A Washer, A Lockset & The Skoolie Dream

Some good progress has been made on the skoolie.  Joseph finished all the plumbing for the washing machine, and got it in place.  

He had to make some adjustments, to install the lockset and deadbolt at our entrance door, and got those in place.

  

He finished hooking up the electrical for our range hood, so it now has a working light and power.  

He bought a storage box off of FB Marketplace.  I know it's a messy pic, but wanted to show the boys are still doing their part, in supporting the skoolie dream.  I briefly helped with some plumbing, and he's put up beadboard and framing in the bathroom.  He's also been working hard on our kitchen countertop.  I'll share these, when they're a little farther along.  Happy New Years, friends!

Merry Christmas 2023!

Hello friends, and Merry Christmas!  Last week, before a low in the teens, I harvested kale, collards, lettuce and a small amount of broccoli.  The broccoli was blanched and frozen.  We had collards and rice for one dinner, cranberry quinoa kale salad and cubes of fried sweet potatoes for another, and a few salads.  All but the door shelves in the refrigerator were cleaned.  It's so nice to open now, I sure wish it would stay like this for a while.   Three varieties of GF cookies were baked from ingredients in the pantry.   I redeemed Swagbucks points for a $25 gift card.  Brandy's taco soup was made, on Friday night.  Such a quick, easy dinner, after a very long day preparing.

In our ongoing chicken saga, I realized two of the three young game hens are gone.  Though we'd clipped their wings once already, they started flying out of their yard again.  We assume a hawk got them.  The two that are gone were our best layers at the moment.  Of course, all the roosters are perfectly fine.  Sigh.  I cut greenery from our land, and combined it with pinecones and trimmings of our Frazier fir to decorate the tables for our gathering.  Besides offering the cookies at our Christmas gathering,  I've also gifted them to our postal carrier, my massage therapist and a delivery driver.  I mixed up a batch of celery salt for gifts, using the celery I had dehydrated.  I picked up their last three small poinsettia's at Lowes, marked down to $1.49, for the tables for our gathering. 

Siblings

Guinness went to the vet, to have a place on his foot looked at.  Turns out it's nothing scary; just caused by him licking the same spot, but the vet thought he could put on a few lbs.  Each day, I've been dividing a half pint jar of home canned meat and broth between he and McNibs, in addition to their kibble and sweet potatoes.  With McNibs being so skinny after his adventure, I bought him a coat.  The first one didn't fit, and when I dropped it off at Staples for the return, I received a coupon for 15% off an in store purchase.  It's only good until the end of the year, and I may use it if I'll already be in town.  The second coat fits him perfectly.  On Christmas Eve, I baked a batch of dog treats, to put in their stockings.  Of course, they had to taste test some beforehand.  Thankfully, they passed with flying colors.  Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Driver's Seat Refurb

 

With all that's going on at the moment, there's not a lot of progress on the skoolie.  But, I did promise a pic of the newly upholstered driver's seat.  Joseph wanted arm rests, which I didn't think to put in place for the pic.  We chose a neutral gray fabric for these seats.  He plans to take the next two weeks off from his business, so I expect there will be some good skoolie progress to report soon.  Happy Holidays!

It's Starting To Feel Festive

Hello, friends.  In case you didn't see the update on the past post, McNibs made it home Monday evening, thanks to a lovely woman 3.5 miles from here.   After eight days, he was very thin and seemed disoriented.  I've been feeding him rice, home canned pumpkin, meat with broth, and sweet potato.  A neighbor friend brought by some liver for him, which she gets in her cow share, but doesn't eat.  So, he's getting small amounts of that as well, to help build him back up.  He shook intermittently the first couple of days, and peed in his bed, which is unusual for him, so I took a urine sample to the vet, to make sure he didn't have anything going on.  Thankfully, it came back clear.  He started seeming like himself, after a couple of days.  Now it's a matter of fattening him back up.  I'd always felt fairly safe, knowing he was microchipped, but I've got something on the way, which adds our contact info to his collar.  I sure hope we never need it, but one more layer of protection.  I'm walking him on a leash so far.  I laid it down while hanging laundry, but picked it back up, when he strayed a bit farther than I was comfortable with.

Last week, I used discount codes for online purchases.  At the grocery store, I got dogfood at $6 off, asparagus for $1.99, and brussels sprouts $2.99, and earned $8 in rewards for my purchase.  I enjoyed catching up on two seasons of a series I liked, with DVD's from the library.  Two loads of laundry were dried on the line.  While picking up groceries, J noticed Food Lion had marked their Christmas trees down from $59.99 to $19.99, and picked one up.  We noticed only a day or two later, some of the stores had marked them down further to $9.99, but we're still happy to have not paid $60 or more for a tree.  When he got the tree home, he cut a slice off the bottom, and placed the trunk in our pond, to keep it hydrated, which kept it in good shape, until putting it up on Sunday.  We celebrated Christmas with our granddaughter, taking her out for dinner over the weekend, which we all enjoyed.  

pillow I made years ago

I'm not sure why the sad dramas with our animals recently, but we had another one with the hen and chicks.  Shortly after McNibs went missing, our hen began hatching out her chicks.  Of the fifteen eggs, six attempted to hatch.  Two never made it fully out of the shell, but there were four healthy looking chicks.  Within the next three days, all were dead.  We're not exactly sure what happened with the first two, but I did see mama hen fling one of the chicks, while scratching in the straw.  The chick seemed OK at the time, but if she did it again, who knows?  When we were down to two chicks, I moved them and mama into the private broody area, as she kept moving where she was sitting with them, maybe because of all the attention from the rest of the flock.  When we checked on them that evening, she had gotten up onto the roost, leaving the chicks below to die.  Mother of the year, she was not.  We don't know why she changed so much, since bringing up her first batch of chicks.  We're both in agreement that if she finds a spot to lay more eggs, we are not going to allow her to sit on them.  

