The Coop is Finished! :)

Yesterday, my fiance came to me at about noon and told me the chickens didn't seem to be handling the heat well.  We'd managed to put a roof on the coop and move it outside, but the run wasn't finished, so we'd kept them inside the coop for the last two days.  It wasn't ideal, but it was roomier than the tub.

I went to check on the chickens and they all looked uncomfortable in the coop.  The window that I'd hoped would give them ventilation didn't seem to be venting out enough.  They were all panting.  So we did something I read about in my research (I was not voluntarily being mean to my poor chickens) and carried them out of the coop one at a time and poured water on them from one of those sprinkly watering pails.

They weren't thrilled about it, but they did cool off very quickly.  They seemed a lot more lively afterward.

This meant that the rest of our day was devoted to finishing the coop and run so that they could go outside to cool down on hot days (like yesterday).  I was a bit burned out on coop-making and a tad under the weather, so I ended up watching while my fiance finished the chicken ramp.  I was very grateful.  He did a wonderful job (better than I would have).

So, we have our completed coop and run.  The chickens seem happy.  We lock them in the coop overnight and open the ramp up for passage during the day.  We need to water them regularly, and make sure the have food.  In the evenings, I plan to give them some sort of "treat" to lure them up into the coop.  Last night it was squash guts which they seemed very excited about.

Here they are, clucking and fluffing happily around the ramp J. made for me.

Our chickens have now become considerably more low-maintenance.  This means I can return my attention to cheese-making.  From thence, onward to goat-owning (and the subsequent goat-cheese making and goat-cheese selling).

Hopefully all of this works.  So far nothing's gotten into the coop and killed any of our birds, and the birds themselves don't seem to have any illnesses (knock on wood, knock on wood).  I do hope to make a small detachable tractor for them sometime in the near future so that I can house sick or broody hens as they come up.  I'd prefer to have the tractor and not need it for several months than need it and not know what to do without it.

Anyway, for now all seems to be going well.  I need to go make dinner.  ttyl :)

Chicken Taming and Land to Live On

So, yesterday, my mother-in-law, R. and I all drove to this plot of land and met with a very pleasant lady who posted it for sale on Craigslist.  It's a bit out of the way (understatement) but it's within our price range.  It's a beautiful stretch of land.  We'll need to clear parts of it.  Maybe we can get a goat to clear it for us... not yet.

Anyway, here's a picture:

Beautiful, eh?  I was a little nervous, because this is a Craigslist deal, and you get what you pay for, but the seller seems honest.  It's worth a try.

We won't be able to live on it right away (even if we could magically clear the whole half acre overnight).  But if my fiance and I work with the land during the weekends, clearing and building, it might prove to be a very beautiful (getting-in-touch-with-nature type) bonding activity for us.  I'm trying to give my inner optimist a voice here.

And, now for something a little more entertaining.

The birds are getting big!  I didn't get to see much of them yesterday, and it looks like they grew visibly overnight.

I've been trying to tame them.  At least to the point that they don't flee and cower at the far end of the coop every time I approach them.  (Chickens, apparently, are instinctively afraid of people.  I really can't fault them on that one.)  So I've been making sure to bring a treat every time I spend any time with them.  I've been using dry oatmeal because I have access to it, but I'd like to switch over to sunflower seeds, which are supposed to be good for healthy feather growth.  I had to buy the salted kind and wash all the salt off.  It was that, or barbecue flavor.

Anyway, this morning I opened the door to give them some fresh water and food, and I brought a piece of zucchini (they haven't been able to go outside, so I figured they'd enjoy something green).  They all ran up to me when they saw something in my hand.  Then they noticed that it wasn't oatmeal, and stood in a little circle around my hand, staring at the zucchini.  Eventually one of them walked up and pecked at it, then backed away quickly.  A few of the others tried, but it was too big a chunk for them to do much with it.

I put the zucchini away and sprinkled some oatmeal in my palm.  Chicken feeding frenzy.  They all ran up to me and started nibbling at my hand, picking up little oats, and chewing at my fingers.  They have this very delicate bite and twist technique that tickles.

So, good.  They're starting to associate me with food.  That means picking them up to check them for parasites will be easier.  Plus it's fun to see them all come running up to me when I open the door.  They are cute, funny little creatures.

