Category Archives: Micro Homesteading

Pesach preparations and menu plan

menu plans, Micro Homesteading, Pesach

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law arrived last night from the United States, along with two of my married sons and grandchildren. My mom lives locally and will be coming this afternoon to stay with us for Shabbos and the first day of Pesach – thank G-d, the house is full!

Everyone who has come so far has been very impressed by all of the changes we’ve made to our house. I really love it! The kitchen is a pleasure to work in; even with lots of people around I don’t feel crowded and there’s space for others to work alongside me without anyone getting in anyone else’s space. I’ve been exclaiming a few times a day, “Have I said how much I love this kitchen!?!” – and then I describe another benefit that I’ve noticed.

It’s really wonderful and though I’ve always appreciated the spaciousness of my home and outdoor space, I’ve never especially liked the main area of my home, and now love how it feels.

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Since there’s so much to do and I have four children who need a lot of interaction and supervision during their waking hours, I’ve gotten up around 4:30 am the last three mornings to get things done. I’m taking a quick break now to share my Pesach menu for the first two days of the holiday with you before they wake up. Usually I write down my holiday lists, but then am so busy I don’t have time to post it and then what’s the point of posting after the holiday? So here you go!

Today – Friday – for breakfast- shakshuka; lunch – beef borscht soup, baked potato knishes

It’s really important to keep everyone well fed in the midst of my cooking marathons. When everyone has food, everyone is much calmer and happier.

For the holiday:

Fish – tilapia, salmon

Soup – chicken

Dips – matbucha (6 kg), mock liver (2 kg), homemade mayonnaise

Salads – tomato onion, Israeli, lemony dill carrot, marinated kohlrabi and carrots, fennel and orange

Sides – butternut squash kugel (2 loaf pans), onion kugel (4 loaf pans), vegetable kugel (2 – 9×13), potato kugel (3 – 9×13), potato squash saute, sweet potato carrot bake

Mains – roast meat, baked chicken

Desserts – walnut chocolate chip bars, macaroons

My house is overflowing with fresh produce and it looks excessive to see the cases stacked up, but I know how fast it all goes with so many people eating three meals a day. I used 25 kilos of potatoes the first day and a half, before Pesach even started. My son told me that doesn’t make sense, but that’s actually what we used so far. That includes the baked potato knishes for lunch today, but doesn’t include anything for the holiday yet.

I wasn’t able to find cocoa in the stores, and a staple dessert that I make on Pesach is brownies. I haven’t yet decided what to make as the cake for my nineteen year old’s birthday circle the first day of Pesach; I might use the blondies. The dessert isn’t really the main point, the birthday circle is, and it’s always nice to have more family members to share in the circle.

I’m planning to double the kugels and freeze half for the last part of Pesach, and I’m doing the same with the marinated salads that will stay fresh in the fridge for the week. Cook once, eat twice. 🙂 Edited to add: that was a nice sentiment, but we went through everything listed above in the first two days of Shabbos/Pesach, even what I thought would be put into the freezer for the end of Pesach.

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There’s so much to do and so much of that isn’t seen – the endless loads of laundry this entire week, hanging, folding, putting away. Shopping for clothing for everyone. Buying and putting away all of the food. Cooking all of the food. Cleaning for Pesach. Taking care of the younger kids. Giving them all haircuts. But even if these aren’t consciously noticed, these things all contribute to a nice environment for everyone.

I have a cabinet where I put all of the items needing sewing repairs, and this week I fixed most of those. For today I have a couple of new pairs of suit pants to hem.

This year we had all of the renovations on top of everything else and I made seemingly endless trips to the hardware store. The kitchen backsplash is now tiled, though not yet grouted. The floor in the old kitchen area where the plumbing was has been tiled.

On the mini homestead front, I sold a lot of chicks last week. I give ds17 and ds15 the profits remaining after paying for the chick feed since they do all of the incubating and caring for the new chicks. They thought I should keep part of the money, but I consider the chickens we keep as my payment. We started incubating a new batch of Brahma eggs that will be ready after Pesach. Seeing all of those new chicks caused a number of our hens to go broody (to want to hatch their own eggs); we now have six broody hens sitting together on one batch of eggs; it will be interesting when the chicks hatch to see how they coparent!

