Tiny house thoughts

Jake and I keep coming back to land. Not in the city, not that Cheney is really a "city" but you know what I mean. Freedom to raise chickens and have a rooster on site with out the neighbors suddenly taking an interest in marksmanship. Space. Quiet. Stars. Greywater. Rainwater. Things we cannot do in the city. Our main problem is money.... who's problem isn't money? Being tied into this house we don't have the option to go buy land and start a new house out on property. But we've got an idea, build a tiny tumbleweed house ourselves.

If you've never heard of tumbleweed house's click the link, poke around. Jake and I could get a small loan enough to build a tiny house for around 20K. Then we would have a transportable house to move into after we sell this house and search/prep land.  I don't want to move back into an apartment, plus no one accepts dogs at any apartment or rental house in Cheney (college town.)

The tumbleweed house's (at least the one's we are looking at) are built on flatbed trailers, like a camper. The one we've chosen is called Lusby. I like how the great room is the kitchen. Me being the cook I don't want to be stuffed back in some corner like many of the other plans have. The Lusby is 117 sq. feet of pure awesome. Jake and I will be attending the the workshop in August, to ask questions and get a feel for the construction of a tumbleweed house.

Dee Williams might even bring her house down to the workshop, all though that's unconfirmed. Here's a great video about Dee and her tiny house which is modeled after a tumbleweed:

I forgot to mention, during the chicken harvest we had a rather surreal soundtrack... the ice cream truck was driving around the neighborhood playing It's a small world after all.

Chicken Harvest and a story about Quizzie

I read a lovely article this morning about owning livestock animals and dealing with the issues of a farm. The first rule of farming: be prepared. The last paragraph struck me most of all:

"But livestock aren't pets. They are on a farm because they serve a purpose. If I can't raise an animal to eat, then I shouldn't keep sheep whose purpose is to become meat. Furthermore, if I can't eat meat that came from an animal I know was loved and respected, that had a good life playing in the sun and eating grass, then I should go back to being vegetarian."

I could not foresee the issues we would face with our layers, but it's our job as chicken raiser's to deal with the problems that arise. 

We did it. We're down to 4 hens now....

Quizzie, a lovely hen who's antics are very similar to Curious, stopped laying about 3 months ago. I thought she might have been egg-bound a serious condition where the egg usually being too big gets stuck and can't get out. But after days of warm baths and many poking arounds by me, I decided she must be an internal layer. Not much is documented on this from all the chicken sites I frequent. Regardless the gist of it is this, somehow the egg white and yolk don't pass into the shell making part but out into the body cavity. Gross I know! So essentially her body was filling up with eggs. I am not sure how the egg ends up in there, maybe a tear in the tubing? In any case however it happens that was my best guess as to why she stopped laying. I decided I was right when she started to look much fatter than her fellow sisters. Internal laying will eventually kill her, chickens body's will not stop making eggs, period. Being less than one year old I knew that if I let nature take it's course it would be painful. I didn't want that.

So we gobbled up information on how to kill a chicken humanly and with as little trauma possible. Chickens, or any (being, human or otherwise with a brain) when beheaded will thrash around. All of the muscles fire after there is no brain to supervise activities. That is too traumatic for me, I didn't want to hold my bird down while her body thrashed around in it's final stages. We opted for the 'cone' method, where she is placed head first down a cone and the jugular is cut. This cause's the body to go brain dead instantly due to lack of blood. In an upside down position the chickens fall into a trance similar to sleep and stop struggling. That's how I can clip there wings without them struggling like a wild thing. It was as humane and trauma free of a death I could give her.

I told her what a lovely chicken she was, I held her and said thank you for the eggs, and the meat.

On Meat eating

Jacob and I tell people "we're vegetarians" since that is the simplest way to phrase it for the general public. Truly though we only eat meat from 2 places. Rocky Ridge Ranch sells the turkey I get for Thanksgiving and the occasional chicken all though that's going to change. Then there's Tom's Custom Meats where we purchased some beef for a hamburger. Jacob and I were only able to split the burger since red meat is incredibly rich. It was the first time we've had red meat in, 4 years? I think? It will be an extremely rare occasion food. I felt good about that burger because the cattle are raised on pasture right here in Cheney there entire life. They never go to an Iowa feedlot, I drive by them on the freeway all the time. But still, consumption of red meat will be a once in every 4 years kinda thing (if not longer.)

We've been considering raising chickens/rabbits for our own consumption, this way we have a hand in the meat we choose to eat. I can't turn a blind eye to the atrocities of "protein production" that is standard in the ole` US of A. Which is why the simple answer is "we're vegetarians," and it is one of the main reasons we became vegetarians. I don't mean to offend strict vegetarians with this post either. For 4 years we were strict veggies and it was great. But in an effort to get our balanced diet from local as possible it seemed meat eating needed to be added back in. I had to ask myself how much oil did it take to get this tofu to me? Peak oil? Will tofu become a luxury? And other such thoughts along that line. Trying to reduce the MPG of our food seemed like a good idea. Now with the gulf oil spill, it seems even more prudent. 

