Menu Plan Monday, 4/30

Slowly but surely the school year is winding down, the main garden is dying and being turned under, and the brunt of our 4-H activities are coming to a close. It’s time for those “dog days of summer.” I wish!

My summer often looks a lot like a northern homestead winter. I usually hold up in my house working on those projects that I didn’t have time to work on the rest of the year. The biggest difference is that I’m hibernating in front of an air conditioner instead of a radiator.

When the last of our school-year activities ends in May, I’ll be pulling out the sewing machine and laptop, finishing up some big quilting and writing projects I started a few months ago. I’ll buy a “Haul Pass” for Jared and a few day passes for me from the Transit Authority to make hitting the pool at one of our many rec centers a lot easier. As summer fruits hit the produce stands, I’ll replenish our stash of jams, jellies, and fruit salsas.

Can you tell that I’m really looking forward to the summer?

I think I also need to revisit my calendar and other organizational tools over the summer and see how to improve for next year. I absolutely do not want another chaotic school year, that’s for sure!

Got any interesting summer plans? I’d love to hear about them.

I pray you have a blessed week with less stress because you created a menu plan!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 04/30/2012

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, smoothies., or oatmeal

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, oranges, and strawberries

Dinner

Monday – Roast chicken, carrots, Brussels sprouts, salad

Tuesday – Big salads, artisan bread  

Wednesday – Chicken salad wraps, salad

Thursday – Jared’s Cooking Lesson: Homemade Pizza (Somebody didn’t manage his time very well last Thursday, so he has to take his “final” on homemade pizza this week.

Friday – Chili, cornbread, salad

Saturday – Wraps and salads on the go (out of town 4H event)

Sunday – Grilled pork chops and pineapple, salad

                                                             

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Soapmaking Resource Review

About two years ago, I got it in my head that I needed to learn how to make soap. So, in my usual fashion, I took out every book on soapmaking that I could find at my neighborhood library—all four of them. Unfortunately, three of those books were dedicated to the pretty melt and pour soaps that start with a pre-made base from the craft store. I was more interested in making “real” soap from scratch.

Thankfully, the fourth book had detailed instructions for cold-process soapmaking. Unfortunately, the book contained a lot of errors, including mixing the lye and water solution in the wrong order, which could be dangerous, incorrect lye-to-fat ratios, and claiming that using an immersion blender to speed up the mixing process was dangerous and wouldn’t work. Suffice it to say, my first couple of batches of soap were dismal failures!

I’ve learned a lot since then. In fact, not only does my family have a good supply of plain soap on hand, I’m working on some specialty bars like lavender soap and chamomile shampoo bars. Good resources made a big difference!

After checking out all of the books and DVDs on soapmaking available at the libraries in the entire county, I finally found the best resources that made sense and made soap. If you’re interested in making soap at home, here are my picks for the best information to get you started:

Basic Soap Making by Elizabeth Letcavage and Patsy Buck is, by far, the best beginning soapmaking book available. Not only is everything broken down into easy to follow step with excellent pictures, but the beginner recipes only make six bars of soap. I know I didn’t relish spending the money on enough materials for thirty bars of soap that may or may not actually work. These sample-sized recipes meant I could learn the technique without breaking the bank on ingredients.

Aside from the excellent visuals and recipes, the book also provides detailed instructions for building soap molds and a soap cutter. Yep, this would be my first pick for the beginner soapmaker.

Next, I’d pop the Homestead Blessings Soapmaking video into the DVD player. My goodness, those ladies made soapmaking look easy! This DVD is a must for the beginner. Just remember that their recipe makes a very large batch of soap. You may want to apply what you learned in the video to making a smaller recipe from the Basic Soap Making book.

When you’ve made a small batch or two of your basic soap, I’d turn to the Soap Maker's Workshopby Robert S. McDaniel, an excellent book and DVD set with easy-to-understand information about fragrances, colorants, additives, and SAP and INS values. McDaniel teaches techniques for creating your own natural fragrances and even how to make your lye solution the old-fashioned way, with rainwater and ash.

If you’ve visited here a few times, you know that I don’t spend money lightly. My purchases are well-researched and worth every penny. Even though these resources are available through our county-wide library system, I felt they were worth the money to have on hand all the time.