I previously held back two roosters when we processed all of our roosters, but it turns out that one chicken that we thought was a hen has revealed himself as a rooster. I decided that one rooster for the main flock is enough, so I sold two roosters earlier this week. It’s not worth it for us to take two chickens for shechita and I didn’t want all of the extra work processing them right now. The people who bought them are very happy and two days later called me wanting more. Now I have a good way to sell all of my roosters in the future that we don’t want, which is very nice.

This week we brought in a male goat for breeding purposes but he wasn’t letting my does eat and the older doe kept looking at me from a distance and bleating at me to help her. The first morning I took the other goats out to graze when he was on the other side of the pen; I didn’t think that would be an issue since they weren’t a bonded group. He charged at the door of the pen and began breaking it open. That was frightening for me since I was on the other side of the door. It was six am but I quickly woke up my husband and son so they could help me since I was in over my head dealing with him.

They put the other goats back in and he calmed down, but that really stressed me. We brought him since we hoped it might marginally be the end of breeding season but obviously nothing was happening on that front; maybe with time that would have changed but at this time I didn’t want to wait a few weeks since it would negatively impact my holiday. Usually the animals are a source of relaxation for me that but with this buck here that wasn’t the case. I want our grandchildren to be able to interact with the goats if they want to, which they can’t do if he’s here, so yesterday we took him back. We’ll try again after Sukkos.

We ordered hay and this year it was clover; last year it was wheat hay and it was a huge issue to deal with for Pesach. We ordered cracked corn for the chickens for Pesach and started fermenting it yesterday to increase the nutritional value for them, so it will be ready for them by Sunday. Meanwhile, they’re eating up all of our chametz!

I wish you all a deeply enjoyable Pesach!

Avivah

A mongoose is stalking our chickens

Micro Homesteading

Two days ago I was sitting in the coop holding the baby chicks when I saw a movement from the corner of my eyes.

Outside of the coop a large mongoose was walking by, checking out our coop. Midmorning I open the door to the coop and the chickens go in and out as they like, coming in for the night when the sun begins to get lower in the sky. At that point I lock them in for the night.

It was late afternoon and the majority of the chickens were in the coop, but some were still outside. I jumped up and started yelling, “Oh, no, get in, get in, get in!” as if they could understand me. What it probably did do that was effective was make the mongoose aware it wasn’t a good time to strike and he disappeared.

Until we began raising chickens, all I knew about mongooses came from the endearing character in the classic children’s story, Rikki Tikki Tavi. Set in India, the mongoose was saved from drowning by the child of the family and later the mongoose saved the child from a cobra family.

A mongoose is a big weasel and in real life, they’re far from endearing. ‘Vicious’ is the word that the man who sold us our first ducks and warned about how one will enter a coop and rip off the heads of multiple birds, eating none of them.

We’ve tried to build as secure a coop as possible. But it’s not easy keeping determined predators out, who have the entire night to work their way in. Several years ago on Friday night, my son heard the chickens clucking in alarm and ran out, yelling to us when he got there “Something is in the coop!” That something was a mongoose, who ran out when my son opened the door. It killed two hens and the next day two others died from their injuries.

We strengthened our coop even more, and until now didn’t have any return visits.

After seeing the mongoose, I told one teen that I was hopeful that it was hunting vipers. (We had a viper enter the coop one day, eating one chicken and killing another. – that was another adventuresome morning for the Werner family.) My son said it sounded like wishful thinking on my part.

It was still dark at 5:15 am on Saturday morning when I heard my son yelling from the porch upstairs, “Mongoose, mongoose!” He told us afterward he heard the chickens call out and looked over the side of the porch and saw the mongoose run inside the length of the coop. My husband ran outside while I paused to put on shoes before running out. Less than a minute after hearing my son call out, I was outside and already there were all three teens as well as husband. One was holding a huge knife, another a broom.

The mongoose was gone.

We did a check of the coop a couple of hours later when the sun was up, and thankfully all of the birds were safe. My son’s fast reaction in yelling had scared the mongoose off before we all got there. But now with a mongoose on the prowl, we need to shore up our coop.