People keep telling me they'll breed like flies.  I really hope that's true.  Anyway, I must finish building that chicken coop.  Until next time :)

Separated the Flocks

Bits of info today.  I've sliced my hands up so much now that this morning when the tomato stake I was carrying broke and split open the skin between my fingers, I didn't really even notice that the blood was oozing all over my hand until I was in the car and halfway to the hardware store.

Got hinges for the coop door (the one the chickens will use).

We separated the flocks last night.  Her chickens are in the tub (she has four).  And mine are in the coop I made.  They don't seem to object to the wire mesh floor.  I finally managed to look it up.  (You know how, when you google something, you don't necessarily find any information pertaining to your topic?)  So, people say it's okay.  The birds won't mind.  Awesome.

So, they should be ready to live outside permanently in about a week.  I can't wait.  Of course, the coop's not done yet.  I wouldn't call it a defensible structure just yet, and I wouldn't want them outside in it until it reaches that point.

I started work on the run yesterday.  In fact, that's all I worked on yesterday.  I wove the wire mesh for the roof together.  Then, since I didn't have wood to complete the frame, I went out into the woodsy area behind the garage and found some fallen limbs which I then sawed down to the appropriate lengths.  I'm using those to support the over-all frame, which has been going relatively smoothly so far.  (Knock on wood.)

I should be getting back to work any minute, but I wanted to burn some time just sitting and doing nothing.  I've been working like crazy to get this coop done.  Once it is done, I realized I'm probably gonna have to sit around for a week and wait for the birds to get big and strong enough to handle being outside.

I also need to take some time today just sit with them and let them grow accustomed to my scent.  They scratched me up pretty good last night when I started carrying them from the pen we had them in outside.  They're getting big enough that they can do some damage if they want to.  Must remember to look up the best way to pick up and hold them so that they'll stay calm.

So much do to.  Will post pictures of the run once it's up and running (no pun intended).  Wish me luck.

P.S.  Received a renewal notice for my stripper license.  Tore it up.  So that's the end of that part of my life.  Now I just hope I make a satisfactory housewife.

Coop!

(Still getting used to this new composing program.  I adapt slowly to things.  Painfully slowly lol.)

So, yesterday, I finally finished enough of the coop to house birds in it.  It's not perfect, and it's definitely not ready to go outside.  (Only half of it is finished, and it has no roof.)  But, I was concerned about the larger birds.  They're broilers, and they're prone to irritation of the stomach because they don't walk around as much as the smaller birds do.  They lie down a lot, and if they lie down in their own filth, the ammonia gives them rashes.

I've noticed all our broilers going bald on their stomachs and I've been concerned that they were over-crowded in the tub we originally had them housed in.  (They grew so fast!)  We've been trying to keep them clean, but pooping is like a twenty-four seven hobby for these guys.

So, yesterday, at about eight in the evening I finally finished the fourth removable door of the coop, which would enable me to secure the birds inside at night.  (It's not predator proof, but it will contain the chickens.)

My coop design has been rather interesting (to me at least) in that it is a hybrid coop/chicken tractor.  It's a complete coop in and of itself.  However, it is designed to be disassembled and relocated from time to time to give the chickens constant access to fresh, clean grass.  (Clean is a big thing with me.  Clean is healthy for them and not-stinky for me.)

Anyway, there are four "removable doors" on the coop that can be unlocked and then lifted off so that the coop is light and moveable.  Once the doors are in place, it's far too heavy to move.  The second part of the coop, which I'd like to start building today will be a chicken run/chicken tractor which the birds can be housed in while the main coop is being moved.  At some point I'd like to add an isolation pen on the other side for introducing new birds to the flock.  But that's not happening anytime soon.  I'll be happy if I can get the tractor/run up and working.

So far, our coops cost us about... seventy dollars?  The wood was free (thank you again to R. for negotiating to keep the junked lumber and wooden pallets, and to my in-laws for letting us have the wood).  The wire was a big ticket item because I bought hardware cloth instead of poultry fence (which is pretty useless at stopping anything other than poultry).  After that, there were the eye hooks, hinges and various odd bits of metal that held the thing together.  Those add up... ugh, and I need to buy more.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling.  Here's some pictures:

So here's a side view of the coop, with the little

chicken window for the birds to see out of. 

 Here's a view of removable doors one and two.  Made from pallet wood

which R. and I took turns sawing loose from the pallets they were nailed to.