Thanks for stopping by! Have you been toying with the idea of making or own soap or have you taken the plunge? How did it turn out? Let me know. I love a good homesteading adventure!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

The Morris Tribe's Homesteading Blog Carnival 
The Prairie Homestead's Barn Hop
 Family Time Tuesday
Growing Home's Teach Me Tuesday
Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Ways, Sustainable Days 
Deep Roots at Home's Encouraging One Another Link Up 
Our Simple Farm's  Simple Living Wednesday
Raising Homemaker's Wednesday Link Up
We are THAT Family's Works for me Wednesday 
GNOWFGLINS Simple Lives Thursday  
Homemaker by Choice's Homemaking Link Up
Shared on Dandelion House's Farm Girl Friday   

The Organized Gardener: Keeping Notes

For years, my husband and I have been trying to find ways to organize our gardening information. As usual, one of us would find fault with every idea we found. Mostly me.

My hubby loves spreadsheets. He has all our planting dates, best-for-Florida varieties, and even a few garden layouts stored in his computer. Unfortunately, I like paper and am paranoid that such valuable information will someday be held hostage on a crashed hard drive.

As simple as it might sound to create a notebook containing all of my husband’s spreadsheets, I want to be able to add information each season and be able to find that information in later seasons. Yeah, it still sounds simple until you want to look back at the notes of a particular crop and how you treated a specific problem or how often you applied compost tea the season you had a bumper crop, and you can’t remember which season or year it happened. A chronological journal just wouldn’t work for me.

Finally, we stumbled across a simple but useful idea: index cards in a file box! What an easy idea! Each crop has its own card with plant dates, varieties planted, and any problems faced, but each season also has its own card with garden prep information, rainfall, overall temperatures, etc. I’ll also be including empty seed packs, harvest amounts, and maps of the garden each season to my file box. Everything is filed alphabetically with the garden plans at the back.

I’m pretty excited about finally finding a way to organize our garden information. If we can look back at what worked and what didn’t, we can keep improving. When I was younger, I held a lot of information in my head. These days, the brains cells fill up pretty fast, and one season runs into another. I just can’t keep them straight anymore! Besides, as my hubby likes to remind me, “A short pencil beats a long memory every time.”

Thanks for stopping by! I hope this little tip helps you, too. As soon as we stumbled on this idea, I grabbed some index cards and wrote all my notes from this season. Now, I just need a box to put them all in. You know, something wooden, rustic and crate-like that matches my seed crates. I’m just sayin’…to my handy hubby.

And before anyone else is "just sayin" about my seed organization, those sorters were created long before I understood the importance of plant families. They'll be updated and re-organized during our slow, summer season.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

The Morris Tribe's Homesteading Blog Carnival 
The Prairie Homestead's Barn Hop
 Family Time Tuesday
Growing Home's Teach Me Tuesday
Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Ways, Sustainable Days 
Deep Roots at Home's Encouraging One Another Link Up 
Our Simple Farm's  Simple Living Wednesday
Raising Homemaker's Wednesday Link Up
We are THAT Family's Works for me Wednesday  
GNOWFGLINS Simple Lives Thursday   
Homemaker by Choice's Homemaking Link Up
Shared on Dandelion House's Farm Girl Friday  

Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop #4

Did you find some help for your homestead last week? I know I did!! Wow! You all brought some great posts. I can’t wait to try some of the new things I learned. Thank you to everyone who linked up! And thank you to everyone who visited the other links! I don’t know who visited which posts, but I do know that everyone had visitors, and I know how many. Here are the most visited posts from last week.

Last week, the most visited link was posted by Michelle at Simplify, Live, Love. Her adventure and advice for healthier groceries on a budget brought into some great Amish places!

I also think everyone got chickens for Easter this year because you all flocked to the Wild Sage Homestead for the excellent post Raising Chickens Part 2: A Beginner’s Guide to Providing 3 Basic Needs for Your Flock! You can groan about by cheesy pun now.

Last but not least, many of you wandered over to My Healthy Green Family to read about Free Range Mama’s experience with washing her hair with baking soda. This one was especially poignant for me because me and shampoo just don’t get along. I can finish off one bottle of any shampoo just fine; however, when I get to the second bottle all kinds of odd things start happening to my skin and hair. I’m in the process of creating a shampoo bar for myself, but I might try a little baking soda with an apple cider rinse myself.

It is near impossible for me to choose just a few posts to feature. I let your hopping decide for me! Make sure you visit your favorites and come back and “like” them so I can feature them next week!

