Chickens and Snow

Chickens and snow don’t mix.

This is our coop.  It is one of those aluminum storage buildings that we retrofitted into a coop.  It works well.

Here are our chickens and guineas being reluctant to enter out into snow land.  They waited until it was all melted before venturing out.

This is Maybe, our Dominique rooster.  He is quite the character and loves to be outside the pen and coop.  Evidently, he doesn’t care about the snow being cold on his feet.

Even the guineas didn’t want to get out in the snow.  Silly birds!

What We’ve Been Up To

It’s been forever since I’ve even been to my own website, much less put anything on it!  Sorry, life just gets in the way and I have to make time for other things.  I am going to try and make time to update more often.  But, in the mean time, this is some of the things that we have been up to.

I have been busy getting rid of this.

Paper clutter!

All this paper came from our HUGE 4 drawer file cabinet.  We recently updated our printer/scanner and I’ve been making the scanner tired   All our files have been put on our computer now, in what I call the ‘virtual file cabinet.’  Now, once I’m completely done, we can move that file cabinet beast out of our house and into somebody elses.

We have also been playing this a lot.

We got Mario Cart for our Wii while my Momma was here right after Christmas.  Even she joined in on the fun!

We had a bunch of snow in January and Big A still wanted to do this.

We cleaned out the bird houses and took this super cute picture of my son.

We’ve been getting a lot of use out of these.

It’s been so rainy and mushy around here.  The kids always are wearing their boots.  Love some boots around here.

Been reading some books.

And obviously taking pictures

I have always said this and I believe it to be true.  Our girl will be the first to visit the ER.  Man, is she fearless.

She races Bryce up to the top of the driveway and races him down.  Bryce is riding without training wheels!

These are just a few of the things that we have been up to.  What have you been up to?

7 Foods So Unsafe Even Farmers Won’t Eat Them – Planet Green

7 Foods So Unsafe Even Farmers Won’t Eat Them – Planet Green.

What Can I Do?

Since I don’t know who my readers are, I am going to cater this post to those who have no idea how to ‘step softly.’  This list is just a start to the many, many ways that you can make a difference.  I will try to blog about these individually . . . uh . . . later.

• Air dry your laundry on a clothesline

• Bake your own bread

• Buy as much organic food as you can

• Eat a vegetarian diet

• Compost all food and yard waste

• Don’t use paper anything, including paper towels, napkins, tissues and if you’re ready– toilet paper

• Use cloth everything, diapers, wipes, tissues, for cleaning, etc

• Use cloth shopping bags

• Eat local and buy local

• Grow food organically—in your own garden

• Keep your thermostat low in the winter and high in the summer

• Recycle everything, or as much as you can

• Use 100% recycled toilet paper, or cloth (see above)

• Use a DivaCup or cloth mama pads

• Use low-flow shower heads

• Use natural yard care practices

• Use a Kleen Kanteen instead of bottled water

• Take one of these to the coffee shop

• Don’t buy disposable items, or single-use items

• Look for less packaging on the things you buy

• Buy more in bulk to reduce packaging

• Store food items in glass containers.  Get rid of your plastic

• Use every side of a piece of paper before you recycle it

• Don’t get a receipt from something you purchase unless you absolutely need it

• Use homemade natural cleaners

• Decrease your amount of garbage

• Use hand dryers in public restrooms instead of paper towels

• Rinse/reuse plastic bags and aluminum foil

• Use glass jars for storing food in fridge and for bulk items

• De-clutter and donate continually.  If you buy something new, get rid of something

• Don’t buy anything new.  Shop at thrift stores

• Use all natural body care products

• Replaced your Teflon stainless steel or cast iron

• Wash only full loads of laundry and wash on cold

This is not an exhaustive list by any means.  These are just ones that I could come up with off the top of my head.  Most of these can be undertaken pretty easily.

Have You Made The Switch Yet?

Okay, so male readers (I don’t think I even have any male readers) no need to continue any further.  I’m warning you . . .

I love my Diva Cup.  My Diva what?  The Diva Cup is a soft, silicone “cup” that is a menstrual alternative to tampons and pads.  It is extremely comfortable, easy to clean and very reliable.  It saves me tons on tampons, pads and pantiliners.  It is latex, chlorine, dye, BPA, phthalate and coloring free.  Did I mention that you can wear it for 12 hours?  Yippee!

If you are looking for an alternative in menstrual products and want to make less impact on the environment–look no further!  Check out these statistics from Diva Cup’s site.

Women, on average, experience a lifetime menstruation span of 41 years (11-52). From use of disposable feminine hygiene, an estimated 12 billion sanitary pads and 7 billion tampons are dumped into the North American environment each year (1998). More than 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999. Our revolutionary, reusable product is a modern, viable alternative to disposable tampons and pads.

Most tampons and pads contain surfactants, adhesives and additives. In addition, most pads contain polyethylene plastic whose production is a pollutant. Also, dioxin, a known carcinogen, is a by-product of the bleaching process of tampons containing rayon. In landfills, many of these substances can leach into the environment (groundwater, streams and lakes) causing serious pollution and health concerns.

