What the...?

Have you ever seen anything like this?  We found it in our back yard earlier this month, right after that freak snow on May 2.

It's dandelions...a dozen or so...but all the stems were conjoined. 

One of the strangest things I've seen since the circus came to town when I was a kid.

Simple Soap

I just wanted to show off my latest batch of homemade soap that I made yesterday.  These are actually shampoo bars, but the difference is in the ingredients, not the method of making them.

This is my first batch of hot-process soap.  It was made in a Crock Pot and only took about 90 minutes, including clean-up.

In the past I've always made cold-process soaps.  There are advantages to each method, but in terms of curing time, hot-process wins hands down.  While still soft, it can be used the day after it is made, as opposed to several weeks of curing time with the cold-process version.

Because it was my first time, I didn't try to take any photos as I made it.  I plan to make another batch this weekend and will try to enlist Shane's help so that I can write a tutorial with pictures.  Stay tuned for that.

Ready, Set, Garden!

Gardening has begun at Haphazard Homestead!

I now have a new printer and have begun using the garden planner I purchased earlier this year.  I have mapped out our garden on grid paper, but I also like mapping it on an aerial photo (this one's from Google Earth) and pasting it into a drawing program to add the ground features.  It just gives us a more realistic perspective, I think.  All the white boxes or lines are our planting areas, both raised and in-ground beds.  If they aren't labeled, they are still empty.  It should also go without saying that the beds are absolutely not-to-scale.

Shane and I have been simultaneously planning on paper and planting in soil.  So far, we have planted a largish potato patch, two new gooseberry bushes, as well as transplanting about 75 strawberry plants to a new pyramid.

While I'll try not to neglect the blog entirely, you can expect that posting will be more erratic for a while. I apologize in advance for absences that are sure to happen, and will post if/when spare moments and inspiration coincide.

Dehydrating Potatoes

My friend Melinda and her husband gave us a boatload of potatoes recently, and I've been slowly working them up.  Some will be chitted and planted in our garden, some canned, and some dehydrated, and of course some eaten fresh.

This week I've been dehydrating.  The process takes a little time, but isn't difficult.  I learned the basics from this post at Hickery Holler.

First I scrubbed and peeled about five pounds of potatoes.  I sliced them into a bath of about three quarts cold water and 3/4 teaspoon of citric acid.  This will help keep them from turning brown or grey from oxidation.  I am pretty fast with a knife, so that's how I cut mine, but you could use a food processor or mandolin.

As I was slicing them, I was also heating a large pot of water to a full boil.  In batches, I blanched the sliced potatoes in the boiling water for four minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, I removed the slices from the boiling water and returned them to the cool water and citric acid bath.  I made a new bath each time, using 1/4 teaspoon citric acid to each quart of cold water, because the water needs to be cold to stop the blanching process.

I then drained the slices and placed them in a single layer on the trays of our dehydrator.

I would like to one day have an Excalibur dehydrator, but for now we have a basic Ronco with ten round trays.  The five pounds of potatoes filled all ten trays perfectly.

I set the dehydrator on high (in this case, that means heat AND fan), and rotated the bottom tray to the top each hour.  Rotation isn't strictly necessary, but I feel it speeds up and evens the drying.  All of the slices were dry after eight hours.  Had they been sliced uniformly thin, they may have dried mopre quickly.

Five pounds of dehydrated potato slices fit perfectly into two quart canning jars.  I have ordered some oxygen absorbing packets and will put a couple in each jar to seal them.  Properly stored, these potatoes could be kept safely for years.

The next, I decided to make dehydrated hash browns.  I used the same basic process as above:  Wash, peel, shred with food processor, soak in citric acid bath for a few minutes, blanch for four minutes, shock in another citric acid bath.  I added a couple of steps by rinsing the shreds with cold water to remove some of the starch and wringing them in a clean cloth napkin to squeeze out most of the water.  Then I spread them on the dehydrator trays. 

Some of the shreds fell through the mesh of the trays, but that was really no worry, as the heating element is enclosed and doesn't get hot enough to burn food anyway. There are small-mesh mats available for the trays that would keep this from happening, and would also make clean-up easier for other (stickier) foods, so I may end up getting those in the future.