Each of those two doors is hinged and locked in place, but they are relatively

easy to lift up and off the coop for cleaning and coop relocation.  Without

the four doors in place, the chicken coop is incredibly lightweight.

Here's a view from the chicken window in the first picture.  The demonic

red light is the heating lamp we put up to keep the chicks warm overnight.

You might be able to see the mesh floor of the coop.  I was rather concerned

when I first constructed this.  I didn't want it to be uncomfortable on their feet, but

I did like the cleanliness factor.  Most of the chicken poops drop through the mesh,

which means they won't be lying on their own filth.  I left the cardboard box in

there, though, so that if they were uncomfortable, they'd have somewhere soft to lay.  I

worried that the wire would also be hard on the broilers' stomachs, but I was

surprised to notice this morning that they seem to be regrowing a little of

their fuzz.  Maybe it's just my imagination.

And here (in case you were wondering why I don't simply clean the coop more

often if filth is an issue) is the reason frequent cleaning alone won't stop the filth.  We put

them in the new coop right before going to bed.  When we woke up in the morning, all

of this was lying under the coop, having fallen through the mesh.  And this is just

the stuff that made it through the mesh.  There's all the stuff in the box to consider.

And there's also all the stuff that didn't make it through the box.  The big puddles

are from the water feeder, which leaks occasionally, and then dribbled down to

make a nice, fetid poopy-soup.  And if they'd been in their tub, they would have

been sleeping in that.  Let me reiterate: they did this overnight.

So that is the update on my little poop factories-- er-- baby birds.  The coop is made.  The birds don't seem to hate it (that I can tell).  And now all I need to do is construct a roof and a chicken run/tractor.  Wish me luck.  (If anyone's even reading this... I don't think anyone's reading this.  Oh well.)

Another Infodump (regarding chickens)

Wow.  New posting format... I'm kinda lost here.  Anyway, today is another infodump.  A lot's happened that's been keeping me away from the computer.  Namely: the birds are getting big!  (I call the cats "the girls" and our chicks "the birds".)

So, yeah.  They're getting big.  Too big for the galvanized tub we originally had them set up in.  They're dirtying their bedding overnight, which means we've been replacing it very regularly, but even that isn't quite good enough.

So I've been trying to make them a coop.  I've kinda been in a hurry because, as soon as I've got the coop part of the coop ready, we can move them into that overnight, and put them in an outdoor chicken run my father-in-law built during the day (while I continue to build onto the coop).

So, once again, behold the innate messiness of the infodump:

1.) Blight.  We lost half our seedlings to it.  I've still got my rosemary and lavender seedlings, and plenty of tomatoes or peppers, but unfortunately while we were throwing away all the blighted plants, the remaining got mixed up.  So we'll have some surprise plants growing.  I know the peppers and tomatoes will probably cross-polinate, but since it's all going into my Infamous Throw-Together Burritos anyway, I don't think that'll be too much of a problem.  Live and learn.  Learn and live.

2.) Roof.  I cannot thank R. and my in-laws enough for letting us have the junk wood salvaged when they were having their roof redone.  Hail damage--> Insurance--> New roof--> wood for poor man's chicken coop.  Long story short.  Anyway, I'm very grateful for that, and all the help I've gotten figuring out how to use the power tools in the garage.  And on that note, I'm also very grateful for the use of the power tools and all the nails, screws and drill bits you guys have let me use.  This would quite literally have been impossible to do without that.

3.)Hands.  I used to think my hands looked rough compared to the other strippers because I refused to wear nail polish.  I didn't know the meaning of the word.  My hands are now covered in little red dots where the hardware cloth poked through the skin.  I've got burns on my right thumb and forefinger.  I've got a slash on my left ring finger.  I'm just happy I haven't lost a finger yet.

4.) Trees.  I can climb them.  Like a black bear.  I didn't know I could do that.  I was trying to get a dead limb from this rather tall tree which had no limbs near the bottom to use for support, so I just climbed right up it, grabbed the dead branch and hung from it until it broke loose, at which point both the branch and I hit the ground.  (I landed on my feet.)  So... awesome.  I'm a cat.  Cool.

