Happy Birthday to Mike

Proof that I made Mike a Birthday cake.  A Butterscotch Sundae cake from an old Betty Crocker cookbook.  It's taller than it looks.  This picture was taken before I drizzled butterscotch all over the top.  Perhaps the best frosting I've ever made.  (Maybe not...maybe it's just been so long since I've baked that it seems like the best).  But how can you go wrong with butter, powdered sugar, cocoa and cream.

Yes today was Mike's Birthday, and I went on a quest to find him a birthday present.  I went to seven places to find one book.  I could have ordered it on Amazon, but I only thought of it yesterday.  You know, I really love the ease of shopping on line, but I hate what it's done to the local economy.

While I was on my search this morning I went to Barnes & Nobel (no luck there--again, why should they stock a book that was written over a decade ago, when they can sell it on line), then I tried Walden's bookstore, only to find they were no more (I hadn't heard...) Then I tried Lassley's paper back exchange on the west side.  The sign was still up, but the building was empty with a for lease sign on the door.  

So much for the west side.

I headed down town.  No luck there either.  Not at Browser's and not at Orca books.  

Who Done It books is now only a memory.  When did it go?  Poof! Just like that.

I was beginning to regret having such a brilliant idea too late to order on line.  

I had wanted to get Mike a book that was number 6 in a series of 20 books.  We had the complete series before he decided to give that book to his dad a few years back.  Then last summer, he started reading that series again, only to find we were missing a book.  What a disappointment...and so he stopped.

I thought, "What a great gift!  By buying this one book, I'm really giving him an entire series back."  I just didn't know how hard it would be to find that one book or how hard it would be to even find a bookstore in this town.  They seem to be dwindling.

But I pressed on, and finally at the last place I had left to try, Lassley's paperback exchange in Lacey, was still in business, and there it was.  One shining copy.

Okay, not a shining copy.  It's a paperback exchange, so we're talking about books that have been read over and over.  But somehow, the quest made giving Mike that book all the sweeter, because it wasn't easy.  I wasn't sure I would find it and it seemed to make the ragged paper back more of a prize.

So I brought it home and wrapped it in a remnant piece of soft green plaid flannel fabric tied with twine (because I thought it was pretty) and handed it to him with a home made card.  Then we had coffee and laughed together while he opened his other cards and gifts from family.  And he was really excited about the book.  He started reading it later in the afternoon, and he's already a quarter the way through it...and remember it's not just one book...now it is 15 books, because he can finish the series.

Then I took him to lunch at Vic's pizza.  And when we came home, while he read his book with a cat on his lap, I made him a birthday cake.  He though he was in heaven.

I came of age in an era of materialism unprecedented in our culture.  And even though we used to make more money than we're making now, I always felt poor.  Somehow that has changed for me.

The more I step outside of what is normal and safe, the richer I feel.  Today, going on a quest for a Birthday present felt magical.  Would I find what I sought?  Would I win the day?

And Mike feels blessed because I baked.  Something I used to do often, but in these days when every moment is filled with earning a living or keeping up with household work,  baking is the last thing I have time for.  So now a cake becomes a magical and rare treat.  And that is how it should be.

What I'm really trying to say, in a long and rambling way is that all those things we once took for granted had lost their magic.  They had lost their zest.  But now  that we live a completely different lifestyle, where we work only for ourselves, we have come to appreciate the crafting of a moment into something more beautiful, and more magical.  A moment to be cherished and savored.  

Update on The Peepers

The Peepers have now become part of the flock.  The internet is a strange and wondrous source of all sorts of information, which is subject to the perception of whoever is sharing that information.  I had read that you should wait to introduce chicks into the flock until they were 16 weeks old.  My friend who runs a chicken farm disagreed.  Her opinion is --the sooner, the better.

The last two days, I had observed Ruby pecking at the chicks and apparently wanting to get back to the flock.  I could see she was torn.  She wanted to be with the others, but she wanted to take the chicks with her.  Having read "expert" advice on the internet, I was hesitant to introduce the Peepers to the flock.  But by just observing the behavior of the chickens, it felt like it was time.  So I asked my friend with the chicken farm.  She seemed to think it was long overdue.

Yesterday I put them in with the flock and cut a little exit in the fence so they could escape back into their yard if they needed to.  They were mostly just ignored, which was kind of a relief.  But they also didn't want to stay with the flock.  They wanted to be "home".  Their home.  So today, I put them in with the flock and blocked the fence.  They were distressed at first, but adapted.