We have large rocks lining the inside and outside of the coop, and part of the coop has a ‘skirt’ of chicken wire that is under the ground, to prevent predators from digger under and getting in. Today we’re going to closely inspect the coop to see how and where a mongoose got in, and seal it off.

Avivah

The kitchen is finished! and other projects

Homemaking, Intentional Spending, Micro Homesteading

Though we’ve had tremendous progress on the kitchen, Wednesday evening the boys and I were all really tired and felt a bit disappointed that we hadn’t accomplished as much as we hoped to that day.

I have a tendency to want to get the tasks on my list done and then do the relaxing or enjoyable things. That’s fine on a normal day when there’s time for everything, but at times that there’s a huge amount of tasks to do, the time for rest doesn’t come and it can lead to burnout. I’m protective of myself from these tendencies, and despite the many things piled high in the kitchen waiting to be organized, when I woke up the next morning I resolved to begin the day with ample quiet and calm.

I headed to the chicken coop.

I take care of the chickens daily and sometimes spend long minutes in the coop, but almost never take time to sit down. Yesterday morning I pulled up a chair next to the brooder housing the week old chicks, and took out three chicks to hold.

It’s very relaxing being with chickens. It’s also very interesting watching them; someone coined the term ‘chicken tv’ and that’s accurate. The more I watch them, the more interesting it is to learn their behavior patterns and understand more of why the do what they do.

I spent over an hour sitting in the coop, and all three cute balls of fluff climbed right up from my lap to perch on my shoulder.

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Yesterday’s goal was to finish the kitchen. It was the last day the younger four kids would be in school before Pesach vacation began, and once they’re home, my ability to get things done goes down quite a bit.

There’s a lot of work that had to happen between the last post when big pieces were in place, to having all of the small details finished. Those details are what make a huge difference between an end result being merely functional or really nice.

The kitchen cabinets were adjusted so they will be higher for our tall family. The hanging cabinets are hung. The toekicks are installed.

The countertops are cut and installed.

The countertops were my biggest concern, since this isn’t work we have any experience with. It was dd28 who encouraged me about this – last year (thanks to our example), they put a new/used kitchen into their rental apartment, doing all of the work themselves. However, they also cut the countertop, something I had considered outside of our capacity in all of our past kitchen renovations. She told me it was easier than she expected, and it was her confidence that made me willing to try it.

Before the boys began working on the countertops, I asked them if they would be upset if they did the work, but then wasn’t happy with the result and wanted to get new countertops. They said it would be okay. Then, when they were taking off the first countertop from the island, something happened and for a long minute they thought it might have cracked. At that moment, it was really important to me that they not feel pressured about this project, and I told them that if something cracked or didn’t turn out well, it was okay – we would buy new countertops. (It didn’t crack.)

The countertops were a huge project that took two days. Though they all worked on it together, it was ds17 who made all of the cuts. Ds17 was exacting in his work and he did an amazing job, with an end result that was better than the best I hoped for.

When the plumber (who’s also a general handyman and has been for decades) came back to finish the final bit of work he had remaining , he was very impressed by how the countertops turned out. He told me he’s never tried to do work like that and exclaimed, “Your boys are really something, they really know how to do the work!”

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We began the kitchen on Monday morning and…drumroll….. Thursday night it was finished! I am super pleased with how the kitchen turned out; it was worth all of the effort.

I’ve reorganized all of the cabinets and cleaned them for Pesach; what’s left is to put away the odds and ends that don’t quite belong anywhere. It was a long and productive day for us all; today it will be so nice to do all of the cooking for Shabbos in our new kitchen.

Though there’s a bit less counter and cabinet space than I previously had, the space is much more usable. Everything feels bigger and better. We now have a spacious kitchen with plenty of workspace and storage space. It’s light and airy and has a beautiful view. I love it! In addition to other smaller advantages that I’m happy about, we achieved our two main goals: since it’s a mostly open floor plan with the living/dining area, it will be more comfortable when hosting guests, and finally, people won’t enter our house directly into our kitchen anymore!