With shreds, five pounds filled up seven trays, which tells me I probably could've made the layers thinner in each tray so they would dry more quickly.  In the end, they filled two quart jars after six hours of drying time.

Overall, this was an easy way to preserve our potato bounty, and one that's a space-saver, too.  I'm looking forward to trying recipes made with these potatoes, and I'll be sure to post them when I do.

February Resolution Review

Since Shane will be home and our weekend will begin tomorrow, and since the last day of February is today, I decided to write my Friday post today.

I set some goals at the beginning of the year, so I thought I'd give a quick monthly update on my progress in February. 


Reading: 

• Goal - 18 Books and more than a year of Mother Earth News and Hobby Farm Home back issues (and yes, I've let the subscriptions to those magazines expire).
• February Progress - Read 2 books (5 of 18 total), and 5 of the  magazines (6 of 38 total). 

The books I read were:

• Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
• During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase

Crafting:

• Goal - 12 completed projects, preferably one a month, with one being a quilted item and another being knit socks.
• February Progress - Started and completed one toe-up knitted socks. ( 1.5 of 12 total)

I taught myself to crochet around the age of 12 or 13.  A few years later, I taught myself to knit.  I don't consider myself an accomplished knitter, and think it's more difficult than crocheting, but I usually do alright.  These socks were probably the most challenging knitting project I've tackled.  The work itself is not difficult, but just finding a pattern I could make sense of took days.  I made irreparable mistakes causing me to start over several times, but with each re-do, the quality improved.  A few nights ago I was determined to finish the sock, but come 2:00 a.m. when the yarn was about to run out, I completely forgot to consider that I needed a stretchy bind-off.  I bound off in a traditional way and couldn't get the thing over my foot.  So, I had to rework that, and now it might be too stretchy, but at least I'll be able to wear it (and learned a stretchy bind-off to boot!).

The sock isn't without flaws, by far, but it will be wearable, and I'm looking forward to finishing the pair.  What's more, now that I have a clue what I'm doing, I'll probably make more socks in the future.

My first sock!  It's in Paton Kroy washable wool
sock yarn; the colorway is Clover Colors.

Gardening: 

• Goal - Organized planning, leading to an organized garden.
• February Progress - Our printer quit working and I haven't replaced it yet, so I haven't been able to use the garden planning downloads I bought.  However, I've been planning all the same.  I know what we will be planting, in approximate quantities, and have ordered seeds.

Diet/Nutrition:

• Goal - To switch over to less harmful types of sweeteners and/or reduce sugars in our foods.  To grow more of our food in our backyard.
• February Progress - I have to admit that I haven't made any progress toward finding less harmful sweeteners since last month.

In other nutrition news, I've started making kombucha tea and tibicos soda (aka, water kefir) again after letting both go dormant for a few months at the end of last year.  Since re-establishing the habit of drinking a cup of one or the other -- or both -- daily again, I've felt a noticeable improvement in the way I feel.  To me, they are like safer, more natural energy drink and they are good for your gut.  IMO, they taste good, too.


Fitness:

• Goal - To join a local yoga class better flexibility, balance and overall health.
• February Progress - I have not found a different yoga class to join and to be honest, haven't given it much thought.

Finances:

• Goal - To pay off our RV.
• February Progress - A little.  When we first bought the RV, I padded our first two monthly payment by about $90, rounding it to the next hundred dollar amount.  For the next five months, though, I wasn't comfortable doing that.  We are in a position now that I can start paying extra again each month and even start catching up on the five months when I wasn't able to pay extra.  Every little bit helps.

Garden Planning - Step 2 - Buying Seed

Knowing how much to plant each year is the hardest step in garden planning, I think.  As far as I can tell, no matter how I choose to calculate amounts, I'm going to get them wrong. That said, I still think it's better to work on this step and at least have an idea, rather than to just forge ahead blindly.  After all, neither a truckload of zucchini nor a spoonful of peas will do me much good.

I started out by taking my initial list from Step 1 and considering how much we eat of each.  This isn't an exact science, and some calculations will be less brain twisting easier than others. 

