Freeze Proof Chicken Waterer

I came across this video showing how to use geothermal energy to make a "heated" chicken waterer and now I really want to make one for our homestead. 

I don't think we'll get to that this year before the ground freezes. 

I was inspired to use an old tire as an insulated water holder for the ducks and chickens. The opening fits the water dish perfectly! 

I do need to go back and stuff straw inside the tire walls for even more insulation. 

Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls- Maple Syrup Sweetened

It's Bekhor's birthday today (our firstborn who came at 16 weeks). To celebrate his heavenly birthday, I whipped together some sourdough discard cinnamon rolls sweetened with maple syrup instead of regular sugar. Chat gpt gave me the recipe. 

The recipe conveniently used up a cracked egg G brought in from the shed. 

I wasn't sure how the maple syrup would spread in the filling, but it handled quite nicely. 

The dough stuck to the counter making it hard to roll, hence the lopsidedness. 

This morning I took them out of the fridge while the oven heated. Then bam, twenty minutes later, sweet rolls! 

I had 1/3c of Greek yogurt to use up. Chat gpt to the rescue again...

I actually really liked the frosting- a little tangy, a little sweet, good consistency. 

Vanilla Extract

Back in college, a friend gave me a small bottle of homemade vanilla extract. I had other vanilla to use up first, and by the time I finished that, I had received a couple other small bottles as gifts. 

Eventually, I mixed them all together and that's what I've used since. When the vanilla got low, I added more vodka to the jar. I think over the years I did that twice.

Now my vanilla stores are low and topping up the bottle with vodka results in a weak vanilla. Time to make a new bottle. 

G sourced some Madagascar vanilla beans online along with some Minnesota-made vodka. 

It's a pretty easy recipe. Slice eight vanilla beans down the side to increase surface area. Put them in a jar. Pour 8oz of vodka over the top. Rest for six months. 

 That's the hardest part...waiting to use it!

Subbing in Fifth

Another subbing day today. This time in 5th grade, the classroom where I did my long-term subbing a couple years ago. It was nice to be in a familiar classroom with a familiar routine. The kids were pretty chatty no doubt because it's a two-day week and tomorrow is a field trip.

My mother-in-law is home from Arizona for Thanksgiving, so she was able to watch Jaron. She brought him to school over lunch, but he had had so much fun playing all morning, he fell asleep in the car right when they pulled up. I got him out of the car seat anyway, but he was so tired he stayed asleep! He ended up going home without any milk. 

I did some actual teaching today - religion, writing rough drafts for English, a social studies lesson on the fur trade. Best part of the day was starting the book Frindle as a class read aloud. I found out from the other 5th grade teacher that she had planned to use that book in a novel study after Christmas. Wonder if she still will. 🤔

I had another little snafu with the other 5th grade teacher... It was the end of the day and I had just finished teaching her class social studies. We finished a little early, and they asked if they could go out for recess. I knew my class had a PE, but I didn't know what their class was supposed to do. They said that they normally have recess while my class has PE and that Mrs. M would take them out to recess and the other fifth grade teacher would take the other class out. So, I let them go out a little early for recess. I went back to my classroom to get my outdoor gear and let my class know that we were going to have outside recess instead of PE. The other fifth grade teacher looked a little surprised when I said her class was already outside.

Turns out they weren't supposed to go outside. She had a different activity planned for them. They were going to watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and have Charlie Brown Thanksgiving snacks. But since they were all outside she abandoned that idea and just let them have recess. I felt bad about messing up her plans. She said they didn't know that they were missing out on something fun, but I'm sure she was bummed; she clearly loves all things Peanuts. Her classroom theme is Peanuts, and she even has Snoopy themed eyeglass frames.

Risen Savior Subbing

This week on Tuesday was my first day subbing at the school associated with our church. I've been on their sub list for a few years, but this is the first time I was actually called upon to teach. I taught the 5-6th graders for a day. 

Their teacher doesn't know me super well, so he made the day pretty simple. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more teaching to do, but the day went smoothly. Catechism lesson for religion, read-aloud and questions for reading, math test, recess, show a video in 5-6 science (Magic School Bus), work time on final drafts for English, show a video in 7-8 science (Bill Nye). 

I was able to find a bit of time to do extra read-aloud. The book they picked was How They Choked: Failures, Flops, and Flaws of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg. We had time to read one person's story and they picked the man who owned the Titanic, Bruce Ismay. He was a very bad man. Most likely a product of his upbringing, but wow, did he make some bad decisions. It seems like the whole Titanic disaster could've been avoided. Look him up for more of the story.

