Life Over the Past Year - a Review of 2013 and a Start to 2014

Here we are, two weeks into the new year, and I never wrapped up last year.  I had planned to do this on New Year's Eve, but sleep took over. And then other things happened, so I'm finally getting around to this.

It was a busy year; sometimes a hard year. A lot of stuff made it onto the Facebook page instead of here; I'll be trying to do better about that this year.

It snowed. and snowed, and got warm, and snowed. Pretty typical for the mountains. Pretty typical for the state!

I took several pictures of ghost towns and ruins on my trips.  Karl's Dairy, local finds, random buildings from driving about for work, Husband and I took a road trip one day after an appointment, going the back way into Central City, and then finding a town I still can't identify from the maps. A couple more work trips brought these - near Greeley,  a ghost town near Jefferson, a number of places going through South Park, including Kline Ranch.  I also covered the opening of a new local state park, Staunton State Park for my Examiner column.

Hawk on a pole near home

Eagles on a nest near Kremmling

The giant adirondack chair a local church built- you can see a regular sized one at the base.

My car got fixed, thanks to help from my dad, and when we went to take it to the shop, we found out that our local squirrel had used it as a storage device.  Amazing how much easier it is to carry my work equipment in the van, rather than trying to stuff it all into a Mustang.  It also made it so that my husband had access to a car during the day, just in case he needed it.  Also made it so that he could make his weekly doctor appointments.

This was the year for cooking and canning.  I shared a few recipes, and processed a TON of tomatoes!  I thought I was ordering 30 pounds of tomatoes, and I ended up with 75 pounds!  This was in addition to the tomatoes I had already gotten and frozen, about another 50 pounds all told.  I made pickled sweet pepper jelly, watermelon and dandelion jelly , pizza sauce, apple butter and apple pie filling, tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce, pumpkin and pumpkin butter.  These were great come gift giving season; that, eggs and baked goods were gifts to several people this year.

tomato sauce - round one

spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, dried tomatoes -round two

Dandelion jelly, watermelon jelly, pizza sauce

apple butter

apple pie filling - some n small jars for lunches!

Tomato sauce and pizza sauce - round three

75 pounds of Roma tomatoes

Here's the recipes I shared here and elsewhere.
 Mini Egg Roll Bake
Cabbage Rolls
Making Butter
Chicken Soup
Lemon Cookies
Easy Bread
How to roast a Turkey

Even though my income was lower in 2013 than it was in 2012, we did better with it.  I tried to stock up on a lot of foods and necessities  - dog food, toilet paper, dish soap, etc. A half price sale on chicken feed really helped for a while there.  All in all, we've done fairly well, but there are still improvements to be made to my system.

One of the biggest helps was our daughter, who lives with us, got a promotion to assistant manager of the bakery at the grocery where she works.  Her increased salary has been a big help, as she was able to help cover bills for December than I was not able to do.

Other big family news, our son, a Lance Corporal in the Marines, got married mid summer.  They live far away in North Carolina, but came to visit in August.  They are settling well into married life.  My father took a trip back east to visit family, and ended up traveling quite a bit this summer, just because he could.

newlyweds

And of course, we got  baby chickens. More than I had originally planned on.  Oh well. I wrote lots of stories about Chickens. And the biggest deal - the finished chicken coop.  We did lose another couple of chickens this year; White Myrtle, our mighty mouse hunter, decided to stray from the flock and got taken my a coyote.  That coyote was rather brave; he came back the next day and attempted to get one of my other hens.  Most of them fled on his approach, but one . Bad luck for him - I happened to be standing by the garage when he ran up on them, and I chased after him, screaming, with a broom in hand. That made him stop for a few seconds, long enough for our Magellan to get the idea and run for the garage.  I kept chasing him as well, and have not seen him back in the yard.  We did, however, hear then howl for the first time in months last week - the pack is back in town.  But now, the hens are safe within their sturdy fortress!

White Myrtle and her catch, with assistance after she dropped it

The other chicken we lost - Nip - was to a sour crop.  My daughter ended up giving her the most care, researching what to do and everything, but on the fourth day of care, just when we thought she was rallying, she passed away in the night.  Nip was buried out back - never eat a chicken that dies of illness, just a note to you.

But in other chicken news - that skylight on the roof of their coop has proven a boon!  When most chickens slow down their laying for the year during the winter months because of a lack of light, they did not. We average about 7-8 eggs a day out of 15 hens.  That's pretty good!

After a very windy spell in early October, husband got out the sawsall and topped all the dead trees in the dog run.  They were all topped at about 10 feet tall, just because.  And around Thanksgiving, we went out and cut all that wood up as well as a few downed Aspen we dragged over - it gave us about 3/4 of a cord of firewood.