5.) Roosting rods.  Of my birds, Wings seems the most willing to tolerate my interference, so I've been using her as a "stunt bird" whenever I want the others to catch on to a new idea.  For example, I made a mini roosting rod for the tub.  I put Wings on it, and she very obediently sat in place, chirping in that way she does when she's content with whatever it is that I've done to her.  While she was doing this, the other stopped cowering away from my hands and ran up to the rod, pecking at it curiously to determine whether it was edible or not.  I left them to it and came back to find three of them perched on the roosting rod.  Sadly, it's too small for the broilers.  I'd like to make them all a little birdy ladder that they can climb to get up to the perches in the coop.  People who've looked at what I've made so far say the coop looks like an aviary in a zoo.  Basically, it is an aviary.  These are birds.  Yes, they're chickens, but they're also birds.  Birds are happiest in aviaries.  So, I'm making them an aviary coop. LOL

Hopefully, it's sturdy and not just pretty.  I'm rather concerned about predators getting in.  I built the first removable "door" of it yesterday.  (Will post pictures soon.)  I've also run out of hardware cloth, and apparently the store is sold out.  Which reminds me that I need to go out and buy a latch for the removable "doors".

So much to do.  Anyway, ttyl. :)

Infodump

So, a lot's happened.  So, I'm just going to drop a lot of info.

1.) Chickens
My God, they're getting big.  I think it's safe to say they've entered the awkward teenage stage of their development.  They're growing their feathers, and every time I look at them they seem just a little bit bigger.  I woke up this morning and found Pip sitting on top of the feeder, about an inch below the top of the tub they're living in.  So we put some chicken wire over the top to prevent them from getting out prematurely, and put a few sturdy twigs in for them to roost on.  My in-laws started building their chicken coop this evening.  My fiance and I will probably start tomorrow morning.  The time is rapidly approaching that we will have chickens and not just chicks.

2.)Hair Gel
It's good, but at the same time, the way I made it is not.  There's a reason everyone tells us to use whole flax seeds.  I improvised with milled, since I had no money to buy whole.  This means I ended up with a whole lot of very fine grains of flax in my hair gel.  This means that when I used a whole lot of hair gel yesterday on my hair, I ended up with this sticky black goop all up in my hair that them combed out in itty bitty black crumbles.  It looked like flea poops.  Very gross.  So I washed out all my hair gel, and I will be trying a new recipe soon, either with whole flax seeds or something else (gelatin, guar gum, xanthum gum... who knows what).

3.)Spring Water
So, apparently, we've been drinking untreated, fresh spring water.  Which is awesome.  Yesterday, we went to the spring to get more water.  We literally drove for a way out into the countryside, then pulled over on the side of the rode in the middle of nowhere.  Around here there are a lot of rock faces on the side of the road.  There was one at the spot where we stopped, and sticking out of it was a pipe.  And a bunch of fresh spring water was flowing out of it.  Ground spring.  Beautiful.  Here's what it looked like:

Lovely, no?

So, that... seems like it'll be it.  I'm sure there's more but I don't remember.

Ode to a Masculine Handkerchief

(Yay!  Sleep deprivation, lotsa caffeine, and way too many parentheses!)

Sorry, guys.  This is probably gonna be a long one.

So my fiance and I woke up at fourish this morning.  (Actually, I'd been awake since one, so I was all bouncy and happy when his alarm went off.)  I decided over my morning coffee (which I keep forgetting to drink, and instead carry around with me absentmindedly from place to place like a ceramic teddy bear full of hot liquid) to make hair goop.

So let me tell you about hair goop.  I've been doing the "no shampoo" thing for a couple months now.  (Which is not to say that my hair is perpetually dirty.  It just means I use chemical compounds other than shampoo to wash it.  Something I will never stop repeating.)  Anyway, I've been very happy since giving up shampoo.  I'm not as prone to dandruff as I used to be.  Since dandruff is generally pretty gross, I figure this is a good thing.

But, I miss my hair conditioner.  I mean, my life hasn't been the same since I threw away the last of my precious hair conditioner.  Seriously, folks.  I loved that hair conditioner.  I needed that hair conditioner.  Every morning.

Why, you may ask?  (If you're reading this... I think Mom and I are the only ones reading this thing.  Aren't we Mom?  Mom?  Okay, I might have over-estimated my readership, there.)  Reason I love my hair conditioner number one.  It makes my hair smell pretty.  I haven't really ever worn perfume or body spray.  I generally pick out a nice pleasant-smelling conditioner and the smell just sort of envelopes me and trails in my wake all day like a loyal puppy.  Well, that puppy is gone now.  And I miss it.

