Quest: Banana Muffin #5

This next recipe is a keeper. My recipe/cookbook sharing friend sent it to me, a non typical banana muffin because of the hemp hearts. 

G isn't normally a fan of hemp hearts. He said he used to eat them on salads all the time, but if he eats too many they make his heart race. 

This recipe doesn't call for many, so I think it'll be fine. Honey and bananas are the only sweeteners. 

I had some bananas in the freezer from before our Chicago trip and since I've been on the muffin kick, I thought I better capitalize on my enthusiasm. 

They came together pretty quickly. Dry ingredients together, wet ingredients together, then mix. It's only supposed to make 12 muffins, but I got 24 minis and 6 full sized. I was thinking a mini is half a full size, but maybe it's less than half. 🤔

The muffins look good and taste good! 

Build a Better Chicken Feeder

Our chickens are free-range on pasture, but we still supplement them with feed. G has been feeding them on the ground in little containers, but they waste so much by scratching I wanted a better solution. 

A quick Google search later turned up this PVC pipe feeder. Inexpensive, easy to find supplies, quick to make and tested/adjusted by a guy with a flock of chickens. Sounds good to me! 

 

So Jaron and I bought supplies at Menards. 

They were out of end caps, which go on the tops of the feeders to keep rodents and rain out. I figured I could buy some later, or come up with an alternative solution. 

Step one was to glue a plug in the bottom of a Y piece. This keeps the feed close to the chickens so it doesn't sit down in the bottom of the feeder not getting eaten. (You'll see in a picture below). 

Then using a saw, I cut off a three inch section to go on the end of the Y to extend it and prevent the birds from wasting feed. The other side of the Y gets a long piece to hold the feed.

 Like so: 

I put two feeders in the shed, attached to the wall with twine and staples. That staple gun G got for Christmas is really coming in handy. 😉

I set it on a block to make it a better height for the birds to reach. 

Here's the other inside feeder.

This was my solution to keep rain out of the outside feeder (facing south/as far into the fence as possible). 

I made one double Y feeder and chose to have it outside since that was where G fed them before. 

I wondered how long it would take the birds to figure out how to eat out of these feeders since it's different than they've eaten from before. In anticipation of that, I mixed some flock armor powder (which has a very strong scent) with their regular feed so it would draw them in. 

My genius plan is working! 

It didn't take long for them to figure it out. 

We have been burning through so much chicken feed, it's ridiculous. G was doubtful the birds were wasting that much. We have so many, he thought it was normal for the amount of birds we have. I counted all the chickens and ducks... We have 54 with more to come- two mamas are sitting on nests. So yes, we do have a lot. 

However, I was NOT doubtful that they were wasting feed. Even with so many, we shouldn't be going through bags so fast. 

So, I did an experiment. 

Fill all three feeders to the tops and note the time. Come back out the next day at the same time and see how full the feeders are.  If they were eating as much as G said (and not wasting any the way he fed them), the feeders should be empty (based on how much he fed them each day vs how much fits in the new feeders). 

The next day I checked them at the appointed time. The outside feeder was about half full. One inside feeder was the same level and the other was down maybe four inches. 

So. Now we know. 

One argument he could make is that not all the birds knew about the feeder so they weren't all eating from it. I'll keep checking and see if the rate changes, but I don't think it'll ever catch up to the prefeeder rate. 😜

Quest: Banana Muffins #2, #3, #4

We rarely have bananas far enough gone for banana bread. Both G and I like our bananas a little spotty, so we have a pretty high tolerance for ripeness. My mom on the other hand loves green bananas, so she has plenty of bananas for baking in the freezer. 

I cleaned out her frozen banana stash this weekend. 😅 There were enough to make one whole and two half recipes.

Recipe #2 is from Kristine's Kitchen. 

Recipe #3 is from Cookie + Kate.

Recipe #4 is from iFoodReal.

Here are my notes from the experiment.

I tried not to veer off recipe. 😅 I did pretty good too! The biggest change was in #4 when I accidentally swapped the amounts for baking soda and baking powder. I don't think it made an impact on the taste. 

My parents agreed, recipe #2 was our favorite followed by #3. My brother N actually liked #3 the best. None of us loved #4. I think it was too banana-y. So, for now I'll save the Kristine's Kitchen recipe! 

I still have three banana bread recipes to go... 😜

Potato Update

The asparagus patches are producing! Not big enough for us to harvest any yet, but much sturdier than last year. Most has gone to seed already, but I found a few that could've been picked. I left them where they were though. 

I also found some volunteer raspberries between the asparagus. Who will win that battle?

My container potatoes are doing amazing! Already ready for mounding. I haven't seen much from the garden potatoes yet... Except yesterday I spotted a few purple potato leaves poking through the mulch. 