The final detail remaining to do for the kitchen is to tile the backsplash. The tiles will be delivered on Monday, and I don’t want to push to get it done because there’s still plenty to do before Pesach. I also ordered some tiles to fill in the broken area on the floor of the old kitchen area where the plumbing pipes were. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a perfect match but since the entire first floor of our home has the same tiling and I’m not interested in retiling all of it, that small area won’t be ideal but it will be done. I do hope to tile that before Pesach.

I kept reminding myself and the boys, “Done is better than perfect!”

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We’re now turning our attention to finishing the area that the kitchen used to be in, that is now the living/dining room.

The staircase railing has been installed.

Here’s the progression of what that looked like:

Starting to take apart kitchen wall units
Wall units down, starting to take down wall next to stairs
The wall is down
The railing is finished!

The next big project is removing the wall tiling from the old kitchen area and repainting the walls.

The tile backsplash before

Once the cabinets were taken out and the tiles were off, an even bigger project remained- with the tiles gone, there was a broken thick layer of tile adhesive stuck to the wall. In order to paint, the wall would need to be spackled, but to spackled, all of that tile glue had to be chipped off with a drill. This was a tremendous amount of work, all of which was done by ds15. Once the adhesive was off, the walls looked quite beat up.

Here half of the area has the first layer of spackle. Note the table piled with all of the tools and hardware in use.

Ds15 has done all of this project and did a lot of the spackling before he and ds18 switched places. Ds18 had been working on building the chicken coop while ds17 finished the last part of the kitchen, so ds15 went out to finish the coop while ds18 did more spackling. The wall is going to need several layers of spackle before it will be smooth and can be painted; each layer has to dry and be sanded before the next layer can be applied. It’s not a one day project.

Also before painting, the electrician needs to finish his work insetting the electrical outlets. When he began moving the outlets and light switches, he made them with visible tracks and plastic boxes that sit on top of the wall. I didn’t see this until he had done several and asked him to change it so that everything is set in the wall. Otherwise it looks tacky. We’ll need to spackle all of the areas that he works on when he finishes. As I said previously, it took him quite some time to get here so I don’t know when he’ll finish up.

Another project is the area under the stairs.

This area has been used for storage, and that was concealed by the kitchen wall units. Once they were moved, the storage space is visible and it doesn’t look nice. I’d like to close it in and put an access door there, using the door that was part of the separate entrance that we took down. You can look above at the pictures of the stairs and the railing and you’ll see what I’m referring to.

Yesterday afternoon one of the boys cut it down to fit the shorter entrance area but I’m not at all happy with how it looks. I’m concerned that once it’s installed no one will later be willing to replace it with something that looks better. My husband and the boys all think it looks fine but I’m the most visual person of them all so that’s not surprising. At this point, redoing the door means a huge amount of work that no one, including me, is interested in right now. So I once again I remind myself, ‘Done is better than perfect!”

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One day midweek, ds15 took out our welder to try to figure out how to weld. This was providential timing since the plumber arrived right after that. Seeing the welder and the pile of metal beams that had been taken down from the porch, the plumber commented that now they can build something with it. Ds15 told him they don’t know how to weld very well.

The plumber used our welder to finish installing the railing. Having seen how good the boys were at other building related things, when he finished working he took the time to give ds15 and ds17 (ds18 and I were gone that day) some instruction. Just ten minutes was all they needed to move beyond what they already knew how to do, to really being able to weld properly. This is a skill that we all felt our family was missing. We can build with wood, and building with metal is somewhat similar except you melt the metal together instead of screwing wood together.

Ds afterward cut pieces of metal and practiced welding them onto a post, and when the plumber came back the next day, he looked at it and said it was well done.

Now ds15 and ds17 have learned to weld, and they’ll be able to show ds18. We’re all pleased to have a new skill learned.

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Not only was the kitchen finished yesterday, so was the chicken coop! It looks great. Ds18 did most of the building for this, with ds15 helping out. It’s a really nice coop. They used our scrap wood supply to build it, and the supply is now almost completely finished. Ds15 used some scrap metal that we had (not a weldable metal) and made a beautiful door, lightweight and strong. I marvel at how they get things done.

