Category: home and garden

Don’t cook in the dark

I think that’s one of the sub-rules under the major rule “Don’t let an idiot cook a $200 egg.” The major rule includes such wisdom because you can’t see if the butter has browned, or burnt. It also recommends against giving your toddler an easy to open bottle of bubbles, and something about having a diaper on. Needless to say, it was didn’t taste quite like the $200 I expected, but it’s unclear if that is because of my distracted, clumsy cooking, or because I adulterated the mixture with 2 other free eggs.

Don’t get me wrong, they were still good, though ended up as scrambled instead of fried and on a sandwich with fresh lettuce, tomato and cheese. But it was still quite good. Even Ella ate all of hers.

Michelle made breakfast with the third free egg (or $50 egg if we decide to reduce the loss on the first 3) and it looked much better than mine, but I trust the difference was all in lighting. And maybe years of successful egg work.

Clipped

Last night I finally clipped Layla and Boots’s wings. Clipping their wings actually means you trim the ends of the primary flight feathers, the long ones at the end. You only clip on one sides so they don’t have adequate balance to fly.

I’ve been putting it off for some time, simply because I didn’t want to clip until it was necessary. I’ve read about it several times, even watched some YouTube videos. Well, it took less than a minute for each chicken. Most of the time was spent just picking them up and getting them comfortable. The clipping took only a few seconds, then they were off to eat some scratch.

Hopefully that’ll help keep poop off of everything. And flies.

Soldier Fly Larvae

Earlier this year my parents discovered a hatch of larvae in their compost bin. They asked me if I knew what they were, but I’d not seen that many of the little burrowers before. My mom called the county extension office and found out they were harmless but I don’t recall what the little dudes were.

As it turns out, the little grubs were Soldier Fly maggots, and they’re excellent vermicomposters. If we’d thought of it, we could have simply given some to the chickens as well.

Alan is going to give me a handful of red worms and soldier fly maggots to seed my compost bin. I’m less interested in keeping compost for gardening, but I’d like to keep food scraps out of the waste stream. The chickens aren’t very reliable for eating scraps either. It’s like pulling beaks to get them to eat lettuce, though they do seem to enjoy the star anise that I can’t get rid of from the various flower beds.

Feline surprise

As of Friday night, I’d caught all but one of the escaped mice again. I moved them from the large bin in to a 5 gallon bucket and placed a screen and weight over it while I finished up evening chores and dinner. Then, I forgot about them. I planned for this possibility by leaving a handful of the corn scratch in the bottom of the bucket, so they were at least going to eat well.

When I went out to get the bucket in the morning, the lid had been disturbed and all 5 mice were gone. The bucket was still standing, so it seems that nature took its course. I suspect the gray cat that I keep shooing away found the bucket, and just as the mice who found the scratch in a bucket, couldn’t resist the easy meal.

Mice

Maybe it’s because Tigger has been gone for nearly a year, or maybe it’s the big bag of chicken feed in the garage, but overnight I caught 10 mice. By catch, I mean they jumped in to the bin that the feed was in then couldn’t get out. And by 10, I mean 6 mice last night and 4 today.

Last night, I put all the mice in a 5 gallon bucket and walked them over to the schoolyard, figuring they’d either end up as owl prey, cat prey, or find a new home in the blackberry bushes. One got away, but I know where he’ll be next.

Today, when I put the mice into the bucket, I got distracted and tried to fix my dying bluetooth keyboard. While trying to get the hardware diagnostic DVD out of the box in the garage, I knocked over a ladder that knocked over the bucket. All 5 mice got a new lease on life. I’m fairly certain I’ll catch all 5, plus last night’s escapee overnight. They’d better get in the bucket before I decide to set kill traps.

Radon Free… mostly

We got our radon test back over the weekend and our current radon level is less than 0.4 pC/L, well below the 4 pC/L that the EPA’s action level. That’s great news for us since we dropped a bit of money on radon mitigation, and it means we can breathe deeply downstairs now. Basement is almost done too. More pictures soon, I swear.

When can I eat raw tomatoes again?

The CDC has a list of safe tomatoes available. Oregon is absent from the list. My garden isn’t producing tomatoes yet, and salads are kind of boring. Plus, today is the Interstate Farmer’s Market, and I’d like to make some caprese salad. When do we get the OK? Is it safe to get locally grown toms?

I’ve had salmonella before, and I’m quite wary of having it again. Last time my appendix was taken out because the pain I had was symptomatic of appendicitis. After it was removed and I wasn’t any better, it was discovered that I had salmonella. Imagine a moose standing on one hoof on your stomach. That’s what it felt like.