Tonight when I put them all into the hen house they cried and cried.  Not the cozy peeps that I'm used to hearing at night, when they are still settling down after their busy day, but stressed out chick cries.

I went back inside my house and thought they would settle down, but when I went out 10 minutes later, I could still hear stressed chick noises coming from inside.  So I did a little energy work from just outside, and within less than a minute, I heard the little peeps trail off and it got very quiet.

I'm so ready for this to work.  I had a talk with Rocky this afternoon, and told him the Peepers were his responsibility now.  They are part of his flock and he has to keep them safe from hawks.  I told the Peepers they need to stay close to the flock and not wander aimlessly in the open.  

They had figured out their own yard, especially after several close calls with the hawks.  Their reactions were impeccable (no pun intended) on their home turf.  But watching them today made me apprehensive.  There is some open ground in that part of the yard, and they were mostly wandering around like lost children out in the open, while the full grown hens and Rocky were under cover a distance away.

Things were unsettled today, I'm sure they'll get the hang of it.  I just don't want to lose any.  I love my Peepers...no doubt about it.  But from a practical point of view, I also need all the egg layers I can get.

Mike asked me the other day, how many chickens I was planning on raising.  Here's my feeling.  I only have so much land, and it's not a lot, and I don't want to go into chicken farming.  But I want egg layers, and I want chickens working the land, which they do so brilliantly.

I started out with 4 hens in the beginning.  When my best egg layer was killed by a hawk, I was not only heart broken, but it upset everything with the remaining flock.  Ruby has been the only consistent layer since then.  I brought in Rocky to protect the flock...it was just a bonus that I got chicks out of it.

With only one hen laying eggs, I welcomed the chance to increase the flock.  And now that they're here, another one of the hens is finally laying eggs.  And I'm letting her keep them in the hopes that she'll get broody.  There are 9 eggs right now, so I'm hopeful.  And if she doesn't get broody, maybe one of the others will.  Ruby hasn't started laying eggs yet, so maybe she'll do it.  But the point is, the more chicks I have, the better my chance of getting egg layers and I'd like to have 6 productive hens.  I potentially have that right now.  But that's only if Ruby starts laying again and the other hen keeps laying, and four of the Peepers grow up to be egg layers...and only if no one else gets killed by predators.  So as I explained to Mike, if I can get another clutch of eggs hatched (the natural way--I don't do incubators), than I will be very happy.

My friend with the chicken farm was wondering when I was going to butcher the non producers.  I get the feeling she thinks that I'm being weak and maybe a bit sentimental.  But here's what motivates me, and it might not make sense to someone who doesn't work with energies like I do regularly, but I'll try to explain anyway.

In a very small flock, such as mine is, it takes very little to upset the balance.  One hen getting killed by a hawk didn't reduce my egg production by 1/4.  It impacted egg production by 75%.  My four hens were laying 2 dozen eggs a week.  Then I lost Penny, and two of the remaining hens stopped laying eggs, so now I was getting 6 eggs a week.  And let me just add, that my hens were all young and had only been laying for 3 or 4 months when this happened.  In the language of energy matrices, the matrix had been disrupted.

Add to the mix an aggressive rooster, and it has taken a year to recover from that one death in the flock.  It's literally taken that long for things to start to run smoothly again.  If I had taken out my two non producers, then the flock would take even longer to recover.  And now one of those two is actually laying eggs again - finally - and I'm not 100% certain which one is the layer.  So I guess I'm not in any hurry to start culling.

I love my flock.  Not because I think of them as pets.  I love them because they are members of my family now.  I love them because they teach me, and they give me food, or have given me food in the past, or will give me food in the future.  And in return, I give them food.  They work my land.  I give them shelter.  We are learning to communicate with each other, and that is really something.  This is who I am.  I'm not a farmer.  I love farmers, some of my friends are farmers and some of my family are but I'm not one and I'm not trying to be one.

I'm a kooky person who does a lot of different things to get by.  That's all.

What A Difference!

What a difference three weeks can make!

I have been plowing through the work around here.  My Kitchen has never been so clean.  I've lived in this house for 15 years, and I've never had much clear counter space.  It's mostly been covered by dirty dishes, bottles and jars waiting to be washed before going out to the recycling, and various works in progress.  A chaotic jumble about sizes the whole situation up.

