They're Gawky Teenagers Now

I remember looking up pictures of Buff Orpingtons and Barred (or Plymouth) Rock chickens when I first brought these bad girls home and being taken aback by how ugly they would become as they entered their awkward teenage years (weeks?). Perhaps it's a mother's love, but they don't seem to have ever become funny looking or ugly to me, and I'm pretty sure they've surpassed the ugly phase already and are well on their way to becoming lovely, healthy layers that will supply me with lots of yummy chicken tampons (this is how Hub refers to eggs; way before Howard Stern ever called them that, THANKYOU). If not, Hub will need to whip up some of his unreal-good BBQ sauce and the girls will become dinner.

We have been bringing the ladies out every afternoon, and now they get very angry if left in the house too long: trying to fly out of their box, knocking over their waterer, and generally being temperamental and rebellious teenagers. The plan was to move them outside permanently this weekend, but with stupid rain on the forecast, we may be forced to keep them indoors for a few more days, much to their dismay.

Trixie and Egg Carton (the Barred Rocks) are pretty much impossible to tell apart now, except that Trixie doesn't mind being held, while Egg Carton has a hissy fit if you try to pick her up. Brat.

McNugget and Peep (the Buff Orpingtons) like to fight a lot. Let's just say that it would be to their advantage NOT to end up being roosters.

So far, they don't like radishes but love radish greens, balk at broccoli except the leaves, and eat bugs and worms like there's no tomorrow. They turned 6 (weeks) on Tuesday. I LOVE THEM.

"We're going to pout and face the wall because we're not outside."

The Carrots Are Being Lame

I'm not sure what their problem is, but they don't get a picture because they just haven't done much in the growing department lately, and I am not amused by their slow-growth antics.

The beets are on my shit-list, too, because I took a picture of them yesterday that looks almost exactly like the one I took of them ALMOST ONE MONTH EARLIER.

March 29, 2009.

April 28, 2009. WTF?

Perhaps this is because root vegetables do all their growing underground and then their greens grow all crazy right before they're ready to be harvested? I don't know, but that's what I'm telling myself because Lord knows I have given these guys some serious love.

Spinach is doing OK, I suppose, but needs to get his ass in gear because I'm going on a diet and need more greens. Something appears to be munching on it, too. Must be a bug of some sort because Fort Knox has got nothing on me when it comes to how secure this bed is.

Holey spinach.

The peas are my friends because they are doing what they're supposed to do like good little peas and growing to my satisfaction.

Thanks, Peas. You guys totally rock.

The ghetto pea trellis.

The cilantro and green onions seem pretty happy in their large pot.

It appears to be a good thing that I bought tomato seedlings because these guys aren't very excited about growing yet. I thought tomatoes were supposed to be easy to grow, so this is not much of a testament to my seed starting skills.

We're being stubborn.

On the bright side, the butter lettuce and chives seems to be enjoying their home in VB1, and Justin's Future Pickles have poked their heads out of VB2. The yellow squash and zucchini are taking their sweet time.

Out of frustration from all my vegetables' slow-growth shenanigans, I made a tea the other day from Foxfarm's Peace of Mind fertilizer and gave everyone a good feeding, so hopefully they'll thank me by fulfilling my need to feel like a somewhat successful gardener and just grow faster already.

Long-Ass To-Do List

I took Friday off since Hub was off clamping for the weekend with his drinking buddies and yet still barely made a dent in my yard to-do list. I blame this on the fact that future SiL (sis-in-law) was in town as well, so I felt obligated to entertain her to some extent: so I put her ass to work in my yard. Unfortunately, SiL has mad allergies, so after only 20 minutes or so of weed pulling, had a good excuse to not help me with my yard work anymore. She made a valiant effort, however.