One way to figure amounts is to determine how many times a week your family eats a vegetable, multiply that by the number of people in your family, then by 52 weeks a year to determine your annual consumption in servings.  It's easy enough to Google to find out how many servings are in a pound of that particular vegetable, but if you can find even two websites that remotely agree on how many pounds per plant that vegetable will yield, please send them to me, because I couldn't find them.

Another way to plan is to remember how much you planted last year.  Every year we plant about 8 square feet of lettuce.  We don't plant it in rows, we just broadcast the seeds.  Every year I'm certain it won't be enough to satisfy those early spring cravings for fresh salads.  Every year it ends up being too much and bolting and/or getting bitter before we can eat it all.  Every year the excess becomes cheap filler for the compost pile.  In an odd way, this works for us, so why fix what isn't broken?

So this is how I proceeded, best-guessing my way through the roster of things we'd like to grow, and ultimately moving a few more things off the planting list and onto the purchasing list.  Once this list was finalized, Shane and I compared it with the seeds we already have on hand and know are good, then we ordered the rest. 

At this point in our gardening experience, I don't feel qualified to recommend specific varieties or seed sources. I will tell you that most of the seeds we already have on hand came from Hometown Seeds in a promo pack I received a few years ago.  Our seed potatoes were gifted to us (thanks, Melinda!).  We ordered the rest of what we needed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, both because they sell non-GMO seeds and because they are located in our home state.  We have just a few things left to buy; we'll probably get those from local nurseries.  You'll have to do your own research and make the decisions that are best for your family.

Next up...I plan the layout of the garden while I wait for the snow to melt.

Chickens On The Table - Chickens Off The Table

On the table...

The 30-Year Old Cooking Virgin's Skillet Basil Cream Chicken on Valentine's Day, Paula Deen's Southern Fried Chicken on Friday, and Deep South Dish's Chicken and Dumpling Bake Casserole on Sunday.

Paula's recipe...my kitchen...

Off the table...

The idea of keeping laying hens in our backyard.  We've been thinking about it for three years and keep putting it off, mostly because Shane has fairly frequent out-of-town work.  I'm just not willing to make a chicken commitment at this time without him home steadily.  Maybe someday, but not right now. 

Garden Planning - Step 1 - Knowing What You Eat

I've mentioned before that I bought a neat-o perpetual garden planner download from Northwest Edible Life, and have all intentions of using it this year, but our printer pooped out last week.  Until I can find a replacement printer for cheap or find time to take the file to be printed out at a printer-outer shop, I'm stuck with old-school pencil and paper.

I had to do a little research to remember, but I've determined that this will be our fifth season in the garden.  In the past, we've grown a little of this, a little of that, and whatever sounded interesting.  It's a fun way to garden, and a great way to learn what you like, don't like, can grow well, or can't grow at all.

This year, though, we're approaching gardening a little differently.  There will still be plenty of variety and a bit of novelty, but we're really going to focus on growing what we eat most.

With that in mind, the first step in this year's plan was to write down everything I could think of that we eat that is plant-based.  From tomatoes to dry beans to rice to tea to pineapple.  I used a seed catalog or two to help me remember everything and I wrote down things I know we can't grow simply because they might jog my memory about things we can grow here.

Then I went through and crossed off anything that we can't grow in our area (things like citrus, tropicals, coffee) and anything we don't have room to grow (grains, mostly) and things I'm just not ready to try yet (grapes, mushrooms).

Once that was done, I considered our family demand.  How often do we eat these foods?

There are several vegetables, fruits, and berries that we eat often and grow well for us.  Because these are on our menu several times a week all year round, these will be the biggest money-savers and nutrition-givers.  They will stay on the list.  Frequently-used herbs also stay at the top of the list.  For some reason I'm not very successfully at growing herbs, but if I can get successful, then cha-ching!  Big savings!

Several crops will grow well for us, but we don't eat them as often.  They'll be planted if we can work them in, or dropped without regret if we can't. 

Some foods are better for us to purchase, either because we don't eat that much of them, we have tried growing them before with little or no luck, we know they won't grow here at all (coconuts, anyone?), or we don't have room to grow them even though they will grow here (wheat is good example).  Unless we just want to try a couple of these crops for the fun of it, they won't make the cut.