 

What is Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop?

Homestead Helps is about helping each other consume less, produce more, and live simply. Posts about gardening (both in the ground or in containers), preserving the harvest, raising animals, frugal living, cooking from scratch, textile arts like sewing or knitting, recycling, repurposing, and upcycling, homemaking and home management are all welcome and appreciated! Did you just harvest your first tomato? We’d love to hear about it! New chicks? Don’t forget the pictures! Did you learn the best way not to do something? Share that, too! Do you grow your own groceries from the balcony of your condo? Show us how! I think you get the idea.

Join In!

Create a “Homestead Helps” post on your own blog. Then come back here to add your post to the linky box below. Please, link to specific posts and not to your blog’s home page.

Each week, I’ll choose a post or two to feature during the next week’s link-up.

Don’t have a blog? Feel free to add a comment here with helpful homesteading stories and tips!

Now for just a few simple guidelines to make sure this is a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone:

1. Please, remember that this is a family-friendly site. No inappropriate content, please!

2. Please, link your posts back to this one. This is a common blog hop courtesy and helps build our online homesteading community. When your readers hop back here, they can read the other participants’ post, too. We all end up sharing with, learning from, and helping each other.

3. Please, visit a few of the other links. This is another common blog hop courtesy. While you’re visiting, be sure to leave a comment, letting the blog owner know you stopped by and come back here to “like” your favorites. Just because many of us wouldn’t mind living in a barn, me included, doesn’t mean we have to act like we were born in one.

4. No advertising-oriented posts. This hop is for sharing useful information, not free advertising. So, keep your links to posts involving homesteading and home management topics

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to leave a link so we can take the party to your blog for a little bit!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Betty

Menu Plan Monday 4/23

This school year has seemed extra busy for us, which is absolutely crazy. Our daughter graduated last year, so we’re only homeschooling our son, and my husband and I are sharing the homeschooling duties. Yet, it seems that every day is jam-packed! I love all of the activities we are part of, but I’m really looking forward to a much calmer summer.

I wonder if I’m feeling things are crazy because we just dropped everything and ran to a U-pick farm on Saturday to pick 300 pounds of tomatoes…again. Nah. That couldn’t be it.

Yes, it’s that time of year here in Florida…again. Pick your own tomatoes are 25 pounds for $1. We get these great deals twice a year. You’d think I’d have plenty of tomatoes put up from the last time. Technically, I do. I have enough on the shelf to last quite a few months. However, my goal is to process tomatoes once a year. So, how do I know how much to store? I do the math.

Keeping in mind that we eat a tomato-sauce-based dish at least every other week but usually every week, I know I need about 50 quarts of crushed tomatoes and 50 pints of tomato sauce for my favorite recipes. Also, a lot of our bean dishes like chili, spicy three beans and rice, and Texas Ranger soup all require diced tomatoes or diced tomatoes with peppers. If I stick to my usual pattern of these dishes, I need about 25 pints of diced tomatoes. At first, that seems like a lot of jars, but remember, I’m trying to stock up for an entire year.

Now that I know how many jars I need, how many tomatoes do I need? Talk about a great word problem for your kids’ math lesson today!

Anyway, I better get to finishing up those tomatoes along with the pickling cucumbers I picked up with those tomatoes. We are definitely getting faster with the tomatoes, though. The first time hubby and I brought home a ridiculous amount of tomatoes, it took about five days to put them all up. Here it is Monday, and almost all of the tomatoes picked on Saturday are in jars. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I pray you have a blessed week with less stress because you created a menu plan!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 04/23/2012

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, smoothies., or oatmeal

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, oranges, cantaloupe 

Dinner

Monday – Chicken and veggies in a creamy basil sauce over pasta, salad

Tuesday – Big salads, stuffed foccacia  

Wednesday – Grilled chicken breast, veggies, salad

Thursday – Jared’s Cooking Lesson: Homemade Pizza (This should be his last week making pizza.)

Friday – Chili, cornbread, salad

Saturday – Sautéed veggies in marinara over pasta, salad

Sunday – Roast chicken, smashed potatoes and turnips, salad

                                                             

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Re-Growing Celery Followup

Back at the end of January, I posted information about re-growing celery using the bottom of another stalk. Since then, my husband and I have planted and lost quite a few plants.

