First Nap

I successfully got Jaron to nap in his "new" bed! Granted, he fell asleep on my back in the baby carrier and I transferred him, but he did semi wake up and I got him back to sleep there. 

Unfortunately, he rolled to the edge of the mattress to sleep on his stomach. And then when he woke up he fell out of bed because he wasn't used to the boundaries. It's very close to the floor so it wasn't a big tumble. 

Guess we'll keep working on it. 😅

Bedroom Swap

Jaron's crib has been in our room for a long time, shoved up next to our bed. He used to start out sleeping there and then crawl in with us partway through the night, but since I weaned him, he starts and stays with us. 

The crib takes up a lot of space, so I decided to move it back to the nursery. I'm going to see if I can get him to take naps there.

After a little shuffling, here's the setup I came up with:

Shift the diaper station over to merge with the toy shelf, move the clothes bins to the foot of the bed, lower the mattress so it's close to the floor, add a step stool for Jaron to climb in himself. Very cozy! We'll see if he thinks so. 😜

The rest of the room had to shuffle too. 

I'm debating moving the little white table and chairs out to give a little more breathing room. The problem is that we don't have a place to move it. Living room? Reading room? 

I need to do some organizing and shuffling there too before I can answer that. 😅

Pullet Eggs

The trampoline chickens have finally begun to lay! Or maybe all this rain kept them inside during their egg laying time. Either way, we got 3-4 pullet eggs today! 

Size is normally the main indicator of a pullet vs mature hen egg, but the trampoline chickens are colored egg layers, so the color was my first indicator. One olive egger and one Easter egger for sure. 

Here they are next to an egg from Dixie (on the left), our oldest hen. 

There was another green/teal egg that was about the size of a mature hen, so that makes me wonder if we've had trampoline chickens laying eggs for a while but haven't found their nest... Maybe it's time to lock them in overnight. Just to see how many eggs we get...

Potatoes

Hot and humid this week make it not fun to be outside. G called me to say the wind made it actually pleasant to be outside and suggested Jaron and I go for a walk. So we did. 

You can see the stubborn boy was tired, but he didn't give in to a nap. 

On our way back, I paused to check on the potatoes. They are thriving! I've hilled them as much as will fit in the container, so the rest is up to them! 

I'm really curious how the yield will be this year. The potatoes in the garden (planted in straw mulch) are not nearly as tall and full. But they were planted later. 

Sage

The native sage is taking over my medicinal herb garden. G thought it would be best to pull all of it. His theory is that there are more in the ground that will pop up. I'm not so certain. But that doesn't mean I can't use what he pulled up already. Probably for the chickens and ducks. 

Right now it's drying in the garage. I intend to hang it up, but we don't have a great place for that. 

I planted some culinary sage in my garden. I wonder if that spreads as much. 🤔 No note on the plant tag, so probably not? 

Sourdough Discard Pancakes

I came across a super simple sourdough discard pancake recipe from a homestead magazine email newsletter. 

That's it. 

I had some discard to use up, so Jaron and I made pancakes Saturday morning. So easy. 

The hardest part for us was melting the butter since we don't have a microwave. I threw it in a metal bowl in the toaster oven on the toast setting while I mixed the rest of the batter. 

I saved the baking soda for last. Holy cow, did it inflate the batter! Big reaction to the sour in the sourdough. 

I normally pour off the liquid that accumulates at the top of the sourdough starter jar, but I didn't know if I would have enough discard for the recipe if I dumped it off, so this time I stirred it back in. I think that made the batter more runny than it should've been. It still cooked up well! Just made gigantic pancakes. 😂

This one got poured in the pan before I realized I hadn't stirred in the butter. Oops. Still in the toaster oven. 

Turned out okay though. I mixed the butter in for the rest of the batch. Note to self - start with room temp ingredients. The butter firmed up when I mixed it into the cold batter so there were butter clumps in the bottom of the bowl. 

Jaron loved them enough to eat two whole gigantic pancakes! 

Definitely a keeper recipe. 

Basil Cuttings

Friends of mine have a plethora of basil and generously shared a few clusters with me. I did plant basil seeds hoping to add to the few garden survivors, but they take so long to sprout! Maybe cuttings will root faster? 

The internet says to make a fresh cut right below a set of leaf nodes, and then pinch back the leaves. New roots will come from that part of the stem.

Keep it in water and roots will form in one to two weeks. I'm bummed it's not quicker, but I think it will still result in a bigger plant than my seeds. 

The race is on!