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.