My family consumes two to three full stalks of celery a week. We had plenty of stalk bottoms to work with. Unfortunately, we also had quite a few that died right away. The most disappointing ones were the ones that really took off and grew well for several weeks and then were dead overnight. 

Right now, we have two really healthy plants that my husband and I are debating on trying a rib or two from. The ribs are no where near as thick as the original stalks, but the plants are definitely a much deeper green that the originals. 

I suppose we’ll have to try these soon. The temperature is getting pretty close to the high end of the celery’s comfort zone. Hopefully, celery won’t react the same way to early warm temperatures our lettuce did! Can you say bitter!?!

Anyway, I’d have to say, I’m a little disappointed by our success rate on re-growing celery. I have no doubt that my husband and I will try again in fall when our extension office says is a good time to plant celery here in Florida. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my courage to take a taste of what we have.

Thanks for stopping by! Have you tried re-growing celery? How did it turn out? I’d love to know!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop #3

Did you find some help for your homestead last week? I know I did!! Wow! You all brought some great posts. I can’t wait to try some of the new things I learned. I have to say that I went a little pin-happy. I hope you don’t mind!

Thank you to everyone who linked up! And thank you to everyone who visited the other links! I don’t know who visited which posts, but I do know that everyone had visitors, and I know how many. Here are the most visited posts from last week.

Last week, you all wanted to ditch your cans of cream soup and joined The Iowa Housewife for a great substitute recipe!  Good for you! You won’t regret it!

You also got your April To-Do List in order over at The Redeemed Gardener. I wish I was as organized as Clint!

Last but not least, many of you were as confused as I am about the difference between hay and straw and using them in the garden. Thank you to Susan from Learning and Yearning for clearing that up for us!

Ok, just one more…I love my homemade deodorant, but I can never get it to stay solid when things heat up here. I am so grateful to My Healthy Green Family for the great solid deodorant recipe!
It is near impossible for me to choose just a few posts to feature. I let your hopping decide for me! Make sure you visit your favorites so I can feature them next week!

What is Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop?

Homestead Helps is about helping each other consume less, produce more, and live simply. Posts about gardening (both in the ground or in containers), preserving the harvest, raising animals, frugal living, cooking from scratch, textile arts like sewing or knitting, recycling, repurposing, and upcycling, homemaking and home management are all welcome and appreciated! Did you just harvest your first tomato? We’d love to hear about it! New chicks? Don’t forget the pictures! Did you learn the best way not to do something? Share that, too! Do you grow your own groceries from the balcony of your condo? Show us how! I think you get the idea.

Join In!

Create a “Homestead Helps” post on your own blog. Then come back here to add your post to the linky box below. Please, link to specific posts and not to your blog’s home page.

Each week, I’ll choose a post or two to feature during the next week’s link-up.

Don’t have a blog? Feel free to add a comment here with helpful homesteading stories and tips!

Now for just a few simple guidelines to make sure this is a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone:

1. Please, remember that this is a family-friendly site. No inappropriate content, please!

2. Please, link your posts back to this one. This is a common blog hop courtesy and helps build our online homesteading community. When your readers hop back here, they can read the other participants’ post, too. We all end up sharing with, learning from, and helping each other.

3. Please, visit a few of the other links. This is another common blog hop courtesy. While you’re visiting, be sure to leave a comment, letting the blog owner know you stopped by. Just because many of us wouldn’t mind living in a barn, me included, doesn’t mean we have to act like we were born in one.

4. No advertising-oriented posts. This hop is for sharing useful information, not free advertising. So, keep your links to posts involving homesteading and home management topics

Thanks for stopping by! I’m always nervous about doing something like this. It’s that whole throwing a party and nobody comes thing. So, please, leave a link so we can take the party to your blog for a little bit!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Betty

Spring Babies

Although we’re on the tail end of our main gardening season, we’ve still been pretty busy around our Little Farm in the Big City taking care of a few spring babies! It’s a regular nursery around here.

A few weeks ago, one of the feed stores had in some sweet baby chicks. I couldn’t resist. Okay, I didn’t even try. So, we added a few Golden Comets and Black Sex Links to our flock…sort of. I gave up trying to mix flocks ages ago. The new chicks have their own space away from the old biddies who’d like nothing more than to make mincemeat out of any new birds who dare to enter their domain.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with these breeds, but my friend Brandy and I did a little research and learned that these breeds are great production birds with sweet personalities. Sold!