But in the first two weeks of 2016, I managed to turn that trend around.  When I came home from the food co-op last week, I actually had a space to set all my groceries, when I brought them in.  The living room and dining room have also been decluttered, as well as The Bindery, which was starting to look a little chaotic.

Three weeks into 2016, and my house is starting to resemble a real home and not just a busy work space.

The Peepers are growing like crazy.  They're 10 weeks old now!!  I'm really excited that 4 of the 5 are pullets and only one is a cockerel.  Of course that still leaves me with a dilemma.  What to do with the excess male bird.  And he is at the moment far more lovable than his pop.

Rocky and I have a tenuous truce, which neither one of us is anxious to put to the test.  It makes cleaning the chicken house and working in that part of the yard difficult though, and if a fence comes down, it becomes a real adrenaline rush to get it repaired.  The secret to my success is that FOOD is the great moderator.

Sparky (Mike named the new one) is my friend.  I'm not sure if he knows the score or not, but he's doing his best to get on my good side, and so far, he's my pal.

Ruby (mom) is finally after 10 weeks, starting to peck at them.  Again, it's that whole FOOD thing.  I introduced her back into the hen yard with Rocky.  I won't say there was a tender reunion, because that's just not Rocky's style, but he was glad to see her.  (I might get more chicks out of that interaction).

She didn't stay put.  She was upset to be separated from the chicks, and wanted me to let them in too.  I decided to let her out instead, and she was OK with that.  Today we tried it again, though.  I guess for the next few days, I'll keep letting her into the hen yard until they remember who she is.  Ten weeks ago she was top hen in the flock.  Now she's at the bottom of the pecking order.  They won't let her near the food, and Rocky wasn't all that thrilled that I fed her a bit away from them.  He wanted to dominate both food supplies.  (Sort of reminded me of Monsanto.)  I had to lure him back to his own food.

I guess I'll just observe how it works out, and if I can bring her and the chicks into the flock--great.  If not, than I'll have two flocks.  I would rather have them all together though, but I'll have to see how Rocky and Sparky will get along.

I'll be glad to get the Peepers out of the back yard.  It was okay when they were still tiny, but now, my back porch and patio resemble a barn yard.  Every evening I have to shovel it off and sluice it down.  (I know, too much information.)

Never the less, I do love them and they always make me laugh.  And they all seem to like being held.

Enough about chickens.

My resolve to move toward zero waste, is coming along.  Last week we generated about a gallon of trash.  (I don't remember what we threw in the trash to even get that much...it must have been some kind of plastic that I ran across when I was cleaning out the kitchen.  I keep finding old plastic squirreled away (I guess I was hoping I would eventually find a use for some of it.)  But as far as the trash goes, typically, I generate about 3 yogurt cups full of plastic trash a week now.  It's getting easier to compost and recycle almost everything else, as long as I pay really close attention to what I am bringing home.  (We haven't bought bacon since the new year--sigh--I do miss it, and I just need to find time to drive over to the meat market, where I can hopefully get some uncured bacon wrapped in non plasticized paper.  #jumping through hoops!)

And finally, I wanted to share that someone who bought Winter Tales through Pegana Press, liked it enough to also buy a copy of Hearth & Heart Summer edition.  He also hinted broadly that he would buy Hearth & Heart Autumn (Coming Soon).  I got a chuckle out of that, until I realized that I had 3 zines partially finished and that I needed to get my butt in gear and get them out.  All the stories have been finished for months, I just need to put them in zine format, which is mostly finished.

But for now, I'm still binding another two batches of books and working on profit and loss for 2015 tax return.  Definitely trying to make sure I stay up with book keeping this year, so it's not so hard later.  The shoe box method, isn't working anymore.  I went in to see if I qualified for a reduced rate in my power bill last year, and the woman said to me.  If you're self employed you should have all your totals already.  I got a hardy laugh out of that, and resisted the temptation to respond with...You've never owned a business before where you did everything yourself, have you?  I have another friend who runs multiple business out of her home too, and it's just her and her partner, just like with me and Mike.  They do everything on their own, just like we do and they work 12 hours or more a day - every day, just like we do.  Tell me, where do people like us find time to make sure their book keeping is up to date?

But now that is on the list for 2016.  Wish me luck.