Reason I love my hair conditioner number two.  I have super-curly hair.  It has a mind of its own.  If I don't coat it in something nice and slippery after getting it wet, it turns into one giant, brittle tangle.  Fancy hair conditioners are too waxy or thick to do this, but that ultra-cheap Suave conditioner you see in the grocery store is actually the perfect texture and consistency.  I used to dump a ton of that in my hair after the shower, smear it in and leave it in.  It allowed my hair to dry into nice, clean frizz-free little ringlets, and there was no giant, brittle tangle issue.

Now that is gone.  Oh, how I have missed it.  The first thing I did was begin experimenting with oil.  I would wash my hair (with my own stuff) then pour some oil into it.  Problem one-- the oil all stuck to my hair in one place like a giant grease spot.  So, then I would pour a large bowl full of hot water and let the oil float on top of the water and dip my hair into this, swishing it around until it was all nice and coated with oil.  Problem two-- not enough oil.  So I added more oil to the bowl.  That didn't do it, either.  More oil.  My goodness, how much oil will this take?  This is getting kind of expensive.

At last, I get it working right.  This seemed like a solution until I realized that the oil never completely dries.  My hair looked greasy (which is was) and filthy (which is wasn't necessary, but who cares at that point?).  Worse than this, anything will stick to that much oil, so dirt, dust, foul odors, everything.  I'd start a day with clean hair, but I'd end it with hair so filthy I couldn't stand myself.

So I shampooed it all out, and did not allow any oil to touch my hair again for quite some time.

Which left me with the giant, brittle tangle issue.  I decided to try and let the natural sebum in my hair take care of that.  Instead of getting my hair thoroughly wet every day like I used to, I would keep it dry and spray it with vinegar that way.  Moderate success.  My hair went completely straight (which was fun at first, but I started missing my "normal" hair after a while).  It didn't tangle, but it didn't have the life or the bounce it used to.

The day before yesterday, I remarked rather sadly to my fiance that I miss my hair the way it was when I still used hair conditioner.  He said he did, too.  I sighed and figured what was lost was lost.  (I'm a bit stubborn about the no shampoo thing.  I'm determined to make it work, even if my hair type and body chemistry conspire against me.)

Anyway, yesterday, I was wandering the internet, contemplating returning to my hair much-beloved hair conditioner and trying to work up the determination to stay away from it.  So I decided to look up just what chemical compound made that stuff so slippery (I assumed it was glycerin, and I was wondering about getting my hands on some vegetable glycerin to see if I could reproduce the effect on my hair).

Anyway, my google search showed up a recipe for homemade conditioner, which I clicked on fully expecting the usual "just use vinegar and all your tangles will magically disappear" which only works for people who don't have radically curly hair like mine.  Instead, I found this recipe which got my very excited.

I realized that all my searches for "conditioner" were turning up fruitless because I never used my conditioner as conditioner.  I used it as a kind of hair gel.  So I did another search for homemade hair gel, and hit the mother load.

There's hair gel made with gelatin, hair gel made with guar and xanthum gum, hair gel made with flax seeds.  Apparently, there are a lot of natural hair product-using people in this world who need hair gel the way I do.

Which is what led me, at five a.m. to my mother-in-law's kitchen armed with a copy of Naptural85's flax seed hair gel recipe.  I didn't have half the ingredients.  Well, I had water, which is technically half the ingredients.  I didn't have the whole flax seeds which are kind of key for the recipe.  I still don't have any essential oils at all, sadly.  I did have a lot of determination.  If this failed, it failed.  Life would go on.  If it succeeded, though...

Oh, my hair,  how I've missed you!

So I took milled flax seeds, thought to myself that there were so many things that could go so wrong with using it, and added it to the water.  I low-balled the flax seeds because I wanted something only faintly gel-like, the closest consistency to my old hair conditioner I could get.

Then I boiled it, thinking the whole time I was stirring, "This isn't going to work.  This totally isn't going to work.  If this doesn't work, I'll turn it into soup stock."  And I would have, too.  But it worked.

After what seemed like a small chunk of forever, I noticed the spoon getting just a little slippery.  I got all excited and added more flax seed flour.  Then, stirring with one hand, and rummaging in the spice cabinet with the other, I pulled out some ground cloves and added it to the brew.  Like I said, I am still without essential oils, so whatever's in the spice cabinet ends up getting thrown into my creations.  Like my fiance's rosemary, dried mint leaves, cloves, vanilla extract, orange extract.  If it looks like it might smell kinda pretty, into the recipe it goes.

