Oy.  Having a new baby during harvest season is a lot of work! I've managed to can 5 pints of chicken, 7 quarts of chicken broth, 2 quarts of beef broth, blanch and freeze about 2 pounds of green beans, and blanch 3 dozen ears of corn for freezing.  Tomorrow I need to cut the corn off the cob, vacuum seal it, and start thinking about tomatoes.  I love having my own sauce, but I'm seriously considering just skipping it this year.  We'll see.  If I know myself, I'll do it anyways, especially since the process isn't all that difficult.  Most of the time is spent just waiting for a giant vat of tomato puree to cook down.

We (I say "we" even though I had no part in the actual process, as I was on vacation at the time) had our Freedom Ranger chickens butchered last week.  I wasn't able to be all that involved in the process of raising them, since it was right at the end of my pregnancy and during Rowyn's newborn period.  All I really did was order the birds online, pick them up at the post office, and provide some consulting services.  But I now have 13 home-grown birdies in the freezer!  They averaged 4.5 lbs per bird, which is about $2.60/lb.  Definitely more expensive than store-bought chicken, but they were humanely raised, allowed room to roam, and are antibiotic-free.  I'm happy.

We're working out the kinks in our budgeting, and I'm making a lot more food from scratch.  I've almost gotten the perfect sandwich loaf down (will share the recipe when I do, though it isn't entirely whole wheat like I'd hoped), which will save us a ton of money from $4/loaf storebought bread. I'm also working on French bread.  Here's my first attempt, which was very pretty and tasted great:

I can't seem to get back into meal planning, though.  I know it would save us money and hassle, but for some reason the idea of deciding what to eat a week from now seems overwhelming.  I dunno.  I have a tentative plan for the next week, so I'll do my best to stick to it and see how it goes.

A Keeper

Today at the beach, Ethan wanted to climb on the big rocks in the water. I lifted him onto on, then held his hand to help him keep his balance. He grabbed me and held me around my leg and said, "I want to keep you. I'm going to keep you forever and ever."

I just didn't want to forget that moment.

Odds and ends

Whew!  What a busy few weeks it's been...  Wrangling a toddler, newborn, and recovering from a c-section is full-time work.  No joke.  Thankfully Shayne took a week off, then my mom came by on the days he was working to help me keep it together.  And then, about 3 weeks postpartum, I suddenly felt normal again.  It wasn't a gradual recovery; one day I was tired and sore, then the next morning I woke up and felt great.  I can still tell I've had a major surgery, but I don't feel crummy and exhausted like I did.  I feel like myself for the first time in over a year, and I'm loving it.

With my newfound energy, I'm starting to really clean and organize the house.  It was never dirty (I do have some standards!), but it has certainly gotten cluttered.  I'd also not been able to keep up with some of the things that get cleaned only occasionally, like the windows and baseboards.  But it's starting to come together.  Last week, I completely cleaned and reorganized the dining room.  The buffet and secretary are clean and organized, and all surfaces are clutter-free.  I also finally came up with a storage solution for our laptops (cloth-lined basket under the secretary), so it's a snap to clear the table for dinner or company.  I even had a friend unexpectedly stop by last week, and I didn't have to cringe over the condition of my house.  How's that for progress?

I still don't quite have it together enough to cook every night, so the meals I put in the freezer have been a lifesaver.  It's so nice to be able to just thaw something on the days I'm stressed or exhausted.  I definitely need to keep up on the freezer stash; it has almost entirely kept us from eating out, which has really helped us live within our new, tight budget.  We're still dipping into savings a bit here and there, but we've been on our "austerity measures" for less than a month, and we're still working out the kinks.

I still think daily about returning to work.  I'm so happy and busy here at home, but I want to move so badly.  It will be very, very hard to find the money to finish our renovations with any sort of speed unless I go back to work.  But going back to work means other expenses too, like childcare (for two!) and meals eaten out.  I'm not sure it makes complete sense once everything is factored in, but it's hard to shake the logic of two incomes meaning more money.  I still have 7 months to figure it out, so I'm trying very hard to just let it be.  It's not working, but I'm trying.  I'm hoping that once we get used to our new budget, we'll still find ways to save.  I'm also hoping that we'll find time to work on the house ourselves, saving the expense of hiring out work.

There will be bumps in the road, but for right now I'm very happy to be right where I'm at.  Everything else will fall into place.

She's here!!

Better late than never... 

On July 11, Rowyn Elizabeth was born!  She arrived via c-section, for many reasons, but she was/is perfectly healthy.

How to pasture poultry without a chicken tractor

When we first got chickens, we were surprised at how far from home they would wander.  They mostly stayed in our yard, but we found that they'd occasionally go over to the bar near our house, which is further than I expected them to go, and across a somewhat-busy street.  The current flock travels as well, but in a different direction.  I spoke with all the neighbors when we got chickens, but either I missed one, or they changed their mind.  Someone got upset about birds in their yard, and they called the humane society on us.  We weren't home when the officer came out, but we were given a warning about our birds "running at-large".  Oops.  I really wish the neighbor had just come to talk to us; I don't understand why they wouldn't want chickens in their yard eating their bugs, but I would have responded the same way I did to the humane society visit.  In other words, the chickens would have been kept in their run instead of ranging. 

Poor chickens.  In 3 weeks of confinement, their eggs went from having orange yolks to yellow yolks.  I don't think they were as pale as storebought eggs, but there was definitely a difference.  I'd let them out half an hour before sundown to range a bit, since they'd stay very close to their coop, but it just wasn't the same.  Shayne and I talked about fencing the yard; we talked about fencing an area around the coop.  But if we fenced the yard, it would ruin our views and access to the little woods behind the house.  Ethan plays back there, and the neighbors let us dump any yard waste that we don't burn.  And if we just fenced an area around the coop, we knew in short order it would be down to bare dirt.  They could exercise, but there wouldn't be any forage for the birds.  I didn't want to build a tractor, since we already had a nice coop and run.  Plus, most tractors small enough for me to move myself seem like they're too small to really let the birds exercise.  What to do?

After some serious googling, I came across Premier 1 Supplies and PountryNet.  It's portable netting made for pasturing poultry.  It's designed to be electrified, but we're just using it as a standard fence.  There are PVC posts every 10 feet with a U-shaped stake that you step on to push into the ground, and the fence itself is flexible, twisted wire 48" high.  The entire 100' roll weighs about 20 lbs, and it takes me about 10 minutes to set it up on the days I move it.  I'm sure it will be less once I'm not pregnant and can move a bit faster...  The birds get the benefit of fresh forage, my lawn gets fertilized, and the chickens don't stay in one place long enough to destroy the grass.  If there's a downside, I haven't yet found it.

We got the green netting, since we didn't want to draw attention to the fence.  I wasn't sure how it would look, and although we are in a somewhat rural area, we do try to keep things aesthetically pleasing.  I'm no Martha Stewart, but I didn't want our yard to look ghetto (for lack of a better term...).   I had to wait on the green fencing, as it was back-ordered, but I'm really pleased with it.  It's nearly invisible from the road, and it allows the birds enough area that I really only need to move it twice each week.

The chickens are happy, we should be back to getting healthy eggs, and hopefully we won't have any more problems with our neighbors.