The end result should be a fairly accurate list (below) of what we'll be planting this year.  Your list will vary depending on your appetite, gardening zone, skill level and space limitations.


Already-Established Perennials:
Asparagus
Rhubarb
Strawberries
Blackberries
Elderberries
Raspberries
Sunchokes

Definitely Will Plant:
Green beans
Lettuce, variety
Onions, bulbing
Garlic
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Dry beans
Carrots
Beets
Zucchini or other summer squashes
Onions, green (scallions)
Spinach
Swiss chard
Bell peppers
Cucumbers
Radishes
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil
Thyme
Oregano
Cumin

Will Plant If It Works Out:
Sweet Corn
Peas (shell-out and snow varieties)
Kohlrabi
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Celery
Eggplant
Cabbage
Napa cabbage
Collard greens
Jalapeno peppers
Winter squash (butternut, acorn)
Ground cherries
Watermelon
Okra
Sunflowers
Ginger
Summer savory
Sesame (for seeds)
Gooseberry bush(es)
Peach tree(s)

Be prepared.  Next week, we start talking numbers.

Spring Cleaning

The blog has been heavy on recipes lately.  That's because, when I'm busy, they seem to be the easiest things for me to post.

And busy I've been!  I've been spring cleaning.  I started in right after Christmas, tackling one room at a time, beginning with the living room as we were taking the tree down and putting away decorations.

From there I moved to the master bedroom, then to Kat's room, the bathroom and hallway, the kitchen (two full days on that one), and finally the computer/craft room.  Yep, it's a small house, but we have LOTS of stuff.  Things were cleaned and then organized, or sorted to be donated or sold in a garage sale we plan to have in a couple of months.  Walls were wiped down, ceiling fans were washed or dusted, windows and blinds were cleaned, and floors were scrubbed.  It wasn't a non-stop cleaning marathon, though.  Some rooms only took a few hours, but they were spread out over a week.

My really clean kitchen, for the five whole minutes it stayed that way.

Shane helped a lot with the living room and our bedroom, and he spot cleaned the carpeting.  Kat helped me with her own room, but the rest of the house was up to me.  That was my choice, though, so I'm not complaining.

There is still a lot to do around here (garage, basement, shed all come to mind), but it's so nice to have the main living areas really clean.  It's almost like a fresh start, which is just what spring cleaning is meant to be, I think.

And with cleaning out of the of the way, full-blown garden planning is on!  I hope to have more to say about that the next time I come up for air.

Shedding the "All or Nothing" Mentality

I think a lot of us who aspire to the frugal lifestyle sometimes get caught up in the idea that our efforts have to be all or nothing.

This applies equally to those of us who are trying to eat "clean" and keep our homes and gardens as chemical-free as possible. We begin to think that anything less than perfection is a compromise. We let perfect get in the way of good, and best get in the way of better.

Well, let me tell you, I'm not perfect, you aren't perfect, and neither is anyone else.

• So far this month, I've baked several loaves of homemade bread, ground my own wheat, and even made homemade flour tortillas and saltine crackers.  But I've also bought bread, tortillas, and crackers, and used store-bought white flour.
  
• I've dried clothes on my drying racks, but I've also used my dryer.
  
• I bought farm eggs and local honey, but I forgot my jugs when I went for raw milk and rather than drive back out to the farm, I bought big-dairy milk at the store.
  
• I try to consolidate errands as much as I can to save gas, but I warm the truck up on cold mornings.
  
• We harvest rainwater for our gardens to conserve water and save money, but I take a deep, hot bath whenever I want one.
  
• We make our own bath soap, laundry soap and toothpaste, but still use Dawn for dishes and commercial deodorant (for now, anyway).

We have given up striving for best and perfect.  But we do try to make better choices and execute better practices, and will continue to try to improve.  We don't let the idea of perfection stop us in our tracks.

That's good enough for us.

Grinding Away

I know I haven't been around much.  Here's why:


- Between Thursday of last week and yesterday, we processed and froze 84 pounds of venison.

- We killed our meat grinder.

- I made Shane a cake for his birthday, which was yesterday.  I used this recipe, but made some changes to include cocoa and little molasses.