It’s been a productive week, but it hasn’t been all work. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!” Each morning the boys spend several hours in shul learning Torah before coming home and starting on our work projects. One afternoon they took a hike with friends midday; last night they had a singing circle at a local spring with other friends. They always stop whatever they’re doing before it’s time to go to shul for mincha/maariv and don’t resume after coming home at night. While it’s been busy, it’s been balanced, and as I said previously, it’s a really nice energy when they work together.

Avivah

Our new Brahma chickens!

Micro Homesteading

When I went with my fifteen year old son to see the Brahma chickens, I didn’t take a crate to bring them back in, I didn’t have a plan for where to put them – I just went to look at them with the hope that would give me clarity about if I should get them or not.

I really enjoyed meeting the people selling the chickens and we chatted for almost an hour. I told them from the outset that I was only going to look at them and would go home and think about it because I didn’t want them to feel disappointed if I didn’t buy them on the spot.

When I spotted a chicken travel crate at the end of our conversation and they said I could use it, I spontaneously decided to bring the chickens home with us – one male and two females. I figured I’d put them in with our other chickens where there’s plenty of room and since they’re bigger than our chickens, none of the other chickens would bother them.

My son carried the crate into the coop, set it on the ground and opened it. We both stood there to watch what happened. The rooster hopped out and I laughingly said to my son that it looked like King Kong swaggering in and assessing the area. I didn’t realize how much bigger they were until they were next to my other chickens.

Then the females hopped out, and the three new chickens went to one side of the coop while my flock went to the other side. They all watched each other.

I observed that my alpha Plymouth Rock rooster was very alert. I figured they’d quickly establish the pecking order and one of them would agree to let the other be the boss of the coop. I had fifteen roosters together and it was pretty peaceful – they all accepted the authority of the head rooster. The beta roosters had minor squabbles between one another in the coop and when they were free ranging sometimes they would get a little more feisty asserting themselves once they were out of the clear dominion of the head rooster. But that’s it.

That’s not what happened this time.

They faced each other and lowered their heads, raising their hackles.

Then Plymouth flew at Brahma. I was concerned that being smaller he might get hurt and watched carefully so we could step in if necessary. It turned out that he was the better fighter, smaller and more agile.

They flew at one another again and again and after a few minutes it wasn’t subsiding. Brahma was panting heavily, blood was starting to flow from them both and I was afraid neither of them was going to give in so I had my son quickly separate them.

It was clear that all my mental machinations about if I should keep them separate or together had been unnecessary. There was no possibility of keeping them together. My son put the new chickens in our gated back yard as a temporary holding spot and gently washed off Brahma’s injuries while I gave them food and water. The roosters had pecked one another on their combs, which is where the bleeding was from, but because my son stepped in as quickly as he did, the injuries were minor.

I created a shady area for them, put a nesting box under a private corner and since I had to leave for the rest of the day, made a temporary roost for them for the night by placing our pool ladder under a covered area of the shed so they would feel protected. I assumed that being the big and heavy birds they were, they wouldn’t be able to fly over the six foot fence – according to what I read, they don’t fly higher than 3 – 4 feet.

I came back hours later with my daughter from her school party, and I saw a large shape sitting on top of our grill opposite the entrance to our yard. It was Brahma. The gate to the backyard was still closed and the only way out was over. So much for being too heavy to fly. And the hens were nowhere in sight.

My extensive search by flashlight didn’t turn up anything, but fortunately when my teens got home a couple of hours later, they searched again and this time found them in a corner that I overlooked. I felt terrible to have ‘lost’ them on their first day with us and was so relieved when they were found. (Not to mention it would have been an financial loss since I paid 500 shekels for the three of them.)

My husband is especially enjoying these chickens and their very calm and gentle energy. He said they’re very ‘zen’ chickens.

While the backyard is working for right now (we put them in a large cage in our locked shed at night so they’re completely secure), now we need to build another coop for them…another day, another project!

Avivah

Adding more chickens to our flock?

