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. :)