- I set up some Spicy Cranberry Relish to lacto-ferment.  It should be done by Thursday.

- I made Make-Ahead Gravy for Thursday's feast.

- After using what I needed for the gravy, I canned 4 pints of perpetual chicken bone broth.

- I zested and juiced some lemons and limes for future recipes.

- I'm making these French fries to go with tonight's supper.  I'm trying the twice-fried or double-fried method this time.  These are between fryings.  If you are interested, do a Google search.  There are WAY too many results to link just one.

- I managed to work in a little bit of laundry and housework between other jobs.

- Somehow, I managed to find time to plan meals until the end of the year.  Mostly just the main dishes, but it's a good starting point for more busy days ahead.

- And just for fun, we had dinner with some friends on Saturday evening.


I'm on a roll!  If you don't hear from me by Black Friday, send a search party.

Beautiful Weekend for Heritage Days

Shane ended up having to work on Saturday, but Kat and I decided to go to Warsaw Heritage Days without him.  This is the first time in many years (15?...20?) that I've gone, despite it being in my hometown of Warsaw, MO.  The festival, which began in 1981, is a celebration of the pioneering forefathers of the area's Kaysinger Bluff, now the site of the Harry S. Truman Visitor Center at Truman Lake.

The weather was beautiful and we had so much fun, eventually catching up with one of my sisters and her husband before going to visit my dad for a while.

I took lots of pictures of our day.  Here are few -- to see the rest click HERE or on the Heritage Days tab at the top of the page.

It's Alive!

Garden season isn't quite over yet.  This is what we picked from our garden last night.  Two big bowls of green beans (we covered them during our recent frosts), several small acorn squash and a custard cup full of strawberries.

Yes, I did say strawberries.

They're an ever-bearing variety and they've been doing this all summer except for a short while during the hottest, most dry weeks.

We even had 2-3 raspberries last night, but they last long enough to make it into the photo.

Still in the garden are butternut squash, possibly a few more green beans, some Swiss chard and some collard greens.  Everything else has been "put to bed", so to speak.

Are your gardening days over for the season, or do you still have a few plants that are producing?

How to Ripen Green Tomatoes in Your Basement

Some of last year's tomatoes; taken October 2011.
A couple dozen of these look ready to move to the kitchen.

Our first frost was last weekend, so we picked all the tomatoes we could find on our vines, whether they were ripe or not.   We didn't have nearly as many greenies as we did last year, but there were still a couple hundred, I guess. 

I don't want that many sitting around on my kitchen table or in my kitchen window waiting to turn red, so I set up the seed starter rack (mini greenhouse) in the basement.  Any cool dark place, like a garage or cellar, will do.  I left off the see-thru plastic cover and put a layer of cardboard on the shelves to keep the really small tomatoes from falling though (paper would work, too).  I placed all the green tomatoes on the shelves and covered the entire rack with plastic.  In our case, we had some very large white plastic bags used to dispose of natural Christmas trees.  You could use large trash bags, tarps or whatever you have on hand.  Cloth sheets will work, but not as well as plastic.  The plastic covering not only blocks out direct sunlight, but also traps in gasses that help the tomatoes get ripe.

Every couple of days, I will go down to the basement and check for tomatoes that are turning red.  Once they have a decent tint (about half-ripe) I'll gather those and bring them upstairs to sit on the table to ripen in the sunlight.  I don't mind a few tomatoes at a time sitting around in my kitchen. 

You're mileage may vary, but we've found that this method works better than any other for us.  They'll  never taste as good as if they had ripened on the vine, but they are still so much better tasting than store-bought tomatoes. 

Canning Potatoes

We harvested about 20 pounds of potatoes this year.  That's not a great yield, but it was better than any previous year, so we were happy about it.  We ate some of them right away, but I needed to do something with the rest before they started going bad.  My options were eat them (too many), make mashed potatoes and freeze them (I have success with this, but no room in the freezer right now), dehydrate them or can them.  I decided on canning just because I wanted to try them.

I remember canned potatoes, usually with a bland white gravy, from elementary school lunches and just knew that home-canned potatoes would taste better.  And believe me, they do!  One of my jars failed to seal, so we had them for supper that night.  I just mashed them with a fork, added a little butter and garlic powder, and they were delicious.