They’re at the “gangly teenager” stage right now, and not the prettiest birds around, but wow, their new adult feathers are super soft! We’ve only named one of the Comets so far. Her name is Marshmallow because when we first got her she looked like a marshmallow peep when she sat down. We’re waiting to name the others until we’re sure we can tell them all apart.

We also have a few baby bunnies. Jared’s American Fuzzy Lop doe, Bambi, had four sweet little babies about two weeks ago. The day after they were born, I found one of the babies outside the nest, lying on the floor of the hutch under a tuft of mama’s fur. This tiny baby had a terrible gash on the back of its head. I picked it up carefully with a towel and held it close, at a complete loss for what to do next. I did the only thing I could think of to do when faced with a wound. I covered it with antibiotic ointment, placed the baby back in the nest, and prayed.

Ok, I nearly passed out over the whole ordeal, but we won’t go there.

Two and a half weeks later, that little runt is amazingly still alive. It’s about half the size of its siblings and doesn’t have any ears. But it’s alive and going strong! 

Mama is doing very well. Our warm afternoons have been bothering her a bit, but she can’t have her usually ice block because of the adventurous babies. Instead, she gets an ice cold wet cloth a couple of times a day. It’s pretty funny to watch her straighten out the cold cloth and then throw her body across it. Any woman who has ever breast fed a baby can definitely sympathize!

Thanks for stopping by! What’s new on your homestead this spring??

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Menu Plan Monday 4/16

I think I’m ready to try once-a-month menu planning. I’ve been toying with this idea for about a year now and chicken out every time. However, my reasons for backing out are no longer valid. I used to menu plan around coupons and sales. These days, most of what we purchase never has a coupon or goes on sale. So, I suppose I have no more excuses!

My friend Myra also shared a wonderful story with me about her year in Alaska that really encouraged me to tackle once-a-month menu planning. Myra writes:

Betty, I spent one year on an island in Alaska and our groceries were ordered from the commissary and flown out to us once a month so I had to plan menus for one month at a time. Getting started was a problem because I had to plan for two months the first time around. We ordered one month and received our groceries the next month. After that it became easy. We had a large walk-in cooler to keep fresh fruits and vegetables and a large freezer. I froze our milk, butter, cheese, and meats. Once I got 3 or four months worth of menus, I shuffled the meals around and just repeated our favorites. Made life easier all the way around.

Can you imagine only shopping once or twice a month? I believe I am sufficiently motivated now!

By the way, for those who also visit me on Facebook, all four of the baby bunnies’ eyes are open, including the injured runt who is half the size of everyone else and has no ears. Amazing!!

I pray you have a blessed week with less stress because you created a menu plan!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 04/16/2012

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, smoothies., or oatmeal

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, oranges, and strawberries

Dinner

Monday – Roast chicken, smashed sweet potatoes, veggies, salad (I did not get to this last weekend—something about a very large breakfast served at 2 pm—so I’ll be trying my “roast chicken outdoors experiment” today instead.)

Tuesday – Big salads, stuffed foccacia  

Wednesday – Breakfast for Dinner, fruit salad

Thursday – Jared’s Cooking Lesson: Homemade Pizza (A certain young man has a new appreciation for all the times I make pizza!)

Friday – Texas Ranger Soup, salad

Saturday – Chicken and veggies in a creamy basil sauce over pasta, salad

Sunday – Sloppy Jills (Just a Sloppy Joe made with ground turkey instead of beef), salad

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Could This Happen Here?

A while ago, my family had the honor of participating in the making of this video for a church youth group film festival. The young man that directed it really does have an amazing gift as a filmmaker. And the message, well, it's something to think about. I hope you enjoy it!

Shared on:

Heavenly Homemakers Gratituesday
Time Warp Wife's Titus 2sday
 Family Time Tuesday
Growing Home's Teach Me Tuesday
Raising Homemaker's Wednesday Link Up
We are THAT Family's Works for me Wednesday 
Deep Roots at Home's Encouraging One Another Link Up 
GNOWFGLINS Simple Lives Thursday  
Homemaker by Choice's Friday Homemaking Link Up

Egg-Eating Chickens

Have you ever raced out to your chicken coop all excited about gathering fresh eggs and reached into the nesting box only to find some small eggshell shards lying in a puddle of egg goop? Yep, me, too. You have an egg eater. Yep. Me, too.