Here's my list:
1. make a trellis for the peas
2. take old toilets, empty propane tanks, and other miscellaneous crap at front and side of house to dump
3. eradicate blackberry bush up against house, including roots
4. clean out shed and move it where blackberry bush was
5. burn remaining brush
6. move compost bin away from house and turn it
7. figure out what kind of ground cover to fill parking space with, then cover it
8. spread gravel along north side of house - fill in washing machine drainage ditch
9. take down stupid pear tree that litters tiny white flowers all over your driveway
10. buy a gas-powered blower because your electric blower is retarded
11. wash and clean out Tacoma
12. re-position clothesline
13. make the extra bedroom into a canning/storage room (IKEA trip?)
14. build a fence out of T-posts and welded wire fencing for your future goats

My pea trellis turned out pretty ghetto, but I think it will work.

You notice how it says toilets, plural? Yes, we are white trash. I'm ok with that. It scares away the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

I forgot that burn season ends on April 30th and am kicking myself for not finishing off the last tiny bit of the burn pile.

So yea, my percentage completion rate is only 28.5 percent, but to my credit, instead of starting out with yard work on Friday morning, I opted to rip the frightening orange carpet from 1976 (I'm not kidding) out of our bedroom. I found a somewhat thread-bare but pretty clean Karastan rug on CL the other day for $20 from some lady that thought I was a college student (BLESS HER HEART), and it just so happens to be almost the same dimension as our oddly-sized bedroom (11.5' x 18'), so out with the old carpet, and in with an antique (ha!) rug. Some sort of rug is necessary because our house was built in 1963 and has asbestos tile flooring in the bedrooms, which isn't exactly cozy to walk on with bare feet - I plan to hunt down the person that made this unfortunate decision and strangle him/her someday. As long as you don't try to remove the tiles, it's not a health hazard, but WTF (that would be who, not what) would install vinyl tile flooring in a bedroom anyway?

I like the rug a lot! I'll take a picture for you once I get all the furniture back in place and post it soon. I even remembered to take BEFORE pictures so you can understand just how much happier I am without gnarly orange carpet in my sleeping quarters.

You've Got Nuthin On Me, Chard

I got Hub to eat green vegetables last night - lots of them. No, really, I did.

Noce's All-Green-Like Stir-Fry.

Ingredients:

1. The massive bunch of chard that came in the farm share today, ribs removed and chopped up
   
2. One young onion (aka spring onion; or you could use a leek) leftover from last week's farm share, sliced
   
3. A lot of broccoli, chopped (or not, if you prefer big trees)
   
4. Two chicken breasts, sliced into bite-size pieces
   
5. 1 cup Black Pepper Sauce from Trader Joe's
6. 1 1/2 cups Sweet & Sour Sauce from TJ's
7. 2 1/2 Tbsp. butter
8. Garlic, minced
9. Some slivered almonds
10. Some sesame seeds
11. Lemon pepper and salt, to taste
    
12. Basmati or Jasmine rice
    

How to:

In a BIG saute pan over medium-low heat, melt the butter and add the young onion/spring onion/leek. Let it sizzle for maybe ten minutes (start cooking your rice in a rice cooker about now), then add the chicken. Season with lemon pepper and salt.

Add the broccoli and chard (holy cow, that's a lot of chard) to the chicken, cover, and let cook until broccoli is bright green and chard has (significantly) reduced in size. Not so scary looking now, is it?

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together your Black Pepper Sauce and Sweet & Sour Sauce. I'm just guessing on the quantities here, but I probably had about 1.5 cups, which is why I put those particular amounts in the ingredients list, but I really don't know how much it was. My stir-frys always seem to be disappointingly un-saucy, so I really sauced it up this time, and it obviously worked out because Husband ate it all.

Now toss your garlic into the Fry. Stir it up.

Wait for the click on the rice cooker to tell you that your rice is done, then add all that good sauciness to the Fry.

Now, serve yourself up some rice, slather on some of that Fry, and garnish with the almonds and sesame seeds.

Line Drying Season Has Begun

OK, maybe I was little negative yesterday with all my Earth Day un-support rhetoric.

Although I don't understand why people get so excited about it, I do appreciate the sense of community and togetherness that Earth Day brings about. I still think it's total BS, but I also try to be a relatively positive person, and slamming people for having kids probably isn't going to accomplish much. Even so, I am a big proponent of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and think everyone should peruse the www.vhemt.org website and draw their own conclusions. I'd be interested to know what people think.