There are a ton of weeds. I should've mulched more in the beginning, but it's hard to know how deep to go. I plan to add more on top to smother the weeds. Hopefully that won't smother the potatoes.

The onions are coming up well! Weeds too obviously. 😜

 

Summer Pots, Dirt Magnet, Storm Damage

I finally planted the planters with our summer flowers. I've had the flowers for weeks and it was either too cold or I didn't have time. My inlaws took Jaron for a few hours, so I finally had uninterrupted time. 

I also put mosquito netting over the chicken waterer. That's a big relief to not think about that anymore. I had other netting I planned to use, but I couldn't find it. Then I remembered I had two nets with elastic at the bottom meant to go over a stroller or pack n play to protect a baby from bugs. It went on super easy! (There's a copper pipe in the waterer to keep algae from growing. It's worked so far!)

My little dirt magnet had fun exploring the pots at Papa and Mimi's house. 

He is grumpy because he wanted to eat the cat treats and I wouldn't let him. 

Shortly after supper the wind picked up, the rain came, and we had a huge downpour. Neither G or I knew about a storm, but thankfully our outside stuff was picked up and nothing blew around. Unfortunately, a dead branch above our deck dislodged and crashed to the deck. Thankfully, it didn't damage anything. 

Unfortunately, another tree snapped- the beautiful conifer in the goat pasture. It doesn't seem like the garage roof is damaged, thankfully. 

Now we have to decide if we cut the whole tree down or just shave off the top. My vote is for the latter. 

Fire Honey

My dad has a remedy he takes every day, one teaspoon of fire honey. 

The recipe is simple. One teaspoon of each of these spices:

Mix together with one cup of honey. And there you go!

Maybe I should mix up a batch for G to get him through the busy season...

Mac Barnett

I met my favorite children's book author yesterday. 

This fall when we were in Austin, TX, he was speaking in a town a few hours away, and I almost went, but it was too far with the little time we had there. So when his newsletter said he'd be speaking in Duluth in May, I knew this was my chance to go.

My sister E, also a huge Mac fan, came along with Jaron and me. We stayed with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and they actually watched Jaron for me during the author talk. 

Mac is the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a position chosen by the Library of Congress. He selected "Behold! The Picture Book" as his platform. It's pretty amazing how he summed up my views on the picture book and articulated them in a polished and cohesive way. 😜 Picture books were one of my favorite ways to share stories with my 5th and 6th graders ( and 7th and 8th graders) when I was teaching. You get the whole story in about 15 minutes, and oftentimes there's a second story told in the illustrations

Mac's main goal for being the ambassador is to stress to parents, educators, and librarians how important and special the picture book is for readers of all ages. Picture books are very rich in vocabulary and context and emotion, and they are the perfect means of sharing a story with someone. They are where children and adults meet as equals and adults need to do a better job of giving children high quality picture books to read. 

So, that was a big part of his talk. He also read us a few of his picture books, and he gave the adults some pointers for reading books aloud to children. Use voices, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Show your kids your vulnerability.

My two big takeaways were: 

Don't let your disdain for a book ruin the book for a child who is trying to figure out their own taste in books. Many adults have ruined a story for a child because they think the book is garbage. 

When you read a book to a child, always give them the best possible version of the book you can. There are a lot of junky children's books out there, but you can still give them your best. And that goes for the books your kids want you to read over and over and over and over and over and over again. Don't rush through them, or skip pages. 😅

And then talk about the books with your kids. What did they like, what didn't they like? 

Even though E and I sat in the front, we were able to get to the front of the signing line. He had the idea I should have the dedication of the signing be "to the best read alouder in the world", which I thought was funny, so I did. That prompted a short discussion between Mac and me about doing voices in read alouds. 

I still remember the first day I tried doing a different voice from character in a read-aloud book with my 5th and 6th graders. They were a bit taken aback, but liked it. I was so uncomfortable I'm sure I was blushing, but it definitely got easier with time. One of my favorite things to do with read aloud was to ask my students what kind of voice I should give a certain character. It was always interesting to hear what they had to say! And a lot of times they would ask for a voice of a character from a previous book, making connections between the two books and comparing the characters. So cool. 

Mac and I were chatting so much, unfortunately E didn't get any chatting time, but he did do a secret handshake with her from the book she had him sign (book three in the Terrible Two series), which was pretty awesome. 

We were back to Jaron after about 1.5h of being gone. They'd taken him on a walk in the stroller, fed him first supper, read books, and looked at pictures on their digital photo frame. My brother-in-law said that every time Jaron saw a picture of someone in our family he began to whimper/cry. I think he missed everyone. And when I came back the switch flipped and Jaron was happy and chatting up a storm. We enjoyed second supper (for Jaron, first for us) and nice conversation before bed. 

Definitely worth the four hour drive!