I’ve had three small flocks of chickens over the years and two egg eaters. Since the third flock is only about a month old, the jury is still out as to whether or not one of them is an egg eater. However, each of the other flocks had an egg eating chicken.

The first time around, the egg eater didn’t show its face until just after molting. Molting is pretty tough on a bird. They stop laying because their bodies need all the protein they can get to regrow feathers. A handful of high-protein kitten chow every couple of days really helps. Unfortunately, right after molting one of the birds continued craving that protein and got her fix on eggs. She wasn’t too particular which eggs she ate either. Since this was my first flock ever, I was beside myself on what to do.

For the most part, all of the books and websites I turned to advised culling the egg eater. My problem with getting rid of a hen was that we could only have a small flock. Losing a hen meant fewer eggs. Granted, we were already getting fewer eggs because of our egg eating chicken, but that’s beside the point. My other issue with getting rid of her was that this was my first flock….ever. I still viewed my chickens as pets not livestock.

Two things happened that helped me solve my problem. First, I noticed that since the molt, our eggshells were paper thin. Second, the temperature dropped to below freezing.

Up until this point I didn’t see a need for a calcium supplement like oyster shell. Eggshells were thick and hard and well-formed. After the molt, you no longer needed a candle to see inside!

However, before I could pick up some oyster shell supplement, the temperatures threatened to fall below freezing. Freezing temperatures are pretty rare in my part of Florida. I was a little concerned for my chickens. Although chickens can handle pretty cold temperatures, these girls were born and raised in Florida. After spending just one year here, my hubby and I would reach for our winter gear when the temperature hit 50°F! I was a little worried about my Floridian chickens.

Even though my Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens assured me the chickens would be fine, I also took their advice to give them a special treat before bed that would help keep them warm during cold weather: scratch grains mixed with milk. Something about the grains and milk mixture revs up their metabolism and keeps them warm all night. The cold snap lasted a few days, so they got a dish of scratch and milk every night for about a week.

The egg eating stopped.

For a while.

Then it started again.

Evidently, this particular hen was looking for extra calcium or protein or both! I had started giving the girls oyster shells, so I suspected my egg eater was looking for protein. As long as she had a dish of feed and milk or yogurt once a week, she left the eggs alone.

Unfortunately, my latest egg eater really is an unbreakable case. She’s not eating eggs because she needs something, she’s eating them to “protect” them from the other hens. She’s a lone Ameraucana in a small flock of Rhode Island Reds. The others pick on her a bit, so she eats her eggs. Only her eggs! I’ve tried moving her to a pen all her own, and the stress of solitary living was too much for her so I moved her back. I also tried moving her in with another Ameraucana and a mixed breed bird, and well, let’s just say she learned a few things from her bullying coop-mates! She moved back.

Anyway, after all of the time, effort, and research I dedicated to my egg eating chickens, I thought I’d pass along what I learned to you. Here’s a list if things that worked for me or other chickens owners who didn’t want to give up their egg-eating chicken either.

-          Add extra protein and/or calcium to their diet.

-          Isolate the egg-eating hen from the rest of the flock.

-          Place wooden or plastic eggs that the hen can’t break in the nest; thus, teaching the hen that the eggs can no longer be broken. Golf balls work, too. These shouldn’t bother the other hens because they have no problem adding more eggs to a nest that already has eggs. In fact, the fake eggs are often used to teach young hens where to lay.

-          Carefully make a small hole in one end of a fresh egg and replace the insides with an obnoxious tasting substance like mustard and pepper sauce. Then place the egg in the nest. Hopefully, the egg eater won’t like the taste.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have an egg eating chicken and try any of these ideas, please let me know how they work out for you. If you’ve ever combated egg eating before, what did you do and how did it wok out for you? Inquiring minds want to know!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

The Morris Tribe's Homesteading Blog Carnival 
The Prairie Homestead's Barn Hop
 Family Time Tuesday
Growing Home's Teach Me Tuesday
Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Ways, Sustainable Days 
Deep Roots at Home's Encouraging One Another Link Up 
Our Simple Farm's  Simple Living Wednesday
GNOWFGLINS Simple Lives Thursday  
Shared on Dandelion House's Farm Girl Friday 

Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop #2

How exciting that we had 20 links posted to the first edition of Homestead Helps!! I don’t know about you, but I was pretty excited about all the interesting information shared! Thank you to everyone who linked up! And thank you to everyone who visited the other links! I don’t know who visited which posts, but I do know that everyone had visitors. Very cool! I hope you all join us again this week!

