The other day the wind picked up and broke a few panels on our greenhouse.  I wasn’t able to get a hold of the company that made it so I had to come up with my own solution to fixing it.  I tried small screws, I tried glue and a few adhesives but nothing was working to well.   The screws seemed to work about the best but it wasn’t a good fix.

Our Hobby Greenhouse

I figured I’d try a rivet tool.  I found one at the store for ~$10.  It worked great.  Just drill a hole, put the rivet in, squeeze the handles and bam.  Done!

Installed Rivets

I am not sure how much longer this greenhouse will survive, but I figure I can keep it together for at least a few more years.  It serves as a chicken home in the winter and a place to grow fun stuff in the summer.  I bet I can find all kinds of uses for this new tool too! 

Rivet Tool

I had a phone call recently.  It’s the type of call that is not “the norm”. I knew Cassie had emailed House Hunters International about the possibility of being on their show after she had heard from the Kruses that they were looking for couples who had bought a place in Puerto Rico. But I didn’t really think they would be so eager to talk with us so quickly! This is kind of how it went:

Melissa: Hi, this is Melissa from House Hunters International!
BK: Hi, this is Britton.  How are you?
Melissa: Good…We are interested in doing your story! Can you tell me a little more about it?
BK:( I told her all about our story, the property, why Puerto Rico…so on and so forth)
Melissa: That sounds great! Well, the next step before we line things up is to get a casting video from you.  I can send you some information about what we are looking for in it.
BK: No problem.  We can do that and have one to you in the next few days!

So these past few days Cassie and I (with help from Cassie’s mom the camera-woman -thanks Char!) made a short casting video.  In the video they just want to see how we live currently and why we want to move. They basically want to see how we look “on camera”.  Hopefully we come across well!

It would be cool to be on the show as it is one we definitely like to watch and I think we would be a bit different than their regular shows.  Most of what I’ve seen on there are people who have quite a bit of money to spend.  Cassie and I are very budget-oriented and one of our (my) criteria was that the place be “affordable”.  To me that meant not getting a mortgage. Also we were ok with having a fixer-upper, unlike most people that we’ve seen on the show.

We want to move down there in the next few years, not continue to work and pay for the thing over the next 15-30.  So, we save the majority of our income, we both drive normal little paid-off econobox cars, and we have invested in rentals in the hopes that one day we could use that income to live off of (see Fruitfulista for more on how we do this!)

I’d hope they would present us as the ‘fixer upper/saver/self-sustainability people’ and maybe tell the story of how we ended up with the property. One thing we were surprised about is that nearly all, if not all of the shows are re-enactments, so according to Melissa the producer/casting person in New York, we were perfect for their show!

So, here’s our casting video- wish us luck!…What do you think?

Littlefoot the green egg layer

So…one day we went out and found a very obviously green egg! They are so cool. Now you know that the Dr. Seuss story wasn’t completely made up! We CAN have green eggs and ham!

The egg shell color is determined by the breed of chicken. A brown egg or green egg is no more (or less) healthy than a white egg. What makes an egg healthier is what the chickens eat. Because white eggs are from the industry standard Leghorn (like Omeleto) they are often considered less healthy than brown eggs that are from heritage breeds – like our barred rock. But really, it’s about their diet. On the outside the shells may have a different color, but inside the color only changes if they have a more varied diet such as being on pasture eating bugs, green grasses and the occasional mouse. If you want to see the inside difference between a conventional store-bought egg and our backyard hens’ eggs, you can see it here.

Otherwise, here’s the outside cool variety of colored shells.

Variety Pack: carton of eggs including the green eggs and speckled eggs

Chickens in the yard

I checked the place where they had liked to lay before under the unruly rose bush by the house, but no, there wasn’t anything there. I thought I had looked everywhere until I glanced into the mint bush and just happened to spy their clutch in there. It was so well camouflaged that I asked Britton if he could come out and try to find it. I don’t think he ever would have if I hadn’t shown him where it was. Right under our noses and super hard to spot! If you have chickens who are about laying age, make sure to check your yard for any hiding areas. Now I know where the Easter Egg Hunt tradition came about…this wasn’t just a game for kids back when most people had their own chickens

Hidden Eggs in the brush

With a progressive dinner you can have between 3-7 stops. For the most basic three stops there would be Appetizers, Main Course, and Dessert. We had four stops so we also had a salad course. To add more stops, you could do Drinks, Appetizers, Salad, Soup, Main Entree, Dessert, Coffee/Chocolate/Cheese. Each stop is meant to be a “tapas” size stop except the main course which should be fairly filling.

Frozen chocolate banana appetizer

Our house was the first stop at 4pm where we served appetizers and drinks. We had frozen half bananas with hazelnut chocolate and slivered almonds, deviled eggs from our chickens and some chips and nuts. We also served kombucha tea from Celestial Seasonings because we thought our guests would get a kick out of it as we did. Everyone arrived and enjoyed this snack and then we saddled up on our bikes. I think there 11 or 12 of us who ranged in age from 12-50 years old!

Leaving to our next stop

Then we rode about 3 miles to our friends Matt and Jamie’s house where they served the salad course which was a nice pasta salad with veggies from their garden and a homemade tuna salad. They just got a couple chickens in their huge backyard so it was fun to check out their set up as well.

Next was probably both the most fun and also the hardest leg of the bike trip to Kelly’s house about 5.5 miles away. There was a lot of up and down hills and one very fast downhill part. At Kelly’s we had the main course of homemade pulled pork sandwiches and drinks and played with her adorable new puppy.

The whole group with all our bikes

Finally we rode to Gina’s house (about 4 miles) for a dessert of fruit and brownie kabobs which were excellent! Afterward, Matt and Jamie rode (treacherously uphill) back to our house under the full moon where we hung out and listened to music and sat outside for a while. It was a great day and a nice way to take all of our minds off of the usual. We all agreed that we should do this more often. It was sort of like having four parties in one with a quarter of the work of one large house party. Plus we had people ride along just for the fun of it without having to be a stop. It was great night plus awesome exercise. I am definitely feeling it in my quads!

When we fed them to the chickens we thought they would go nuts. But no. The chickens liked them, but were not as enthusiastic about them as I thought they would be. It was as if they were saying, “yah, we get those all the time out here”. But they still ate them all! Good protein and omega-3s for our eggs! Circle of life and all that.

Yum! A jar of grasshoppers

Our new 16-week old leghorn has already started laying eggs! Leghorns are often the commercial standard for hens because they are smaller than other hens (take up less room), they begin laying earlier and they lay longer than most other breeds. I can definitely say that the early laying is the case for Omeleto as the other two pullets have not.

Omeleto

Usually the last thing to mature is their comb and you know they are ready to lay. Omeleto’s comb is definitely more developed than the other pullets. However, her eggs still aren’t!

Pullet egg and regular sized egg

The pullet eggs look more like robin eggs! I was curious what the inside would look like, so I made a fried egg with one of each. Check out the tiny yolk in the pullet egg.

What a big difference between the full egg and the pullet egg! You can hardly notice the yolk in the pullet egg

So we still have a little time before we have full-sized eggs, but this is pretty good for only 16 weeks old! The other chickens should start laying at 20-24 weeks or in another 1-2 months.