Monday, March 28, 2011

Two uses for plastic milk cartons

Collecting Sap

 
Seedling ID

Heroic Task (Or what I won't do for my son)

Car dug out of 2 feet of frozen snow in one and half hours by 50 year old mother and 18 year old son, so son could get to soccer practice. Thank-you to neighbors for final help pushing it out and pumping the flat tire!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Feeding the Chickens

We have about an hundred chickens. (and currently no steady egg sale market so palettes of eggs are stacking up on the kitchen counter) Somedays, it is a real struggle to get that afternoon feed accomplished before it is time to set off in the car to guitar lesson or Spanish class. I found myself a few days ago, struggling to retrieve an antique wooden clothes pin from the mud under the chickens, as they cluttered around, excited about the maggot-ridden peanuts that I had brought them in a cellophane bag closed with the pin. The maggots had had plenty of time in the bag to make a fine sort of webbing that swaddled the bag, the nuts and the clothes pin, but I picked it up from the mud and put it in the now-empty food bucket. It is wonderful to even be able to put maggot-ridden peanuts to good use.