Kitty is Enjoying the Fire
Winter is finally here and Coco was meowing to come in from her house into ours…where the wood stove is burning.
Fencing in the Garden
We let all of our chickens free range, which has caused some trouble in the garden. We quickly added netting around each raised bed, but it was clear that we needed to fence in the entire garden area. We’ve also had racoons, armadillos and other critters in the garden. It took a while, and I
Winter Garden is in Full Swing
The winter garden is going well. This year we’ve planted lettuce, spinach, kale, carrots, beets, broccoli, cabbage and lots of turnips. I wish the beets and broccoli were doing better, but everything else is doing great. It’s nice how minimal the pest pressure is in fall/winter gardening. We’ve had temperatures down in the mid 20’s
Building New Stone Sidewalks
My mother wanted a couple of sidewalks built at their place. We used stone that my brother got from his work. Ben, Brent, my dad and I worked part of the day and made good progress. It still needs some leveling out before mortar is added to set the stones permanently, but we have had
Compost Bins – Updated Design
We’ve had compost bins since April, 2014, but we’ve done several improvements since then. Here is what the original 3 bins looked like. The original compost bins worked great, but the sawdust and wheat straw cover material wasn’t protected from rain. The finished compost bins. A few of the improvements made are: * A roof
Kitchen Cabinets Done
I finally finished the kitchen cabinets in our little cabin. They are made from 3/4″ pine from our chainsaw mill with an inexpensive 1/4″ luan backer. They were super simple to build and very inexpensive. Sarah picked out the green…her favorite color. I used Kreg pocket screws to make the door frames as shown in
Cheap and Easy Insulated Cat House
One of our cats, Roxie, has been sleeping in the garage for the past several months instead of her cat house on the back porch. Now that the weather is getting colder I wanted to quickly make an insulated home for her that I could leave in the garage. I used two Sterlite storage bins
Harvesting Ginger
We planted some store bought ginger root just to see if we could grow it ourselves. I think we planted about a half dozen small pieces of ginger this past spring. Although this is a shade loving plant we left it out in the garden which gets full sun for most of the day. The
Rescued Kittens
We were having a garage sale at my parents when we found three kittens in a culvert running under the road in front of their house. Four white paws The effect of Sarah belly scratching one of the new kittens…She’s konked out.
Homemade Mayonnaise
Here is a recipe for homemade mayo that we think tastes better than store bought. Blend well using a hand-held electric whisker/blender in a wide-mouth quart sized mason jar: 2 eggs at room temperature 1 Tbsp lemon juice 1 Tbsp white vinegar 1/2 tsp seasoned salt 1/2 tsp dry mustard power 1/4 tsp garlic powder