Before making the switch to the Diva Cup a year and a half ago, I was already using Natracare’s applicator-free tampons.  They worked great, but I wanted something different.  I wanted to stop putting my chlorine-free, certified organic, 100% cotton , plastic free tampons into the landfill.  I felt like I was making a difference–but I could do more.  I switched to the Diva Cup and haven’t looked back.

The Diva Cup leaks very little.  If it is adjusted and inserted correctly, there is NO leakage.  A lot of women don’t even use backup at all.  I do choose to occasionally use some handmade mama cloth pantiliners that I purchased off Etsy.  They are organic hemp/undyed cotton, so soft and very comfortable.

You may be thinking, “That’s gross!”  Well . . . at first it is a little messy . . . I do admit that.  There is a learning curve, but it is easy to master after a few cycles.  Don’t give up!  Also, there is no odor involved with a Diva Cup.  Supposedly the odor comes from when your period is exposed to air.  Since the Diva Cup is worn inside your body, that doesn’t happen.

Have I convinced you yet?  Are you going to make the switch?

Don’t Forget The Tiffin

For Christmas I got Chris this two-tiered tiffin from To-GoWare.  It was one of those selfish gifts that was really for me too.  If you’re not familiar with tiffin boxes, they originate in India.  We keep ours in the back of the van and when we go out to eat we bring it with us to put our leftovers in.  It even comes with a tiny little container for things like salsa and guacamole.

You ask, “so what’s wrong with Styrofoam?”  Studies show that styrene mimics estrogen in the body and can therefore disrupt normal hormone functions, possibly contributing to thyroid problems, menstrual irregularities, and other hormone-related problems, as well as breast cancer and prostate cancer. The estrogenicity of styrene is thought to be comparable to that of Bisphenol A (BPA), another potent estrogen mimic from the world of plastics.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists styrene as a possible human carcinogen, though this conclusion is primarily based on studies of workers in styrene-related chemical plants. The Vallombrosa Consensus Statement on Environmental Contaminants and Human Fertility Compromise includes styrene on its list of contaminants of possible concern, noting that even weak estrogen mimics can combine with other such chemicals to have negative effects even when the chemicals are individually present at levels that would have no impact. On the positive side, a 2005 expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Health concluded that there is negligible concern for developmental toxicity in embryos and babies.

(Source:  http://www.grinningplanet.com/2008/04-08/foam-cups-polystyrene-cups-article.htm)

So, no more styrofoam boxes (excuse me, polystyrene) for us.  Now, if I had just gotten the 3-tired one . . .

Green Thumb or Good Window

I’ve always had this thing for African Violets.  When I first went off to college one of the several plants that I took with me was an African Violet.  My Momma had never been able to keep them alive for very long, but for some reason I always had a knack for them.  And the way I took care of mine was against what all the directions say.  I would leave it sitting in water and I would water it from the top!  That’s a big no-no in the African Violet world.

After getting married I started collecting them and had gotten up to about nine before we left for our travels around the country.  One of the things that we had to farm out to our family was my plants.  And I just knew that when I came back they would all be dead.

I was mostly right.  Only two or three of my violets had survived my Momma’s house.  And they were in pretty bad shape.  But thankfully, I was able to revive the ones that weren’t deceased and bring them back to a prettier life.

I now have gotten my violet collection up to seven.  They are a lot of different colors and varieties.  I like the variegated ones and frilly-edged ones all the same.  All of them are blooming at the moment.

So, the jury is still out on whether or not I just happen to have a green thumb when it comes to African Violets or, if I have just been blessed to have good lighted windows for my violets.  Whatever the case may be African Violets are something that I love.

Seed Time

So, we got our seeds in the mail.  Yay!  We are looking forward to this years garden.  We plan to make it even bigger this year.  Some of the seeds that I got from Seed Savers Exchange, so far, are:

• Garden Huckleberry
• Early Snowball Cauliflower
• Golden Bantam Corn
• Clemson Spineless Okra
• Blacktail Mountain Watermelon
• Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry
• Scarlet Nantes Carrot
• Calabresse Broccoli
• Cilantro
• Green Tomatillo
• Dwarf Gray Sugar Pea
• Golden Zucchini Squash
• Black Beauty Zucchini Squash
• Seed Savers Lettuce Mixture
• Dr. Wyches Yellow Tomato
• Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomato
• Red Brandywine Tomato
• Trucker’s Favorite Tomato
• Black Krim Tomato
• Martino’s Roma Tomato

And I couldn’t pass up getting in some Benary’s Giant Zinnia and Prairie Black-Eyed Susan seeds.  Love, love, love me some flowers.  Especially old fashioned ones.

There are lots more vegetables that we want to plant, but we will just get a few plants of each of those, such as different varieties of peppers and cherry tomatoes.  I also want to get more varieties of regular tomato seeds as well.  Six varieties just isn’t enough!  Every year we’ve also had volunteer cantaloupe pop up everywhere and I look forward to those too.  Our neighbor, who we share the garden with, is getting strawberries, sweet potatoes, pole beans and a host of other veggies as well.  I sure hope that we can keep up!