They are easy to can, too.  Because they are a low-acid food, the must be pressure canned, but the method is simple.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the forethought to take photos of the process, but here's what you do.

Clean fresh potatoes well and peel if desired.  I didn't peel them because most of the skins scrubbed off as I was washing them.  Cut away any deep eyes and/or bad spots.

Cut potatoes into chunks about 1-1/2" square.  Small potatoes can be left whole or just cut in half.

Place potatoes in clean cold water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium and boil gently for 5 to 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, have clean, hot canning jars at the ready.  I don't sterilize jars, but I do run them through the dishwasher to make sure they are clean and hot.

Once potatoes have cooked, not until tender but just long enough to be heated through, drain them and spoon the hot potatoes into the hot jars.  Add a teaspoon of canning salt to each quart jar (1/2 teaspoon to pint jars) and then fill each jar with clean boiling water, leaving 1 inch of head space.  Use a knife or spatula to remove any air bubbles.

Apply clean, new lids and secure with rings until fingertip tight.

Process in a pressure canner at 10 pounds of pressure for 40 minutes for quarts or 35 minutes for pints.  Always follow the manufacturer's instructions for your canner, the Ball Blue Book, or the advice of your local university extension office to ensure safe canning practices.

Stumped

I'm busy sewing today, but here's something that's on my mind -- and has been on my mind before, because it's happened several times.

I'll be in a conversation with a friend or acquaintance and talk will turn to things like kids, our families and eventually, the fact that I am a stay-at-home wife and grandma.  The other person will ask if I enjoy staying home, and when I say that I do, they say, "Well, you have lots of things to keep you busy."  Or, "you have things to do at home."

The emphasis is always on the word you.  I just don't know what to make of comments like those.

Do I say, "Hey, thanks for noticing all the projects we have going on at home.  Isn't it great that we're so industrious? Wouldn't you like to be just like us?"

Or do I say, "Oh, I see what you're saying.  You're just a lazy slob who's happy to never get off the couch and do anything productive." 

Neither really seems like the right thing to say.  I'm stumped.  I usually just grunt or mumble something in their general direction and move on.

What do you think?  Has anyone ever said something like this to you?  How would you, or did you, respond if they did?

Busy

We've been busy.  I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.

Bi-Monthly Book Look - January/February

I thought I'd take a look at the books I read in January and February of this year.  Maybe you'll find something here you like.

I've divided them into non-fiction and fiction.  Beyond that, they are in the order they were read.

Non-Fiction

Making It - Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
My rating: 5 of 5.  This is a great book of formulas, recipes and instructions for making homemade food, drinks, cleaners and useful objects.  I liked this book well enough that I bought a copy for myself.

Fed Up With Lunch - The School Lunch Project - Mrs. Q
My rating: 3 of 5.  A Chicago-land teacher decides to eat her school's hot lunch every day for a year, and lived to tell about it.  While interesting, the book offers little to solve the problem of the declining quality of school lunches.

Made By Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself - Mark Frauenfelder
My rating: 4 out of 5.  This is one man's account of his decision to delve into the world of "makers".  Not only does he describe his own experiences, but he discusses the philosphies behind what he calls the "DIY Movement" and the value of making mistakes.  It was a fun read and as someone who has always been a do-it-yourselfer  to some extent or another (and who doesn't think of this as a "movement" at all),  it was interesting to see the processes of DIY projects from the point of view of someone who wasn't naturally called to work with his hands.


Fiction

The Heart Specialist - Claire Holden Rothman
My rating: 4 out of 5.  Historical novel about one of Canada's first female physicians.

Gone For Good - Mark Childress
My rating: 3.5 out of 5.  A 1970s rock star finds himself plane-wrecked on a tropical island, where other inhabitants include Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart and other famous dead folks.

11/22/63 - Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5.  What if you could travel back in time and prevent JFK's assassination?  That would be a good thing.  Or would it?

I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive - Steve Earle
My rating: 5 of 5.  Alt-country music fans will recognize Steve Earle as a singer/songwriter; I think he does an impressive job with his first novel.  Imagine being a washed up heroin-junkie physician living with the ghost of Hank Williams.  What would it take to make you go clean?  (Coincidentally, this was the third novel in a row that included JFK among their casts of characters.  What are the chances?)

