It's Pinterest's Fault

I remember a time when I told a friend, "I don't have time to add another thing to my list."  This was my response to her question about why I had not joined Pinterest.  I caved and joined and sold my soul to the virtual pinboard.  I recently joked to a friend that if I could knit as quickly as I pinned, I would be AMAZING!  I live in a small house, so Pinterest is a hoarder's dream tucked away in cyberspace.  It doesn't clutter my house with pages torn from magazines never to be looked at again, until I decide to get rid of the clutter in my house.  It feeds my OCD need for organization.  Pre-Pinterest, I would see an idea and think, "I want to do that."  Then I would forget it as soon as I saw the next clever idea.  Much to the chagrin of Nate, the ideas I've pinned have stuck, and I've actually done some of them.  One day, he was loading a pallet into the bed of his truck, and he said a co-worker just looked at him and asked, "Pinterest?"  Nate said he just nodded and threw the pallet into the bed.

A few months ago Nate built a new rabbitry for me.  I know, he just built one for me a year ago, but it didn't work for several reasons.  I hated the cage over cage set-up because of the poop boards, which just did not seem sanitary no matter how often I cleaned them, and the arrangement of the cages, which were either too high or too low for me to reach into comfortably.  Plus the height of the lower cages made cleaning beneath them difficult.  The old rabbitry is now being used for storage, which I desparately needed, so no great loss with some small gain.  I love my new rabbitry, and the cages hang so the poop and urine fall straight to the ground, and I can adjust them to a height that works for me. 

I've composted for years, but I've never had a great system.  One day, I was trolling Pinterest and I came across the idea of building compost bins under the rabbit cages.  Compost bins under my rabbit cages?  You don't say?  I do say, and I did!  Operation Compost Bins has been in full force and effect the past two weekends.  The backs and sides are 1/2" hardware cloth and the fronts are boards that fall into the slot with screws in each board to keep it slightly apart from the board below it.  The boards can be stacked close to the bottoms of the cages.  The chickens are already checking it out.  (You can click on any photo for a larger view.)

Another idea I recently found is growing celery from the cut base.  I never buy celery because I don't use much of it, and tf always goes bad before I can use it all.  Well, what do you think appeared in the compost box I get each week from the grocery store?  You got it, celery.  It was pretty limp and old, but I thought what the heck.  After about a week of sitting in a tray of water in the greenhouse, both pieces started growing from the center, and I potted them this weekend.

And, the next time Nate gives me the look when I broach a new project to him, I'm going to say, "It's Pinterest's fault."

Happy homesteading,

Candace

A Day at Home

While the weather here is still in the 90s, I can feel a change in the air.  The temperatures are more tolerable in the mornings and evenings, and the heat index is not as extreme during the day.  At least it seems that way to me.  The humidity has been unreal with afternoon thunderstorms threatening daily but no rain.  The afternoon clouds have been a nuisance because I've been wanting to use my solar oven more than I have.  If the sun goes behind the clouds, I can forget keeping the oven above 200 degrees.  Plus, I want to be home to monitor it since I'm not an expert user.  Today the sky looked fairly cloudless, so at lunchtime I took a chance and put some vegetable chowder in the oven to simmer.  The oven got up to 300 degrees at its hottest, and since this is the first time I've cooked a meal in the oven, I put a thermometer probe into the soup pot to monitor the temperature.  The soup rose to 200 degrees and maintained between 190 and 200 for about 3 hours.  That should be closely equivalent to a slow cooker on low.  After about 3 hours, the clouds rolled in and the oven temp started to drop.  Not wanting to risk unsafe conditions, I took the soup out and all the veggies were done.  I still need to finish it with milk and cheese, but I think I'll have to do that on the stove top since it's pretty cloudy now.  At least the bulk of the meal was cooked by solar energy.

Today, I also started planning my fall garden and in anticipation of some seed starting, I cleaned out the greenhouse, which has been ignored since spring.  I'm not adept at succession planting yet, so I haven't really done much in the area of seed starting this summer.  If I didn't work, maybe I would get better, but there are only so many hours in a day.  I also did some general garden bed maintenance by getting rid of some plants that are not really producing to make room for new ones.

On my way out to the greenhouse, I found this:

   













This is my lazy form of composting, and I found Thelma and Louise going to town on the bugs and worms today.  These are two large trashcans with holes drilled in the bottom edge for drainage and the top for aeration when the lids are closed.  I just keep dumping yard and kitchen waste into them and turn the top layer with a pitchfork once a week.  Eventually one fills, and I start in the other one.  It works for me.  The chickens did a great job of turning it for me today, and to them it was like a buffet.

I have some big plans for the fall, so stay tuned!

Happy homesteading,

Candace