I brewed it a little longer, to let the cloves steep, and thought "This might work!  This might actually work!  I really didn't think this would work!"

And then came the moment of truth (and the reason I titled this post as I did).  I didn't have any pantyhose, so I poured the brew into a common man's handkerchief draped over an oversize coffee mug.  I've very recently realized just how awesome handkerchiefs are.  I mean, yeah, you can blow your nose on them, but they're good for so many other things.  For example, this particular handkerchief had recently been used as my labneh cheese-cloth and, in my opinion, worked better than the commercial cheese cloth I'd purchased for my first batch.  I figured if anything would work for me, my best bet was the humble (but oh-so-useful) man's handkerchief.

Surprisingly, despite all the difficulties so many people seemed to have with this recipe, it worked like a charm.  It strained out all the gritty bits of clove and flax seed perfectly.  I'm pretty sure the finer grains got through, so for all I know, I'll have little grits of flax seed in my dried hair, but the current mixture looks pretty uniform in consistency.  It's viscus, but not so much as some of the recipes I've seen.  It's browner, too, because of the cloves and flax seed flour (as opposed to whole flax seeds).  I added orange extract to it once I'd filtered it, and now it smells like some sort of tasty holiday beverage.

I don't think I'd mind one bit smelling like a tasty holiday beverage...

So, anyway, I popped it in the fridge to cool, and it now looks (the coffee mug helps this illusion) like some sort of goofied cappuccino.

Wish me luck putting it in my hair.  I'll probably post a followup consisting mostly of either "it worked, it really worked!" or "OMG, it took me half an hour to get the gunk out of my hair."

I'll post pictures, too. :)

More Chickens

Happy Easter everybody! :)

So, yesterday morning, I went out and bought six more chicks of indeterminate genders in the hope of getting a rooster in the mix.  So we now have two red, two black and five blonde chicks.  My mother-in-law's chicks are one red, one black and two blonde with black spots.  The garage is filled with the cheeping peeps of many tiny critters.

The cats are scared of them.  My poor babies.

Anyway, I have pictures all over my Flickr account, for those who are interested in seeing them.  (Click the slideshow in the upper right hand corner.)

And I'll add a picture here while I'm at it.

Isn't he/she adorable?  I actually can't wait till they get bigger and we can keep them in the coop out-doors.  If they live that long, then I know that I'm considerably less likely to make a mistake that will get them all killed.

Anyway, wish me luck. :)

CHICKENS!!!! :)

So we are now the proud owners of CHICKENS. :)  So happy.  So excited.

I bought four pullet chicks, and my mother-in-law bought two pullets and one chick of indescriminate gender.  Their names are as follows.  Mine are Wings, Spotlight, Shadow and Tiny.  Hers are Pipsqueak (Pip), Star and Paulie/Polly.

I didn't expect them to be so ADORABLE!  The tub (which we will convert to a bathtub after they're grown) is full of the sound of little cheeps.  I'm trying to look up all their requirements.

Plus, I'm rotatilling the area where our garden will be.

And I'm trying to resist picking them up and holding them and cuddling them, and holding them some more :)

Anyway, here is the first in what will inevitably be a long stream of chicken pictures:

Aren't they just the cutest little things?

Labneh and Chickens

After the trials and tribulations of yogurt-making, I wasn't to sure the labneh would be as easy as the instructions suggested.  I kept expecting some small, fatal flaw to make itself evident in the finished product.  Instead, what I got when I opened the handkerchief was perfect, yummy cream cheese.  Exactly like the stuff you buy at the grocery store.  It was perfect!  I was overjoyed.  I immediately used some as filling for these heart healthy dark chocolates I've been making.  (Mostly for my fiance, but partly for me.)

So, I can make labneh cream cheese!  I'm ready to attempt the next step, which is Neufchatel cheese.  It's another creamy cheese, and generally that's what you're getting when you buy "goat cheese" at the grocery store.  I need to make my own buttermilk first.  And I need to get my hands on some rennet.  I can't wait, but I think it'd be wise to take maybe a week to let the yogurt and labneh information sink into my head first.

Besides, we're getting chickens!  WE'RE GETTING CHICKENS!!!  (So happy.)