They have gotten a vacation from it, however - we had a very bad cold snap in the beginning of December; single digits during the day, minus  temps at night.  The girls moved back into the garage coop for about a week. taking very short jaunts out into the dog run, just like last winter. Of course, to go with this was a power outage.  I stayed up all night, stoking the wood stove in the main part of the house, keeping all cupboards with pipes in them open, and running a propane heater in the basement and garage in order to keep the chickens warm enough.  Luckily, it was an easy fix for the electric company and power was back on by 5:30 am.

Some of the hardships of the year were covered well; I had a bout of illness, rendering me unable to talk for about four days. I could still do everything else just fine. Luckily, my work has a lot of people with illnesses and disabilities, and they were able to accommodate me by switching my schedule a little bit so that I could still work without talking.  I also managed to injure my elbow; it was a progressive thing, and the healing has also been progressive. Sometimes, I still overdo it and it aches for the day. But I should be able to go back to work just fine once the season starts here again in a week or so.

However, the cold snap in December brought on another hardship. Our oldest dog, Pip, after being treated for another bladder infection due to her diabetes two weeks earlier, pretty well stopped eating.  At first, she would only eat things that we considered serious treats - cheese, steak, chicken - and she was drinking well. The vet said let her eat what she would in hopes it was just a reaction to the antibiotics she'd been on. But by the end of the second day, she could not walk herself up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom anymore, she was barely moving herself around the kitchen and livingroom.  On the third day, she even started refusing steak and cheese.  So a hard choice was made, and the vet helped to to sleep for the last time.  Pip was 14 years old,  a rescue dog that had been abused before she came to us in 2002. She learned what it was like to be loved and well cared for, and eventually became the boss of the house.  In 2010, she was diagnosed with diabetes and started treatment for it; the diabetes made cataracts grow over her eyes, but that did not stop her from being the boss of everyone and everything, including and especially the chickens and the other dogs in the house.  She is very missed by all of us.

Pip on duty, enjoying the October sun

Pip, ignoring the chickens who are ignoring her.

So what will 2014 bring?  It's already brought more snow, and another short lived cold snap - ever run with chickens through -10 degree weather, in the dark? We have!  They spend another 36 hours in the garage coop.

We plan to rent a chainsaw and go around the property and take down a lot more of the dead trees. It's good fire mitigation and will give us another round of firewood for the next winter.

Of course, upgrades to the coop - it needs a few things, and the heavy winds this month have showed us that we need to do something to shore up the fences and gates. We did not get to it last year, but we plan to use some more of that salvaged wood to create a floor under the gate area on both sides of the fence, to help with snow removal and to be able to put some movable stops in for the gates.

We need to replace the deck flooring, and do some general property clean up.  I'm going to continue on my mission of getting rid of the extraneous stuff we never use, including a lot of the crafting supplies in the basement. Live simpler.

I do have a new writing position as Sustainable Living writer  for Examiner; I plan to write more on both my titles this year.


Otherwise? Make this year an even better one than the last.

The Chicken Coop- The Finished Product

The chicken coop was our big thing to do this year.  Using recycled materials for the most part, we built a fairly decent, sturdy coop that has served us well so far this winter; only during a very bad cold snap in the beginning of December did we move the chickens back into the garage coop in order to keep a heater on so they could stay warm enough.  Other people told of of chicken losses during that cold spell; we did not want that.

Even then, keeping them warm was a serious challenge that one very very cold evening when the power went out for most of the night. Upstairs, the wood stove was kept running full blast, in the basement and garage a camping heater was lit, and when that was not enough, the camping cook stove was used on and off for heat! An exhausting night, but everything and everyone was kept warm, no chickens harmed, no pipes frozen, An overall win.

I know I have posted some of these pictures to the blog before, but we really need a start to finish retrospective. So here it is - the chicken coop. The coop itself was completely finished in late August, early September.

Preliminary layout of the floor, thinking it all out. The actual floor was totally different!

The foundation -built and level.  The blocks are cemented together, the boards cemented to the blocks.

Started, but the rain stopped us.

Finished floor!

One of the first things we did was paint the wall boards, This may seem backwards, but because the coop was put in the corner of an already existing fence enclosure, the boards would need to be put on the frame first before the wall was put in place.  I got two cans of paint from the "mistake" bin - this lovely purple, and a nice dark grey. Why pay $60 for paint when you can pay $14?

Painting assistants.

Since painting was happening, why not the door as well? Funny story about the door - I'd picked it up several years back from a house where I used to babysit the summer after my first year of college - this had been the front door of their house! Now, it was to be our coop door.

It rained while I was painting the door, causing the paint to peel off!  The finished door looks much nicer.

First wall frame!

Backing that frame.

First wall up - with the proud builder.

Checking the framing out for all the other walls - better to get it right the first time.

Second wall up, and it's getting dark! Tomorrow is a new day. You can already see the slope we put in place for snow and to accommodate the skylight.

Day two, wall three and the roof joists.

And now, the front wall and the skylight frame.  Rain was our nemesis; it kept us from this for days! And this was NOT the easiest wall to do.

