Chicken Tunnels

Time to start saving those 2liter bottles again

Check out this tutorial on how to make a greenhouse out of plastic 2liter soda bottles over at http://ana-white.com/2011/04/plastic-bottle-green-house-build-guide

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Instructions on how to build a plastic bottle greenhouse using 2ltr plastic lemonade bottles. This was produced as part of the Greenspaces project with primary schools in Moray. http://www.reapscotland.org.uk/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=8

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How I built my Greenhouse, or how to ignore instructions and get away with it! http://www.squidoo.com/plasticbottlegreenhouse

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Plastic bottle greenhouse http://www.appropedia.org/Plastic_bottle_greenhouse

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

Last night I bought a new book on dehydrating. Drying With an Attitude By Mary T. Bell. At the start of this book she states "One of my mentors has been Buffalo Bird Woman."  She describes this book as "a rare and valuable window into the past by clearly documenting specific details of how Native Americans grew, harvested, dried, stored, and cooked their food." 

This reminded me that A while ago when I read The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Carol frequently referred to Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden.





Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa Indian born about 1839, was an expert gardener. Following centuries-old methods, she and the women of her family raised huge crops of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers on the rich bottom lands of the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. When she was young, her fields were near Like-a-Fishhook, the earth-lodge village that the Hidatsa shared with the Mandan and Arikara. When she grew older, the families of the three tribes moved to individual allotments on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.In Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, first published in 1917, anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson transcribed the words of this remarkable woman, whose advice today's gardeners can still follow. She describes a year of activities, from preparing and planting the fields through cultivating, harvesting, and storing foods. She gives recipes for cooking typical Hidatsa dishes. And she tells of the stories, songs, and ceremonies that were essential to a bountiful harvest.A new introduction by anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jeffery R. Hanson describes the Hidatsa people's ecologically sound methods of gardening and Wilson's work with this traditional gardener.

After reading reviews of this book that glowingly state testimonials such as "As a messenger of the old ways, she detailed how to build drying platforms, the best days to dry corn, beans, squash, buffalo, serviceberries, prairie turnips, and more. She cached food for two years in case the next growing season was a failure."  I knew this is a must read for me.

Each of the pictures of the books in this post are links to amazon where you can purchase them. But if your cheap frugal like me, I wanted to share a link I found where you can download a copy of Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians for free from the 

Digital Library

 

  Click here to go to book http://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t0sq90970

I Made Cheese! I hate cheese!

The two things I've hated eating since I was a baby, are cheese and potatoes. I know, my mom has always told me that's un-American to not like potatoes, but hey I like apple pie. My poor hubby is of Irish descent and he really, really likes his potatoes. Poor guy I think we were married for about 8 years before I cooked potatoes more often then his Birthday and holidays. The Army actually got me eating potatoes, not much choice to not eat them in Boot camp:) But cheese is another thing. Yuck! What really gets me is that cheese looks so good. Every time I look at cheese I think it looks delicious. It really looks like something I should love. Then I taste it, and well, we don't want to even go there. Lets just say I still hate cheese! I have learned to tolerate mozzarella cheese, well if its on a pizza, and just a light coating. That's a big step for me, I went all they way into my 30's ordering my Pizza's without cheese, and getting a lot of weird looks at Pizza Hut for ordering that too. But now I'm 50, I can't believe I just told you my age, and  I can eat my Potatoes and Mozzarella like a grown up.
I bought this Mozzarella cheese making kit for a fun activity that my daughter and I could do with my mom on her birthday. We followed the directions, or so we thought we followed the directions, laughed a lot and ended up with nothing that looked like mozzarella cheese, but we sure had fun trying. So today I was determined to try it again. First I watched this video.

Boy we didn't do nothing like this the first time.

Separating the curds and whey   

Adding Citric Acid to milk

Checking the temp after the rennet was added

Kneading and stretching

Walla, I made cheese



And it only cost me;    $35.32 
Cheesemaking Kit  $23.75, Shipping  $5.49, 2 Gallons milk (1 gallon for each attempt) $6.00

But everybody sure loved it on the home made Pizza we had for dinner tonight ☻                                                          





How To Weave On A Peg Loom

I've been looking for a project my DGD and I can do together this summer and I think I have found it. Peg looming. It is an ancient form of weaving and its beauty lies in its sheer simplicity! She can make some scarves for her Christmas presents and maybe she'll want to try working on a rag throw rug while I'm working at my loom. Here's a great tutorial I found, and a quick video of a Peg loom rug... enjoy

Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a 50 Watt Light Bulb lightbulb hack

Yukon Mike over at the Living Prepared Blog posted this link and I just had to pass it on

Almost Garden Time

 Our weather is finely in the 50's this week. With the ice and snowing melting and the property a big mud bog it's really got me in garden mode. Time to start planning the garden and start the seeds ☺

Last year I started my seeds in 2 liter soda bottles, sorta like mini terrarium. But I found this technique very space consuming. I needed alot of lights for the amount of plants I started. And I found that my plants became very leggy because with the height of the bottles I could not lower the lights to the proper distance. This year my daughter is starting a large garden. And with my DGS's 2 year old "helping" fingers, she figures that it's a better idea to keep her seedlings at my house.  So now it's time to come up with a better way to start my seeds. I've always wanted the Paper Pot Maker, but no way will I spend $18.95 for it. After hunting around the Internet I found these 2 video's. I like this 1st video because it seems to make a stronger pot, more like the wooden pot maker. But the 2nd video is more simpler, and if you twist the cup in the last step it should tighten up the pot bottom just as good. I think will be using one of these 2 video's to start our veggies this year.