I've wanted chickens for years, but it was one of those things I didn't think was going to happen for at least a couple more years after this.  But apparently, we're getting chickens.  Either today or tomorrow.  (Tomorrow, I think.)  I imagine the journal will be full up with notes about chicken care and handling.  I don't need to distract myself from that with another attempt at cheese.  I've decided I must be a remarkably distracted person, because I can really only focus on learning one new thing at a time.  The chickens will occupy my brains front burners for at least a couple days, more likely a couple weeks.

So, that's the matter I'll focus on for a while.  And I will post pictures!   Chicken pictures!  I can't wait!!! :)

RECIPE:

HEART HEALTHY DARK CHOCOLATES

So, I'm sure someone else has thought of this, but coconut oil solidifies in the refrigerator at about the same texture and consistency of a Hershey's chocolate bar.  So, lately, when I get a yen for sugar/chocolate, I've been mixing cocoa powder in with melted coconut oil, dribbling it into an ice cube tray, and sticking it in the fridge.  (I don't add sugar, because I like my chocolate dark... like my coffee, LOL.)

Once it's solidified, which takes all of five minutes or so, I pull it out then drop a little piece of filling in.  I think I'm going to experiment with raspberries and cream cheese (since I've got cream cheese).  Then I pour more cocoa powder/coconut oil over the top and pop it back in the fridge.

The end result looks thus-ly...

...and it tastes like a very dark chocolate truffle.  Usually if the filling is vaguely sweet, the chocolates are sweet enough for our sugar-avoidant palates.  For people who actually do eat sugar (like normal, sane folks do), you'll probably want to sweeten yours. :)

Yogurt Attempt 3. Success. Labneh Attempt 1...

Hopefully, I don't kill any more gallons of milk trying to do this.  I know I will.  It happens.

I am not a master yogurt-maker by any stretch of the imagination.  Streptococcus thermophilus (as the name suggests) loves heat.  But if you get it too hot, it will die.  This last batch, instead of trying to play it safe at the low end of thermophilus's temperature range, I cranked it up and started working with the high end of the bacteria's heat tolerance.  My thermometer kept fogging up, so I kept having to rinse it and restart my measurements.  Which meant I was far hazier than I would have liked on the exact temperature of the milk and the heating bath in the cooler.  (I got a cooler this time, because I was tired of making perfectly good yogurt and letting it sit in a too-cold house overnight.)

But it survived.  I'm pretty sure if I do it all over again, I'll run the risk of killing my starter, but in a few more batches I think I'll get good and comfortable with it.  (As an added bonus, everyone in the family will have enough sour cream substitute, soup thickener, fro-yo, and smoothies to last them a lifetime.)

Who ever thought that cooking up a batch of bacteria could be so exciting?  (Or stressful?)

So, here comes recipe #2.  Labneh.  Hopefully, this won't prove to be as tricky as yogurt was for me.

I'm going to copy the recipe down in my journal in case anything ever happens to that beautiful, wonderfully informative website.  (Have you ever noticed, it's always the websites with the best info that suddenly seem to shut down when you most need to find that recipe/chunk of information?)

Anyway, after copying that.  I'm gonna pull out my newly purchased gentleman's handkerchief and make myself some yogurt cheese.  Blue cheese, here I come!

PS: So I started making the labneh, and it looked so pretty sitting in the fridge, surrounded by veggies and healthy-type things, that I totally had to show it off.  So, here you go: Labneh!  (I still don't know how to pronounce the word... oh well.)

Yogurt. Attempt 2. Fail.

I can cook.  I'm not too terribly bad at cooking, even.  But for some reason, my yogurt is a complete fail.  And it bothers me.  I follow the directions.  I do what I'm told to do, and the yogurt fails.  I try again, I do what I'm told to do.  Again, a fail.

And I know what it is, too.  I can't seem to keep my yogurt warm enough for the bacteria to thrive in the milk.  The problem is, I don't really know what else I can do to keep it warm.  I stuck it in the stove with a bunch of boiling hot water.  Still not warm enough.

I'm pretty sure I shouldn't even attempt to make cheese until I've got yogurt down.  I'm trying to make a yogurt cheese, but because my yogurt's so runny, it just seeped right through the cheese cloth.  Another fail.

It doesn't help that every website I read up on says things like, "It's practically fool-proof" and "don't worry, this isn't rocket science!"  Tell that to the two gallons of milk I've ruined so far.  I suppose I need to buy a cooler, line it with blankets and then put a kettleful of hot water in a jar in with them just to make sure they stay warm enough.