Micro Homesteading,

Thank you to all of you who took time to comment and share feedback on what you appreciate reading about here! If you haven’t yet commented, it’s not too late to share what interests you – I read and appreciate every single comment.

Today dd7 has a siddur party; they’ll be rehearsing in the hall where it will be held, and she needs to be picked up early. I’ll need to drive there to get here (it’s an hour away), then go back together with her for the performance after an hour or so at home. That will give her time to shower and for me to braid her hair, and to eat something before we leave. That means that most of my day will be busy with getting her to this performance and then attending it, with us getting home in the evening past her bedtime.

Of course on such a full day I need to add completely voluntary activities to my schedule, like going to look at some purebred Brahma chickens for sale locally before I leave to pick up dd.

Why am I thinking about getting these chickens?

On Friday we finally processed our homegrown roosters. (That same morning we had an amazing hatch rate from the eggs my son incubated; we now have almost fifty chicks from a batch of a bit over 60 eggs!) Previously we had five roosters that were shechted (slaughtered) by someone who wasn’t expert in mixed breed chickens (they swallow their windpipe when alarmed and that causes problems in the kosher slaughtering) and they all came out not kosher. We took the eight remaining roosters (we’re keeping two of our purebred Plymouth Barred Rock roosters) to a new shochet (kosher slaughterer). Six of the eight were kosher, and we were very satisfied with his price, approach and skill.

My husband and sons are able to pluck, clean and kasher the birds. Not having a shochet who could kill our birds was our biggest impediment to raising our own birds for meat. Now that we have a reliable way to process our homegrown roosters, that changes everything for us.

If you can’t eat them, roosters are mostly a liability. But if we can eat them, then we have a good source of high quality chicken that we can produce ourselves.

Until now, my focus was on eggs so it didn’t matter to me what breed we had because if they reliably laid eggs, that was what we wanted. With the possibility of eating our chickens comes new choices to make.

The chickens I’m going to look at are a large breed that would be ideal for meat birds. They have a calm and gentle personality and are decent but not amazing egg layers.

My hesitation is that to keep the chickens purebred, they need to be kept separate. When my son bought two pairs of purebred Plymouth Rocks three years ago, his intention was to create a purebred flock. Plymouth rocks are good layers and good meat birds, so they’re called dual purpose chickens. They also are fine in our hot climate and have pleasant dispositions, so we’ve never had to worry about aggressive roosters.

However, he never separated them from his mixed flock, since it would have meant either getting rid of all his mixed hens or building a new coop. That meant that we continue to have a mixed flock with a few purebreds mixed in. All of their eggs look similar, so I don’t have the option of only hatching the purebred eggs. The mixed chickens are smaller which is fine for laying hens but not so much for eating.

I could easily sell off all of our laying hens and start again with only the bigger purebreds, but am reluctant to do that because we’re finally getting a good amount of eggs a day and I expect it to increase in the next few weeks as the youngest hens mature and begin laying- right now we’re getting 10 eggs daily, which is a nice amount. It takes at least five months for a chick to grow into a layer, and Brahmas can take a year until they begin laying.

To keep them separate, which would be the obvious solution, I’d need to build another coop and I don’t know where or when we would build it, plus that’s more financial outlay on top of the cost of the new chickens.

However, we’re already doing the work of hatching our own eggs and then raising the chicks, so if we could get offspring that would be a good size.

Sometimes decisions like this take so much headspace, the thinking and rethinking and thinking again…and no motion happens in any directions.

I finally decided I’ll just go look at the chickens and seeing them will hopefully help me have clarity and I’ll put all of this mental circling around to rest.

Avivah

The chicks are hatching!

Gardening, Homemaking

I got home with dd 6from her therapy appointment on Friday and was greeted by the first chicks to have hatched – twenty cute little balls of cuteness.

My son decided in the summer that he wanted to sell his flock because he’s too busy to continue being involved in chicken care. I’ve gotten used to having chickens around and really like them, so we decided to buy his flock. Though we agreed that I would take over all the care and hatching of the chickens, that didn’t happen as intended – I do most of the chicken care but he and my fourteen year old have dealt with all of the incubation tasks.