Moving on to more exciting things (at least in my head), most people who know me are aware of my obsession with drying laundry on my clothesline. Nothing beats extra crispy towels and the smell of Outside on my clothes. This is another trait I get from my Ma.

Soft, dryer-sheet-dried towels from the dryer? I THINK NOT.

Crispy, freshy bed linens.

Cats Don't Care About Earth Day

And neither do I.

Let me show you:

Nekkie has no consideration for the fragile Alligator Lizard population in my backyard.


Lizard drops tail, confuses cat.


Liz says to me, "I'm totally smarter than your cat."

I think Earth Day and all this green bullshit is just a really sad excuse for people to feel better about their incessant procreating and whathaveyou because they don't want to admit that their decision to populate the planet further is the sole reason for its demise.

O, and it's something for big corporations to totally capitalize on, but that's a discussion for another day.

Not that I believe that Earth is in trouble anyway - we will destroy ourselves far before we have any long-lasting effect on the Big E. Humans are funny in how we always have to make it about us.

Here's a thoughtful quote to help console oneself amidst all this earthy Doom and Gloom:

"No American city comes remotely close to being sustainable. There are too many people on the planet to make it sustainable with any technology. Utopians believe that the earth can handle 6 billion and more of us to come, but every ecological system in the biosphere is collapsing at rates not seen since the last mass-extinction. Thus, I'm not especially concerned about someone driving a hummer or failing to recycle a plastic bottle.

Most of our environmentalism primarily serves the purpose of making us feel good about ourselves. It's not doing anything to 'save the planet'. The planet will be fine, it's doing a good job of ramping up all kinds of anti-human defenses. Read any science journal and you'll see countless reports of ways in which we're destroying our own habitat (and that of many other species), but life will go on just fine as it always does. It will go on with a very different balance of species and a lot of opportunities for new species to evolve during the post-hominid epoch." -- from username "TheHarvester" on www.city-data.com

I remember my Pops telling me a long time ago about his theory that we should use up all the fossil fuels on Earth so that there's nothing left and we have to develop new technology to support ourselves that does not rely on a finite amount of resources. I thought it was absurd at the time - it makes perfect sense to me now.

So why am I trying to be a "homesteader"? Because I am doing this for fun, THANKS. Gardening is fun. Baby chicks are totally cute. Composting benefits the food I get to eat. I'm all in it for the gratification.

I also don't trust anyone. I value self-sufficiency for the sole reason that I don't want to rely on anyone else for my livelihood (other than the Hub for emotional support and because I just like him so darn much). This may never actually come to be, but I can certainly have fun trying.

Don't get me wrong now, y'all! I love all the rug rats that my friends and family have had (and will have in the future). I simply savor the freedom of handing them back over at the end of the day after I've gotten my kid fix.

Earth Day is tomorrow. Show your un-support by choosing to ignore it like me.

I Love Bark Mulch

My front yard is starting to look like I actually care about it. I am so proud.

I got another truckload of bark mulch on Sunday, and, after much weeding and leveling of the dirt, spread it around. I just can't get enough of this stuff. Bark mulch makes everything tidy and neat and oh-so-organized looking. LOVE.

Bark mulch!

I also made another vegetable bed - we'll call him Vegetable Bed #2, or VB2. It's the same size as the first one - I used 28 bricks for each bed. This time, however, I mixed some steer manure into the top soil to hopefully give the zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber seeds the boost they need. This area doesn't get a whole lot of sun, so I'm trying to give them the best chance possible to provide me with lots of yummy vegetables.

I would recommend wearing gloves when spreading manure. Ew.

The butter lettuce in Vegetable Bed #1 (VB1) seems to be pretty happy. I used some Foxfarm fertilizer in this bed instead of the steer manure. It will be interesting to see which bed does better.

Getting bigger, slowly but surely.

The chives are looking more edible by the day.

I removed the chicken wire I originally had covering VB1 and replaced it with some welded wire leftover from the chicken tractor extravaganza. It is much neater looking and will also be tall enough for the butter lettuce and chives, although I need to figure out how to cover the ends and will also need to get more welded wire anyway for VB2.

You can't get to us now, stupid deer.