Eating From The Garden, Pantry and Freezer & Frugal Accomplishments

Hello friends.  Joseph helped me by holding the hen while I got the chicken apron on, and so far so good.  She's so traumatized by the two young roosters that she is still not venturing out of the nest often.  When she does, those dang roosters chase her, and run her right back to the nest.  I guess she's the low hen in the pecking order, and I'm not sure what can be done about that.  Update:  the apron stayed on for 3 days, but she got it off this evening.  She was getting braver, coming out for greens, but several of them were pecking her terribly today, so we separated her from the flock.  She has a wound in her side where she'd been pecked, which  I packed full of neosporin, and added chicken electrolytes to her water.  I think we need less roosters...   Isn't that a sweet nest above?  I found it in one of the nandina's.  I was surprised to see they'd incorporated plastic into it.

Our ladies homestead gathering this month was on seed starting.  Members who had plants to share brought those too.  I brought home some baby hellebores, a large clump of Lemon Ball sedum, and a pink mum seedling.  In my flat, seeds were planted for medicinal yarrow, zinnias, cutting celery, money plant, rosella and lovage.  In my wintersown seeds, the only ones that have germinated are still one of the milkweeds.  My moringa has still not resprouted, though one of the women at the meeting told me hers resprouted after six months!  I won't give up just yet then.  Laundry was washed with homemade soap and dried on the line.  A large pan of egg shells were crushed and added to the compost, along with kitchen scraps.

A dinner of vegetable soup, crescent rolls and a pear blue cheese salad was enjoyed one night.  The soup included our tomatoes, okra, lima beans, carrots, squash and garlic.  Home ground wheat was used as part of the flour in the rolls, and our lettuce and homemade vinaigrette were in the salad.  Besides taking the lima beans out of the freezer, I took out grated zucchini to make bread.  That leaves just a little more room in the freezer.  Our lettuce was used in a green salad another night, along with store bought items.  A frozen pack of our okra was cooked another night, and eggs boiled for egg salad and the pups meals.  Yogurt and kefir were made.

J's business partner gifted us some kale, so with that and our own, I made a kale salad.  On a cold day, I baked sweet potatoes, boiled small ones for the pups, and baked 2 loaves of zucchini, carrot, apple bread.  I took one of the loaves when I visited my SIL.  Something is doing a number on our chard.  Whatever it is is eating the roots, so I go out and find plants all wilted, and I can pull them up without the least bit of resistance.  There are holes dug around them too.  One day, I found 7 chard eaten!  Other days, one or two.  I went ahead and harvested any leaves of good size, to get them while the getting was good.  By the way, that's the $2.50 basket I scored at the thrift store last week.  It's hard to tell, but the basket is 17" long, a great size for harvesting vegi's.

When the refurbished computer tower arrived, the optical drive did not work.  It took 10 days to get it sorted out, and a new one to arrive.  Yesterday, I deleted any unnecessary documents and photos.  Today, J transferred everything I wanted to keep from the old hard drive to the new.   We're still moving things and figuring out some of the details, but I think it's going to work fine.  Sorry for the less than stellar pics of the chicken apron.  She did not want to come out of the nest box, and we still have a heat lamp for a light in the coop.  If I get a better pic at some point, I'll be sure to share it.

There are some big plans in the works, which I'll be sharing in the upcoming weeks.  I have still not managed to get any vegetable seeds started in the house, so we may have to purchase a lot of our plants this year.  I'm telling myself one can only do what they can do, and not beating myself up.  We do, however, have spinach seeds up in the garden.  We've got rain in the forecast, and hopefully that will help them all to germinate.  Be well, friends.  Have you planted anything yet this year? I'm happy to be joining in with Frugal Accomplishments.