Solving Problems

I had a list taped to my refrigerator for most of last year, labeled "Solving Problems" which listed 5 things I wanted to improve in my life with possible solutions.  I just took the list down yesterday.  4 out of 5 were accomplished.  

Now I'm ready to tackle something new and this year, my biggest project to work on is solving the problem of Space and Time.

I don't have enough of either one.

At least that's what it's felt like these last two years.  So my big project this year is to come up with some modifications to organize my living space and my time better.

I've already solved one problem linked to my current project.  The problem of perception.

Before, I could only see the lack of space and the chaos that is/was my home.  I'm not a hoarder.  It isn't that.  It's just that things accumulate, and I couldn't seem to find the time or energy to declutter.

It's difficult because we run our businesses out of our home, and as the business spaces expanded, the living spaces shrank.  And time has been affected in the same way.  As I took on more work projects, my personal time almost completely disappeared.  When you work out of your home, the boundaries can become blurred because you're not separated by distance from your work place.

But as I said, my perception has shifted around seeing my living space as chaotic.  These last two years, I've spent a lot of time in the state of Overwhelm, (that's just south of here).  But about a month ago, I stopped feeling frantic.

So today, I was looking at my same ol' living space and didn't see it as a horrific jumble.  In fact I even said to myself, "This isn't so bad".  And I made progress today, on turning it into a space that works for me.

And I enjoyed the process.  It was restful, and it was a relief.

The Game

Whenever I have something big to overcome in my life, I figure out how I can make a game of it.  It keeps me focused and it gives me a creative way to change my life.  So the other day, I created a new game to help me reduce my "inventory" of stuff, and create a beautiful, organized, practical space, which can function for both business and living.

Trash

One of the challenges I face in my home is how much trash builds up.  So I wanted to address that issue as part of this game.

Back in the late 1980 s, I became aware of the trash problem, and so I began recycling.  But in the last few years, I've come to believe that it's not enough.  The problem of trash has gotten complicated.  It just has.  And in my quirky way, I have responded by trying to be more aware and responsible about my own trash.  Sometimes that leads to me hanging onto things to either reuse, or find a way to dispose of responsibly. I have reduced my consumption of items that come packaged in plastic, and I try to avoid wasting things.

In July of 2014, I participated in a world wide event called Plastic Free July.  The idea was to try to avoid single use plastic.  It was hard.  In fact, you'd have to be pretty self sustainable to pull it off.  And that was the point of the exercise.  To raise awareness.  Some of the practices, I still continue, but I have also made compromises which make me feel guilty.  And that really ticks me off.  Because I don't want it to be hard, and I don't want to feel guilty.

I'm not talking about what other people should do with their trash.  I'm talking about me.  I'm talking about how this issue has complicated my life.  I'm talking about how it affects me personally.  Because I have educated myself on this subject.  Now I know what I know, and I can't unknow it.

I want to do better.  So when I look around my home, and see a lot of accumulation that I am no longer able, in good conscious to just throw in the trash, it makes me mad.  We are constantly bombarded with trash.

But anger can be a useful thing.  In Chinese Medicine, the concept is that Anger gets you moving.  It causes you to take action.  And that action has led me to rethink how I'm handling my trash and to create some new goals for myself.

So another one of my goals for this year is to immediately and significantly reduce the volume of trash I put into my trash can every week.  My usual volume is about two grocery bags each week.  But half of that is chicken bones from making bone broth, and there is also used cat litter from my 3 cats.  Both of those can be composted, it just requires a different process than the yard waste style of compost pile.

There is a whole belief system around composting and people discuss it at great length and even disagree about it.  But here's my belief.  If it's food, and it's done correctly, even if it's meat, bone, dairy and fat, it will break down.  The same should be true for most of what I throw into the trash.  I buy very few things that aren't biodegradable.  It just requires an adjustment in what becomes natural for me to do.

I will be writing about this from time to time, as I discover what is possible.  For now my new indoor trash can is a yogurt cup.  My daily goal is to only generate enough non biodegradable trash to fill that cup, and no more.  As I experiment with this, I will reduce that amount if I can.  The real challenge will come when I begin to declutter.  Who knows what that will look like!

The Peepers

It snowed on The Peepers yesterday!  Both flocks went into their houses and stayed there the rest of the day.  But today it was much warmer, and they seemed happier.