Because we've got an early summer and every air conditioning unit in the house is going at full throttle, it's probably cooler in here now than it is in the winter.  And yogurt likes warmth to grow.

I'm tempted to dump this batch.  I suppose it'll work well enough in a smoothie.  I just don't know where to go from here.  I'm frustrated.

I'll try again.  Eventually, I'll get this right.

Journal, Cheese, and Goats.

So, yesterday was my official "end of stripping" cut-off.  It ended with a whimper and not a bang.  I guess I'm glad.  I don't know what a bang would have been like.  Probably unpleasant, considering the nature of the job.

Anyway, I am no longer a stripper.  Or at least, I no longer consider myself a stripper.  Which isn't saying much. I haven't considered myself a stripper for some time now.  I haven't worked in... a while.

I saw going to post something to mark the occasion, but as it turned out, I had a to-do list as long as my arm.  And other things just seemed more important.  For example:

I was researching cheese-making.  I knew I really wanted to do it, and I figured getting cozy with yogurt-making would be a good way to break into cheese.  But this was something I assumed I wouldn't be able/ready to do until I had my own livestock.  I particularly wanted goats.  I don't know why.  I just like goats.

So, I went online and finally looked up cheese-making.  I got this lovely site right here.  And I can't wait to try out their recipes.  The thing that got me laughing though, was that they use goat milk.  From their goats.

So, then I was researching goats.  So now I'm all kinds of excited about having goats someday in the future.  I've wanted goats for forever, but now I have another reason to want goats.  I now have recipes for cheese.  That I can make myself.  With milk from goats.

I guess I get manic about weird things.  Anyway, in order to do any of these things I so very much want to do, I need to figure out how to make yogurt without destroying gallon after gallon of grocery store milk.  If I can make yogurt, I can make lebneh.  If I can make lebneh, I can try to make... yeah, just visit the link above.

In all of that confusion, I got myself a journal at the Walgreens.  A cheap thing.  The cheapest I could find.  It is now my new bestest best buddy (after my fiance).  I spend a massive amount of my spare time visiting websites for all kinds of information.  How to make relaxing bath salts.  How to make your own soap.  How to make your own cheese.

So, that's great and all, but the problem is that I usually have to re-read most of each of these lengthy articles to get the ingredients and steps of preparation of a lot of these things.  A good writer adds entertaining anecdotal whatnots to their article, and most of the articles I read are written by excellent writers and bloggers.  So, I find myself wasting lots of time fishing through my massive bookmarks collection for the right page that has the right recipe.  Having done that, I have to scroll through the entire article to find the right ingredients.  And then there's always the danger that I'll miss a step.  "You mean you needed flax seed flour for that?  But you didn't mention flax seed flour with all those other ingredients in paragraph six!"

See my problem?  So I went through and copied down all my favorite recipes and cures into this journal which I now find myself using for everything.  Wanna de-flea the cat?  Journal!  Wanna make the beet hummus you can't stop eating?  Journal!  How do you plant garlic?  Journal!

So far I've copied twenty pages of information into that thing, and I'm nowhere near to stopping yet.  How do you make cheese?  This must go into the journal.  What do goats eat?  Journal!

I love it.  Everything in there is scattered in this disorganized hodge-podge.  And at the same time, because it's all hand-written, I remember where everything is just by the feel of the pages.  (It's weird, but I'm like that with stuff I touch.  Particularly stuff I write.)

At some point, I do want to write an index on a piece of loose-leaf and shove it in there.  And I think I'm going to print out the cheese-making instructions, because those are very detailed and my hands are already cramping.

But I'm very happy today.  I'm also very energized, because I couldn't sleep last night and I made up for it with lots and lots of coffee.  So, I'm typing all this a mile a minute, and feeling perfectly wonderful with Everything while I'm doing it.  Oh, blissful euphoria of coffee.  My only drug.

So, I'm making a tincture (?) of rosemary and mint in vinegar.  I know it's supposed to be used for cleaning, but I'm thinking I might use it to wash my hair.  I've been using the vanilla/clove/vinegar spray in my hair and its worked out wonderfully.

But now I've got to run off and do more errand-y kinds of things.  If anyone's reading this, I hope you're having a good day.  I will be until the coffee filters out of my system. :)