Last week, you all really liked The Redeemed Gardener’s "HUGELKULTUR", Raised Bed Experiment. Honestly, you cannot beat one of Clint’s posts for excellently detailed information!  

Supporting Sustainable Meat in Your Community over at the Hopeful Homesteader also caught your eye. Me, too! But then again, anything Joel Salatin catches my eye!

 

Last but not least, you all enjoyed Like a Mustard Seed’s Medicinal Herbs…Common Forms and Preparations. How can you not love a post that simplifies something that intimidates most of us?!

It is near impossible for me to choose just a few posts to feature. I let your hopping decide for me! Make sure you visit your favorites so I can feature them next week!

What is Homestead Helps Wednesday Homestead Hop?

 

Homestead Helps is about helping each other consume less, produce more, and live simply. Posts about gardening (both in the ground or in containers), preserving the harvest, raising animals, frugal living, cooking from scratch, textile arts like sewing or knitting, recycling, re-purposing, and upcycling, homemaking and home management are all welcome and appreciated! Did you just harvest your first tomato? We’d love to hear about it! New chicks? Don’t forget the pictures! Did you learn the best way not to do something? Share that, too! Do you grow your own groceries from the balcony of your condo? Show us how! I think you get the idea.

Join In!

Create a “Homestead Helps” post on your own blog. Then come back here to add your post to the linky box below. Please, link to specific posts and not to your blog’s home page.
Each week, I’ll choose a post or two to feature during the next week’s link-up.

Don’t have a blog? Feel free to add a comment here with helpful homesteading stories and tips!

Now for just a few simple guidelines to make sure this is a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone:

1. Please, remember that this is a family-friendly site. No inappropriate content, please!

2. Please, link your posts back to this one. This is a common blog hop courtesy and helps build our online homesteading community. When your readers hop back here, they can read the other participants’ post, too. We all end up sharing with, learning from, and helping each other.

3. Please, visit a few of the other links. This is another common blog hop courtesy. While you’re visiting, be sure to leave a comment, letting the blog owner know you stopped by. Just because many of us wouldn’t mind living in a barn, me included, doesn’t mean we have to act like we were born in one.

4. No advertising-oriented posts. This hop is for sharing useful information, not free advertising. So, keep your links to posts involving homesteading and home management topics
Thanks for stopping by! I’m always nervous about doing something like this. It’s that whole throwing a party and nobody comes thing. So, please, leave a link so we can take the party to your blog for a little bit!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Betty

Menu Plan Monday 4/09

Would you like to know why I plan my menu every week? You probably don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I plan my menu every week because every Monday I strip beds, catch up all the laundry from the weekend, clean out the refrigerator, and do most of the major household and garden chores for the week, on top of homeschooling Jared, writing part time for an internet content company, and caring for our animals.

On Tuesdays, we ride our bikes to Palm Lake Performing Arts Center for choir and drama classes and do the grocery shopping for the week, on top of homeschooling Jared, writing part time for an internet content company, and caring for our animals.

Wednesday is a little lighter except that we go to church in the evening and every other week we show up two hours early so my musical son can practice with the middle school worship team...on top of homeschooling Jared, writing part time for an internet content company, and caring for our animals. Sensing a pattern?

Thursday includes a piano lesson and preparing for co-op.

On Fridays, we start the day at our homeschool co-op, followed by a quick clean-up of the house and a 4-H meeting.

At least one Saturday a month is dedicated to some kind of 4-H event, followed by church every Saturday evening. A couple of hours volunteering at church on Sunday finishes the week. And that’s just the highlights! Could you imagine my stress level if I didn’t plan my menu every week?!

By the way, if you are exhausted reading our weekly schedule, don’t be. I’m not. I love every bit of it! I don’t feel that any of these activities are a waste of time, and I have felt that in the past.

What does your week look like? Wouldn’t a menu plan lighten the load? What are you waiting for!?

Last but not least, Way to Go, Karen!! Karen commented last week that she is on 3 weeks of menu planning! Woohoo!! In a couple more weeks, it’ll feel like a habit that you couldn’t imagine not doing! Praying for your continued dedication to managing your home! Way to go!