How to Make Elderberry Syrup

How to Make Natural, Homemade Deodorant

Homemade soap update

Click on this for link to the soap recipe

I wanted to do an update on the soap I made, but I ended up really surprising my husband in the making of this post. First off let me say that I love this soap. We've been using it for a couple of weeks now and my skin has never been softer. Most surprising to me is how wonderful this soap is as a shampoo bar. It lathers up like an expensive shampoo and my hair is so soft that I no longer need to use conditioner. That picture on the right is me showing how wonderful it lathers. Though I do have a note of warning to anyone who wants to make this soap and blog about it. If you get the bright idea to jump out of the shower while your shampooing your hair so you can take a picture to show how lovely your homemade soap lathers be warned that you just might have to explain to your hubby when he walks in why your standing in the bathroom, dripping wet with a soapy head holding a camera. His eyebrows raised a little when I said I needed a picture to post on the Internet ☻ 

More Free Crochet Patterns

Has a new ebook out 5 Free Crochet Patterns for Beautiful Handmade Gifts.  I see some more Christmas Crocheting in my future ☻

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PATTERN

We're Laying

At least one or two of the Girl's are. Yesterday I found the first egg, the darker one on the left, inside the Chicken house right in front of the door. Today I found the lighter egg hidden under some hay in the back corner of the house. The nest boxes show signs of the girls making themselves comfy in them, but no egg laying. Since I suspect the lighter egg may have been the first egg layed and that I just missed finding it, I marked both eggs and put them each in a nesting box. Maybe now my girls will get the idea of where I'd like them to deposit their eggs.

Garden's finely starting to grow up

Coops Done, except for painting

I'm pretty proud of this coop. It's almost entirely made from recycled stuff. I only spent just under $20.00 total for it all. That was for the PVC pipe for the Waterer and Feeder.

Today I made the nesting boxes. I made them from Cat Litter Tubs. I'm planning on getting some of that spray paint made for painting plastic to paint them to match the coop house.

These are the only things I spent money on. It was still cheaper to make them then it would have been to buy a large feeder and waterer. I've got some leftover house trim paint to paint all the wood. Not sure when I'll get to that, but we're all sent up for eggs now. ☻

Reusable Cloth Snack Bags Free Tutorial

Forget the disposable plastic bags and make a greener and prettier alternative. Make cloth snack or sandwich bags with this tutorial from

Click Here to go to tutorial

Happy Mother's Day New Jersey Crumb Cake Recipe

Happy Mother's Day to my Mum, My Daughter and all you Mom's out there.
My Grand Daughter has spent the night. Last night we made homemade Pizzas from Scratch, and this morning we made New Jersey Crumb Cake. Which tastes EXACTLY like Entenmanns crumb cake!
 I found the recipe online a few years ago and it's definitely a family favorite.

Ingredients:

CAKE



1/2 cup margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla


TOPPING


1/2 cup margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups biscuit mix
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4-1/2 cup powdered sugar
 
 Directions



(1) Cream butter and sugar.
(2) Beat eggs and milk; mix with butter.
(3) In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder, then add to butter mixture.
(4) Stir in vanilla.
(5) Pour batter into a greased 9 x 13 pan.
(6) For crumb topping: Cut butter into sugar, biscuit mix, and cinnamon.
(7) Sprinkle over batter in pan.
(8) Bake at 350° for 30 minutes or until done.
(9) Top with the 1/4 - 1/2 C powdered sugar when cool.

My Garden Bucket

My Dad has a Bucket Buddy. He uses it to carry all his tools around as he's working on a project. I wanted something like this for my gardening. First I found the Fiskars Garden Bucket Caddy I really like this but I wanted one that was well basically free, Hey I admit it I'm CHEAP.

                      

I found this Simplicity Pattern at a Thrift Shop and picked it up to buy it, figuring that I could adapt the pattern to a large bucket.

Then I walked past this  for 50 cents and knew I had my Garden Bucket.

The Garden Bucket is basically an Apron belted around the bucket. So I cut the pockets off the shoe organizer and sewed them onto an old canvas belt and cinched it around the bucket. I had enough pockets to make a second belt which I cinched around the lip of the bucket so those pockets hung inside the bucket. I love my garden bucket. It's not as tidy as the store bought bucket, or as pretty as the Simplicity Pattern, but the bucket was free (left over from a dry wall project), the belts were something I was going to donate, and you can't beat a 50 cent gardening project.