G brought Jaron to school over lunch to nurse. 

All the students were well-behaved, even the 7-8th graders. I had a little time with them for read-aloud too. We did a handful of super quick mystery stories, similar to Encyclopedia Brown but simpler.

Because the day had a lot of student work time, I had time to do some reading of my own. I've been reading Grow Wild: The Whole-Child, Whole-Family, Nature-Rich Guide to Moving More by Katy Bowman. Good takeaways! Her big thing is stacking activities to build healthy habits into your life. For example, you need to grocery shop, so to add more movement, park far away to add steps. Then carry your items in a basket instead of a cart so you use your arm muscles more. Granted this doesn't work all the time, but you get the idea. 

Or, you want to go on a family hike and you want to eat dessert. Go for a walk in an area with berries along the trail and gather as you go. 

My favorite chapter so far is the chapter about clothing and movement. Our clothes are containers holding us. You will move more if the container isn't restrictive. Pay attention to the movements your kids do or don't do; perhaps their clothing is keeping them from playing to the full extent. She gave some tips about buying barefoot shoes for kids when their feet grow so fast (barefoot shoes tend to be expensive) and gave suggestions on weather-proof clothing. Like I said, I took a lot of notes!

Fire Cider

Ever heard of fire cider? It's an herbal remedy for basically any illness. Lots of ingredients! It seems worth it.

Since there's a lot of room for variation in the recipe, I made notes about how I made this match, in case I want to replicate it later or want to adjust the flavor.

I was surprised it only made one quart. I definitely will be making another batch this year! I'd like to buy all fresh ingredients and see how that compares to this container that uses some dried herbs, etc. 

Shake every day, ready in a few weeks!

Apple Cider Vinegar Ready

The apple cider vinegar sat for a month, now it's ready to test!  

Check out the mother growth on the fresh/frozen batch! 

The post-sauce apple cider vinegar had much less mother growth. Guess from now on I'll use just fresh or frozen apple scraps. 

They say it's ready when it's between 2 to 3 pH. G has some pH test strips from his kombucha making days, so it was very easy. Mine is right at 3. The big jar is more like a 3.5, so I'll let that sit longer.

The post-sauce ACV had a unique flavor, a little sweeter than the rest. The fresh/frozen had more of an alcoholic tone. The bigger jar of fresh/frozen seemed watery compared to the others, definitely didn't have as much flavor, probably because it's not quite ready yet. 

I'll leave some of them to sit a while longer, and turn others into fire cider!

Craft Day- Advent Calendar

The Heintz ladies had another craft day and I had the perfect project... Repainting this Advent calendar in colors that match my color palette better. 

It took the whole day and lots of paint mixing, but I finished! 

This little guy played with cousins and aunties and Gram so I could get it done. 

He was so tired, by supper he could hardly keep his head up while he ate!

 

The Great Heintz Baking Show

My dad requested that we do some baking together after supper one weekend. He needed to provide treats for bible study the next day. "Lemon bars and something with coconut" were his requests. I have a delicious lemon bar recipe, so that was a no brainer. A quick scan of my Pinterest dessert board came up with copycat girl scout samoas. 

Originally, the lemon bar recipe made an 8x8 pan. When I wrote it in my cookbook, I doubled the recipe and made it in a 9x13 pan. 

It had been a while since I made lemon bars, so when Dad and I were making them, the 8x8 pan size was stuck in my head and that's what we used. I should have known something was wrong when we had extra crust. But I chalked that up to Mom's 8x8 being small (I measured it). 

Then we poured the liquid in... It came all the way to the top of the pan. And that's when I realized my mistake. We had just put the pan into the oven and I was checking the recipe to see how long it needed to bake when I noticed the 9x13 size. I thought about pulling it out of the oven and trying to separate it, but in the end we went with doing an experiment.

Being that the liquid was so deep, it took a lot longer to bake than the recipe said. Also, the top part ended up cooking cooking and there was a layer of harder egg stuff on the top. I hoped that hanging out in the fridge overnight would cause it to go gooey like typical lemon bars. 

In the morning, the thicker layer was still there. I used a knife to peel it off and the lemon bars were salvageable underneath. Mom enjoyed eating the top part, so that didn't go to waste. 😅 The bars were a little messy and sticky, but tasted fine. 

Our second recipe was for copycat samoas. Holy cow, very putzy! Toast the coconut, chill the cookie base, bake the cookies, cool completely, melt caramel, mix the coconut in, spread on cookies individually, dip bases of cookies in melted chocolate and drizzle more on top. We made modifications to make it less work....