It's really a very hard issue for us, seeing what is the normal for average America is rather sickening. Have you watched Food Inc? That's America folks, and that's sad. With raising our own meat comes the inevitable act of getting it to the table. Knowing from start to finish the purpose we're raising them for. I know I've touched on this before in the blog, maybe I am just trying to come to grips with it all. This planet is really pissed off and I don't think any one path is "right." But it sure would be nice if we could get a yellow brick road, you know?  

Progress in Pictures

These are the pictures from the ground, maybe if it's nice out this weekend we'll get up on the roof and snap some pictures from up there.

The labyrinth spiral garden: 

Garden grows and sparrows have lunch

We have a sparrow issue, they have decided to eat the chicken feed. This weekend Jacob is going to build an automatic chicken feeder, thus closing off the sparrow feast. Hopefully they will then leave my crops alone, but we'll see... more drastic measures may need to be taken, like a bb gun. LOL.

It has been a busy spring. It's funny how, myself included, all the blogs I read drop of the face of the earth for much of May and June. To much to do outside getting everything ready.  Here's the back garden, looking good in it's early stages. To the left the garlic is HUGE! The strawberries and raspberries are both going gang busters. But my snap peas are being eaten alive. I finally put up that row cover cloth so that the sparrows can't land on the pea trellis and have a snack! I doubt I'll get much of anything from them, but I might try again this fall.

The two white buckets in front are squash, a pumpkin and a winter squash called queensland blue. I plan to train them over the fence and let them take over the grass. WOOT!

It's hard to see from the deck all the tomato plants in there. I need to go out and get a better, close up picture of them. I have all the tomato's and peppers in the ground, and the weather is getting consistently warmer. We've yet to move downstairs though because the seed starting room is still set up.

The bee's are doing good. About 2 weeks ago we did a hive check and noticed 1-2 swarm cells on every frame and they hadn't started using the second box. We weren't sure why they didn't notice the 2nd story addition to the house but?? who knows? So we decided to take frame numbers 3-5-7 from the bottom box and move them to the top, then adding the top 3-5-7 to the bottom box. Hopefully triggering a "wow... look how much room we have...." Jake checked all the swarm cells to see if there was any larva present and she hadn't laid in any of them. I think they were "just incase" preparation cells. Jake collapsed the wax starter cells and we closed up shop. This week they have built a TON of new wax on all the frames, nectar must be flowing because our bees are actively making comb. Plus we only saw 2 swarm cell starts, both empty, and only on the upper 3 and 5 frame. So the moving frames around seemed to work and cancel out the "swarm" trigger.

Garage sale is over!!

These last two weeks have been nightmarishly busy! Getting the last plants healed into place, followed by succession plantings. Then dealing with the garage sale. Mom and I decided to put on a garage sale over EWU's graduation weekend, in hopes that the extra traffic out to Cheney would inspire people to spend! We did pretty much all of our business on Friday.... Saturday was so slow it was painful. I think everyone was still hung over from the the festivities of graduation. Regardless we were able to sell our old TV stand, a few lamps and Jacob's bike. All the other big stuff we need out didn't go.

The LoveSac brought TONS and TONS of college kids by. It was the same every time, kid drives by at high speeds, see's bean bag size, mouth opens in awe, screeches to the side of the road, runs over, see's price..... deflates and heads back to the car. Time and time again! LoveSac's are made of memory foam and run about $400 bucks brand new and that's without a cover.... with a cover it's at least another $100. I was asking $350 or best offer. Someone saw the craigslist garage sale ad and said I'll give you $50 for it, there email was promptly deleted with a laugh. I had another guy ask if I'd sell my GIANT rubbermaid wheelbarrow (that we bought last year and never should have) for $50. They run brand new at home depot for $154+ tax. I said no. I do find it funny how much "or best offer" means "give it to me for free."

Ah well, at least I was able to get rid of some little things and get some space cleared. I am going to put the stuff that didn't sell up for sale on craigslist and see if I can get it gone too. I'll post some garden pix later but for now I have to play catch-up for the week I neglected the garden for the garage.

Plastic Reduction Challenge May

Well this blows my tally out of the water! The heavyweights in this month are from soap making, closet cleaning and guests. Here we go:

May plastic weight: 703g

The goods:

White Vinegar
Vegetable oil
Coconut oil
a juice container and maddeningly it's a #7 which I *grrrrrr at
2 misc vitamin supplements from ?
a tube of super glue
a container of airborne, not sure where I got that from
broken old 'tupperware' container
package of garage sale stickies
bomb proof plastic container for a bike tool *grrrrrrr
many random milk bottle caps and pull tabs
brown sugar bag (will buy in bulk from now on)
of course.... envelope windows
packaging tape
a plastic outer core from an herb plant... didn't see it and wasn't thinking when I purchased it.
tags from clothing prices, you know those little 'T' shaped things?
random plastic bags from the suck sealer food saver