I've been diligently working on using up our '22 sweet potatoes.  The pups and chickens have been getting some every day, and on Sunday I made this sweet potato soup for lunch, which we both enjoyed.  The critter potatoes are brought to a boil on the stove, then moved to the woodstove to finish cooking, which has been working well.  What's left are the huge football-shaped sweet potatoes, more than a dozen of them, so I'll just keep plugging away at them.  Sunday afternoon, we strung our tree lights, and decorated.  We're having my family's Christmas gathering here, next weekend, so it will be a busy but happy week.  May you enjoy the pleasures of the season!

The Cabinets Are Painted

 

Joseph has been busy painting cabinets.  The color is Picnic.  These are on the passenger side, above the dinette area.

The ones in the front of the bus.

The ones above our sink and stove.

And the ones below those.  

Our friends who have an upholstery shop recovered the drivers seat, which we picked up Thursday.  Joseph reinstalled it late Friday, after I had taken these photos, so I'll share it next week.  While there, we got the swatches above, to consider for our dinette and couch cushions.   We're leaning towards one of the right two swatches.  Do you have a favorite?  

A Sad Week

UPDATE 12/11:  HE IS HOME!  Eight days later, and worse for the wear, but I'm hoping I can build him back up.  Thank you for all the prayers and well wishes!  I hope to soon be back to regular posting.

Hello, friends.  The woodstove is being utilized well these days.  As well as keeping our home warm, a pot of barley was brought to a boil on the gas stove, then finished cooking on the woodstove, and a pot of oils was melted there for soapmaking.  Meat and broth from bones collected in a freezer bag were canned for the pups.  The bones were then added to the woodstove, which will help enrich our soil.  Once we learned about terra preta, we began throwing the bones into the woodstove, to collect with our ash.  We'll never make soil as rich as terra preta, but anything we can do to help ours along, we count as a good thing.  With a low of 17 in the forecast, lettuce, broccoli, chard and kale were harvested last Monday.  The calendulas are still sending out blooms.  Lettuce, beets and carrots were covered with hay before the low of 17.  The lettuce made it through with flying colors.  Our game hen is valiantly sitting on her nest.  The little game hen eggs are so sweet.  

I made a pot of vegetable soup.  Besides a few store bought items in the soup, I was able to use home canned tomatoes and tomato juice, summer squash, garlic and green beans, dehydrated onions and soup mix consisting of mushrooms, peas, carrot tops, and purslane.   I started a loaf of bread for J in the machine, then baked it in the oven.  I received a Food Lion reward of $6 towards my purchase, and the blueberries used in my smoothies were $1 off.  Books were picked up at the library, and DVD's with newer shows of a series I used to enjoy.  I dropped a bag off at a food drive our phone/internet provider is having, which entered me into a drawing for gift cards.  Ink cartridges were dropped off at Staples for recycling, which will earn $6 in rewards.  J & I enjoyed a movie on our Roku TV, for the first time this year.  I took advantage of a Cyber Monday sale, to buy bras I've been wanting to try, at 25% off.  After unknowingly eating a plate of wheat pasta recently, then beginning to have worsening itching with the eczema on my hands, I began another 9 day raw food cleanse.  It wasn't planned, so there was produce that wouldn't get eaten during that time.  I froze cranberries, broccoli and peppers, and dehydrated mushrooms and celery.

Forgive me for getting this post up later than usual.  My heart and mind have been focused on McNibs, who went missing on our walk Sunday evening.  We have walked and driven, called and whistled, put it on social media, put up flyers, and let people know.  He and Guinness often take off after a scent, while on our walks, and still often beat me back to the house, or are close behind.  Early on, I started feeding them right after our walks, so they'd know food was waiting when they got home, a prime motivator for them, especially McNibs.  Our 25 acres is deep, and backs up onto 140 acres of rolling hay fields and woods, and this is surrounded by more farms and woods.  A plus is that there are no roads for quite a ways, but the downside is no one is likely to see him.  J thinks he got lost, following the scent.  I've thought of many scenarios, including our active coyote population, but J assures me there would be buzzards by now.  My one consolation is he was living his best life when I saw him last, nose to the ground, following that scent.  I haven't given up hope, but my heart is breaking, with worry for him.  If you're so inclined, please send prayers and good thoughts our way.  If he returns home, I'll add an update here.

A Bed Frame & The Kitchen Is Coming Along

 

There's been some good progress made on the skoolie, since my last post.  Joseph had some scrap expanded metal in his pile, and used that for the bed frame.  We'd read that moisture can be an issue for mattresses in RV's, and this should help, by allowing it to breathe.  Below will be used for storage, but it should still be more breathable than plywood, which is what most folks use.  

He closed in the remainder of what used to be the original door.  The metal is what had covered the inside walls, and was recycled for this purpose.  It will be painted.

Cabinet frames went in, over the stove, counter and sink area.  Track lighting went in.  The range hood I picked up via FB Marketplace was too large for the space.  It just happened that all the workings of it were on one side, so Joseph cut it down to RV size.

Cabinet frames went in on the passenger side, over what will be our dining area.  We wanted to be sure to have a great view outdoors, while we were eating.

Lastly, we figured out what we needed spacewise for our dinette, and he began framing it out.  He'll be insulating, then building a platform over the wheel well, so it will be a step up to the dinette.  Storage drawers will go beneath.   I asked that the dinette be large enough to accommodate another two friends or family, and this should accomplish that.