First, no cutting a second hole in the middle. That made them more like disks and less samoa shaped, but easier. 

After cutting out two pans worth, we opted to put the rest of the dough in a pan to make bars. That saved us a lot of time. 

We weren't going to dip the bases in chocolate, but we had so much I dipped one tray. Except the chocolate was so thick I had to spread it. 

So we had some cookies with chocolate just on top, some with it on top and bottom, and bars. As you can see, we're not going to win any awards for neatness and appearance. 😂

In the end, they tasted pretty good and they were all gone post-potluck. And even though as we made them Dad and I said we wouldn't make them again, as we sampled we discussed what we'd do differently next time: Definitely could make the cookies just on their own. Better with chocolate on the bottom and top. More coconut. Different caramel (maybe homemade?). The bar idea was good.

So there you go! If you've ever thought about making your own girl scout samoas, does our story make you excited to try or convince you to skip it? 😉 

New Fence

We made progress on Jip's new area/the chickens' new area. We're so close to finishing! Darkness falls so quickly these days...

Step one was to put up the fence between the corner of the shed and corner of garage. The trampoline is on the outside so the chickens can still use it. The goats are sad they can't lounge on top anymore.

Jaron hung out in the stroller so both G and I could have the use of both hands. He enjoyed watching all the animals doing their thing. 

Inside the shed got some revamping too. We turned the duck corner into Jip's corner using pieces of a giant dog kennel my aunt and uncle gave us. His area needs a bit more work, so I'll share pictures once that's finished. 

The chickens got new roosting branches.  I took literal branches from the wood pile outside and set them carefully on top of an old planter and a stump so they would be off the ground. The planter and stump are doing double duty as nesting boxes. 

G thought the roosts should be up higher. I wasn't opposed to that; the low branches could make collecting eggs tricky. He screwed them into each other and the wall.

 

When night fell, we collected all of our chickens and put them in the shed so they'd roost there. You could tell they were already out of their comfort zone from all the changes we made. 

The birds that roosted on top of the door weren't able to because we took away their milking stand step stool. The birds who roost on the trampoline tried to roost there, but with winter coming I wanted them to start a new habit of roosting in the shed, so we caught/herded them inside too. 

The tree branches were too slippery for most of the chickens to settle on. I wrapped twine around them in the hopes that it would make the branches less slippery. I might need to wrap the twine even closer together; I didn't see anyone try roosting on them post twine. We shut the lights off to force the birds to settle in. 

I thought about making the ducks hunker down in a new place since they won't be able to use their current space when Jip takes it over, but we decided to give them one more night in their favorite haunt.

Subbing Screwup and Jip On the Loose

I was supposed to sub at Mount Olive today for one of the sixth grade teachers. Normally she emails me ahead of time with her lesson plans, but I didn't get anything from her this time. I chalked it up to me being a veteran sub in her classroom or figured she had a student teacher who would be teaching most of the day.

So, I was a little surprised when I arrived at school and found her at her desk in her classroom (with a student teacher... I was right!). Turns out, she only needed a sub for an hour and a half in the afternoon. Turns out, her student teacher is teaching the majority of the day and would be teaching for that hour and a half. Turns out, she is having a different teacher pop in to check on the student teacher so she won't need a sub at all. Turns out, she told the principal this on Monday. Somehow I slipped through the cracks! 

So, I went home and G went to work. Just as well, Jaron is teething again and has been very clingy/crabby. 

Also just as well I'm around home because over lunch, Jip broke free of his tether. 

We knew this day was coming. Just last night, G and I were talking about what to do about his rusting tether. Jip likes to chew on it, which cuts holes in the plastic coating letting water trickle onto the metal. Of course that rusts, and now it rusted to a breaking point. 

Thankfully, I noticed right away. Jeff seemed more interested in seeing what was going on in the neighborhood then bothering our animals. In fact the ducks looked pretty relaxed.

But it was only a matter of time before Jip lost interest in the goings on of people and turned to his flighty co-inhabitants. I put a barrier up at the end of the chicken area to prevent him from being loose in the front yard, closed the gate at the other end of the duck area to prevent him from getting with the goats, and locked Jip inside. 

Our gimpy chicken was the only chicken on Jip's side of the fence now. Jip had been very well behaved throughout this process, chasing the animals a little but listening to me when I called him over. This one chicken was too much for him to resist though... He went after him and cornered him in the fence. I was able to rescue the chicken and herded him through the chicken door before blockading all poultry-shaped openings with cinder blocks. 