I pray you have a blessed week with less stress because you created a menu plan!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 04/09/2012

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, smoothies., or oatmeal

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, oranges, and strawberries

Dinner

Monday – Ham, scalloped potatoes, salad

Tuesday – Big salads, stuffed foccacia  

Wednesday – Sautéed veggies in marinara over homemade pasta, salad

Thursday – Jared’s Cooking Lesson: Homemade Pizza (he’s almost ready to be on his own with this one.)

Friday – White chili, salad

Saturday – Sandwiches and salads on the road (4-H event and letterboxing)

Sunday – Roast chicken, smashed whites, veggies, salad (Roasting in a cast iron Dutch oven outside. This should be interesting!)

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Foccacia Stuffed with Spinach, Provolone, and Basil

I used to make this stuffed foccacia every time we had salad with dinner. Unfortunately, it’s a bit time consuming to make, and the quick and easy artisan bread took its place. The other day, I decided to dust off the recipe and boy, was my family happy! Enjoy!

Foccacia Stuffed with Spinach, Provolone, and Basil

Ingredients

1 ¼ cup warm water

1 ½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoon olive oil

3 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoon yeast

Filling

6 to 10 fresh basil leaves, washed 

½ teaspoon garlic powder

6 ounces sliced provolone cheese

1 cup spinach leaves, washed and stems trimmed

Glazing

½ teaspoon course salt

2 tablespoon olive oil

In a small bowl, stir together water, salt and oil. In a large mixing bowl, stir together 2 cups of flour and the yeast. Make a well in the center of the flour and yeast mixture, and pour in water, salt, and oil mixture.

Stir until blended, scraping sides. Stir in remaining flour. Begin kneading with an electric mixer on low speed using dough hooks adding additional flour if necessary, 1 tablespoon at a time, until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. Continue kneading on low speed for 10 minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic.

Place dough in an oiled bowl. Turn dough to coat with oil. Cover bowl loosely with a dish towel and put in a draft-free place. Let dough rise until doubled in size, about 1-1 ½ hours.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces. Chafe for 5 minutes then let rest for 10 minutes (See notes).

Stack the basil leaves in a single stack. 

Roll the leaves up tightly.

Slice the rolled basil into 1/4" ribbons. 

My hubby should be a hand model.

Roll out each piece of dough into a 10 in. circle. Place one circle on an oiled baking sheet. Sprinkle dough evenly with garlic powder. Arrange cheese slices, spinach, and basil over the top.

I had some Parmesan on hand, so I added that, too.

Cover filling with second round, then seal by gently pinching the edges together. Cover loosely with dish towel. Let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes.

Using fingertips or handle end of a wooden spoon, gently press into the surface of the dough to form dimples about ½ in deep and about 1 in. apart. Brush with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle with course salt.

Bake at 400°F for 30-45 minutes, until golden. Brush immediately with the remaining tablespoon of oil. Serve warm.

Tips:

*Chafing – Form the dough into a ball by cupping your hands gently around it. Apply a light downward pressure to the sides, while simultaneously rotating the dough continuously in a steady clockwise direction. Continue until the dough is formed into an even round shape. This recipe specifies an extended chafing time. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what this does for the dough, but I did end up with a nice round ball that held its shape well even when rolled. I will definitely use this technique again.

*The original recipe called for unbleached flour; however, I use a mixture of unbleached flour and fresh-milled hard white flour. The mixture of flours give this foccacia a great flavor and texture! I believe this recipe would also do well with bread flour.

*I like using my heavy-duty mixer to make my breads, so that’s the technique described in the recipe. The recipe will work equally well if you knead by hand or use the dough cycle on your bread machine. Use whichever technique works best for you.

*Feel free to experiment with the filling. The original recipe called for Gorgonzola, mozzarella, and a lot more basil. I don’t usually have Gorgonzola on hand. It doesn’t really fit in my budget, so I made up a filling with items my family and my budget would like. I bet this would taste good with some sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and a serious amount of garlic. Have fun and experiment!

*Team this foccacia with a nice big salad for a very filling lunch or dinner.

Thanks for stopping by! I found the original recipe in the book Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno. I was a little leery about trying a bread recipe that called for no sweetener whatsoever. I always believed yeast needed both water and sugar to release enough gas to raise the dough. I was pleasantly surprised at how light and delicious this bread baked up even without sugar or honey.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Betty