Catching The Rain

Look! A Saturday post! This won't happen often, but I wanted to post about our rain catchment set-up so I could link it to a thread on Facebook. This is picked up verbatim from my old blog, from March 31, 2010. Enjoy!

Our backyard still needs a little spring cleanup, but I thought I'd go ahead and post about our rain gathering system, since gardening season is beginning.

We first got the idea for using these translucent white food grade tanks for our rain water when we were stalking my bloggy friend Sharon's house one evening.  She and her husband Kevin have similar tanks.  Basically, we've diverted all rain that falls on the house into the top tank, which sits on the house's original back stoop.  When it's full, we empty it into the lower tank and let the top tank fill again.  While we will use water from either tank, we usually will draw from the top tank if possible, because gravity makes the water flow faster.  Eventually we may get a pump for the lower tank to solve the flow issue.

At first, we blocked the downspouts on the other end of the house, but found that the tanks were getting full while the gutters were overflowing, so Shane opened the other end up again.  Currently, we aren't collecting rain on that end, but it's definitely an option for us in the future.

We found the tanks, which hold 275 gallons each, on craigslist; we paid $130 for both.  We've seen them both cheaper and more expensive since then.  Shane recalls that he had to buy some of the downspout material, some brackets and a couple of hose fittings for the spigots were also purchased.  The total cost for the entire setup was about $175.

What I do know is that we saved a bundle on water last summer.  We planted out in April, before we bought the rain tanks, and our first billing after planting was 50% more than our average!  After we bought the tanks, our bills went back down to average for the rest of the season.  We believe the money we saved in the first season recovered most of the cost; soon we'll be seeing nothing but savings from our rain barrels.

Granted, each season will be different and the savings will fluctuate.  When there is a lot of rain, we collect a lot of water, but we don't need to use as much of what we collect.  During a dryer season, we'll collect less, but will use more (or all) of what we collect.   Still, any savings is a good savings, both for our budget and for the environment.

Exhausting Weekend, But In A Good Way

Thanks to rain on Friday, Shane had another three-day weekend.  He spent part of his day off in the doctor's office, though, getting meds for a sinus infection he'd been fighting all week. 

He was already feeling a lot better by Saturday morning, so out we went.  First to drop Kat at her mom's for the weekend, then to Lowe's to pick up a special dryer vent, to a thrift store to drop off a mountain of donations that were in the back of the van, and to the credit union to make a payment on our camper in person because they forgot to include a February ticket in our payment book. 

That was followed by an hour-long drive to pick up an almost new tiller from someone who'd listed it on craigslist (the same new one at Lowe's was more than twice as expensive!), followed by a stop to see Shane's dad and step-mom, install the dryer vent we'd bought earlier, and to have lunch with them.

After leaving the in-laws' house, we went to a health food store for some soap making oils, went to a freight salvage store just for fun, stopped at Sam's Club to get a few things I'd missed last time I was there, and we finally ended our day by going to a Chinese-and-sushi buffet before heading home.

We were out for 12 hours straight, and I barely stayed awake until 10:00.

On Sunday, I put in my monthly volunteer hours at the recycling bins.  Our city is getting 24/7 recycling bins soon, instead of the one-weekend-a-month bins we have now.  That means recycling will be easier for everyone here and no one will have to monitor bins anymore.

It was too muddy for Shane to work outside, so we worked together nearly all day making two small batches of bath soap bars, one batch of shampoo bars, and a batch of solid lotion bars.  No pics of any of it yet, but I'll probably take some as the goodies come out of the molds.

We rebottled three batches of kombucha, some with fun flavor combinations, and we got two new batches started.  We also used our juicer to make some orange and pineapple juices. 

When Kat came home around 5:30 , we made some roast beef wraps with lots of veggies (sub-shop style) and watched a couple of kids' shows on TV with her.  By the time she went to bed we were wiped out!  We were in bed with our books by 9:00 and were asleep before 10:00.

That's two good weekends in a row for us.  We got a lot accomplished and had some fun doing it.

How was your weekend?