So far Jip has stayed in and the birds have stayed out. Whew! 

But, we need a long-term solution. A dog run for Jip has been on our to do list for months. We've put it off because we planned to revamp the whole shed and adjust our chicken/duck area at the same time; winter was our deadline (so he could have a protected place in the warm shed). That deadline just got moved up!

I came up with a couple of fencing options: 

Plan A-

Plan B- 

Plan C- 

I think Plan C is the winner! Jip has his own space, but we can let him roam in one of the paddocks during the day. The goats and poultry can have the other one until they learn to coexist. And everyone has access to the warm barn.

End of an Era

Seven goats is too many. Too many for our pasture and too many to overwinter. 

We haven't had any luck selling Cocoa (the buck), Blackie (the whether), and Svetlana (the mama) via Facebook or Craigslist. 

Sale barn prices have been good, so we opted to bring them to Jackson. 

We went back and forth about taking Svetlana so many times. She is the best looking goat we have, but she is a bully and tends to hog the food / push all the other goats out of the way. She had triplets and raise them all without supplement, but if any goat is going to find a way out of the pasture it's her. 

To complicate matters, Freya, one of our new goats, died. G went out to the shed and there she was, curled up peacefully. No clue why she died. You can have a vet come do a necropsy, but those are expensive. 

Our best guess is that she got parasite overload or acidosis, which can happen from overeating on grain. I think it's more likely that it was parasites.

The goats have been eating pumpkin which is a natural dewormer. I read online that if they get dewormed but it's not strong enough to wipe out all of the parasites, only the weak parasites die, leaving space for the stronger parasites to take over. This can cause a sudden death when the strong parasites fill those gaps.

So, to sell Svetlana or not? In the end we decided that we want to have nice, non-mischievous goats in our herd, and we settled on taking her. 

G brought the work van home and we loaded them up in our doghouse and dog kennel. It works surprisingly well. 😆 

We gave them a few garden scraps to keep them content on the way. 

Of course, this week's sale barn prices were not as high as past weeks. But that's the game you play with the sale barn. We both wondered if hunting opener played a role in the lower prices. 

Now we are left with three goats: Gerda, Sage, and Brighita. The goats are already jostling for the position of new boss goat. I had wondered if Brighita would take over for her mom, but it appears as if Sage is going for the title. Gerta is attempting, but I think Sage will win out in the end.

Fall Cleanup

Jaron and I bundled up to do some cleanup outside before the snow flies. 

The chickens and goats coexist quite well. Don't seem to bother each other at all!

This chicken found a new roost. Used to be on top of the milking stand, now it's higher up- on top of the shed door. 

G brought home a ton of pumpkins for our animals (leftover from the garden center!) and tossed them out of the truck any which way since it was late and dark.  

I rolled and carried them to the compost pile so if we don't feed them to the animals, at least they decompose in an acceptable location. 

Our oldest hen, Dixie, has laid low recently. I haven't seen her out and about with the others, she looks pretty scraggly, and we haven't gotten any green eggs in a while, so G and I checked her out. I thought she was sick, maybe a fungus/ringworm type thing growing on her face. Nope. She's just molting. 😆

All those tough looking feathers are actually new feathers that haven't fluffed out yet. There's a thin casing around them that will work off eventually. 

And once the molting is finished, she'll start laying again!
 

Last Garden Haul

Over the weekend freezing temps were expected, so after my day of subbing on Friday, I did a last sweep of the garden for everything I thought would freeze. The cabbages filled the wagon, but a lot of it is air space from the leaves. The actual heads are pretty small, and a lot of the pieces will end up going to the goats.

Calendula, still going strong even through frost! I clipped them at the base so I could go through and collect the flower buds later.

Our celery didn't amount to much this year (right). Good supply of oregano (left). 

I spread the oregano out to dry on an old screen. As you can see, we finally dug our garlic. 🤦‍♀️ Better harvest than last year, still not as big of heads as I'd like. 

I collected some carrot tops and lettuce/greens. Most of those were too leggy for us to eat, but the goats enjoyed them! The carrots are left in the ground. They'll be okay in there until the ground freezes. Surprisingly, the remaining tops are still green, even after a night in the 20s!

The brussel sprouts had just begun to form on their stalks. I had planned to shave them off for us to eat, but they were so small G didn't notice them and he fed them to the goats before I could process them.

We actually got a couple of teeny broccoli! 

I'm about ready to give up trying to grow them. They have gone leggy on me both years I've grown them. One more year. I'll research over winter for broccoli growing tips.