But now, all four walls are up!

the skylight is so large, the actual roof space was rather small.

 

Roof tar papered, wooden frame tarred, ready to slide the skylight into place and screw it down.

Roof all tarred and sanded.

Now the rest of the work on this project fell to my husband, with a bit of help from daughter. I was working, and wen I came home, I was surprised with finished nesting boxes, roosts, poop board and chicken door hole.  Together, we got the doors up and ready.

Doors on!

And finally, after all our hard work, the girls get to move in and check out their fancy new digs.

First night in the new coop - yes, we did sneak out and wake them up by taking pictures!

Since then, they have figured out suitable arrangements for themselves - the younger set all sleep on the top roost unless its a warm night, then they spread out on the roosts.  Poppy, our poor omega chicken, sleeps in the middle left hand box, and all the older girls sleep on top on the nesting boxes, as pictured here.

Even the gates got up! Also thanks to my husband - another thing he did while I was at work.

We still want to do some work on the fence, and we want to use the remaining heavy floorboards to make a flat space under the gate and on both sides of it in order to make snow removal easier, but for the winter, this works well and keeps the chickens safe during the day when they are out and about.

We are very proud of it - we planned it and built it all by ourselves (with the wonderful help of scavenged supplies and a skylight from my dad. Thanks dad!)

Lemon Cookies

This recipe comes from the Tangen House cookbook at Living History Farms, a very popular cookie with the staff! The recipe is from the 1860s, unchanged through to today. The dough is suitable for rolling and cutting out. or for making into small balls and baking that way.  My personal preference is  making small balls and slightly flattening them on a cookie sheet. After baking, they seem to remain softer, especially if placed in a zippie bag while still warm.

Lemon Cookies

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Cream together the butter, sugar, eggs, milk and extract.  When thoroughly mixed, add the dry ingredients and mix fully.  Either roll out or make balls, bake at 350 degrees for 5- 10 minutes; take from oven when top of cookie feels firm but before it gets browned.

Tips:

I melt the butter. I find it mixes up better and makes a better cookie, but also mind that I am baking at high altitude.  I have used both regular flour and high altitude flour - it comes out the same to me.

In the past we have substituted other extracts for the lemon - we've used peppermint and almond.  Since we tend to make these for the holidays, we put a bit of red food coloring in with the peppermint to make the cookies pinkish and distinguish them from the lemon.  Imagine taking a cookie thinking you're getting peppermint and biting into lemon!

They are a bit addictive.  Enjoy!

Opinionated Me on "Stupid Habits of" Articles

Social politics at work here today.  I'm going to be my opinionated self here today, because these articles do nothing to help simplify and make our lives happier, They do just the opposite.

These articles that are all about what is WRONG with everyone.  You've seen them - "5 stupid habits" "10 stupid habits" "562 stupid habits" ( OK, I made up the last.) that people develop coming from being in a broken home, or parents who were together forever. or poor, or rich, or getting married, or getting divorced, or staying single,or having kids, or not having kids, or owning a dog, cat, flesh eating bacteria in a jar, or basically, just through being born and growing up.

First off, they start with telling you that you are stupid - if at any point, any of these habits fit you in the least bit, you're stupid.  Reason number one to not read these articles  Most people have doubts and self esteem issues about themselves, they do not need some author writing an article to meet a deadline and get paid, telling them what a bad person they are. Enough people think they're bad people.

Second reason - I've read many of these articles, because I'm curious like that. Well, tell you what - all kinds of people could have those habits without ever having that background.  One of my favorites from the broken home article - "trouble finishing projects". Not all projects, just some.  Well, my parents were married until my mom passed away, and guess what?  I damn near always have at least three different projects laying about unfinished.  I can point to three in this room right now, and that's not counting the unfinished projects bin in the basement. It has nothing to do with my parent's marital status, or my upbringing, it has to do with me sometimes getting easily bored, or my elbow injury - I can only do one thing for so long before it starts to hurt, so time for something else.

The bad habits of the poor? I've seen rather rich people do those things too. People I know who were raised rich and who have never been poor. Generalizations fail, folks.

Third reason? Whatever, whomever you are, those generalized "habits you develop" often do not apply to you.  But the article makes it seem if you are a green and purple transsexual alien who loves golf, you MUST have these habits, all because the author knows someone just like you has those habits. Wrong.

All of us are fallible, all of us have doubts about ourselves, our lives. All of us have played the "What If" game.  It doesn't make us a stereotype.

Realize that you are you - a good person, a decent person. Don't let a lame article tell you that you should hate yourself, that you should have habits that you do not.

And if you do have habits you don't like, ask for help in changing them. Trying to go it alone sometimes doesn't work, and a simple reminder from someone else close to you may help a great deal.

Consider this you reminder if your habit is to take those articles to heart.  We like you as you are, you are good person. Stop reading those articles.