Being transferred from the incubator to their new coop

My son built this incubator a couple of years ago using a small fridge someone gave away as the housing, then wired in all the electric elements that he purchased separately. It has the capacity to incubate a large number of eggs at a time and has served us well.

Here’s a rare look inside our incubator – my son doesn’t like to leave the door open more than an instant because he wants the temperature to stay constant so the eggs hatch and then once there are chicks, he doesn’t want them to get cold. So I usually only see the chicks once they’re out of the incubator.

Below you can see the different levels. The empty shells are from the chicks that hatched out; once they hatch he transfers them to the bottom floor so there’s no risk of them injuring a foot by getting it caught in the netting of the higher shelves. They stay there in the incubator for a day after hatching before being transferred to the outdoor cage that he built that has a heat lamp. When they’re old enough, they’ll be transferred to the coop with the adult chickens.

Here’s a chick starting to break through his shell
The newly hatched chicks still in the incubator, staying warm next to the heat light

It’s a lot of chicks but experience has shown that a large hatch rate doesn’t always equal a large survival rate. Last year seventy chicks were lifted out of their covered brooder pens in our yard by foxes over a two night period; we didn’t know that that was even a possibility and it wasn’t until neighbors who also lost chicks checked their security cameras and saw the foxes making repeated trips into their yard on the same night that we understood how our chicks disappeared. Then there’s the unavoidable chick who isn’t strong enough to survive. We’ve learned from experience and hopefully most of these will survive.

Avivah

Getting ready for the fall season, plans for the week

food preservation, Gardening, Homemaking

Last week we were busy getting our yard ready for the rain, which turned into a race against the weather!

I’m so glad we enlarged our goat pen before the holidays, because there was so much to do to get things in the yard waterproofed before the first rain of the year (for about seven consecutive months a year we don’t get rain here in Israel). First and most important was the goat pen: the boys built a roof frame, then lined it with what they were told was a waterproof tarp.

We were rushing to get the hay covered as the rain began. It quickly turned into a downpour, and we were relieved to have finished the goat pen roof in time…until it became clear that the waterproof tarps we used weren’t waterproof after all, when we saw the water was dripping through onto our unhappy goats.

Talk about finding alternative solutions quickly! I suggested grabbing the large blue foam mats that we used under the pool and stapling them up; they did that in the pouring rain and then we all ran for cover.

They took the entire roof off to redo it on a sunny day, but it began raining before it was put back on. They once again ran to get it over the goats, but the pen had gotten soaked and the next day I and one of the boys had to completely clean everything out.

Until now, I’ve been cleaning out the dirty hay by shoveling it into a thirty liter barrel, then carrying to the chicken run and dumping it in. I do a load every two or three days. The chickens love picking out any insect larvae and with their constant scratching and pecking, break down the hay and in essence, compost it. My plan has been to eventually pull all that composted hay out of their coop to use on the garden beds.

With the sudden huge pile of wet hay, it was too much work to take it all to the chicken coop, so I changed direction and after shoveling it all onto the garden beds, suggested to my son he let the chickens out into the yard to work the hay. They’ve been loving free-ranging again, and we’re enjoying our ‘chicken tv’ again, as we sit in the yard watching their antics.

Speaking of the chickens, we need to cover more of their coop area with a waterproof material as well. Since part of their coop is rain-proof, we put our focus on getting the rabbits and goats waterproofed. Then after the downpour I noticed some of them were wet; I suppose they didn’t want to limit themselves to staying in the dry area. So this week my son will extend that for them.

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Today my plans include making a huge pot of compote, then canning it all up so we can enjoy it in the winter.

I’ve done all my winter clothes shopping for the boys, but I still need to organize it all. We’re at the stage of the days being hot but the mornings being cold enough for winter wear. So in the next couple of days I hope to finish getting all the clothes sorted.

Also in the next couple of days I need to figure out how to transport a buck to our home for breeding. I’ve been pushing this off until the pen was enlarged and then rainproofed; now I need to get this done or risk missing the breeding season. (Goats need to be bred to continue to produce milk.) I think we’ll keep him here for a few weeks, and will see how that affects what has been a smooth running daily routine with our three females. Male goats have a reputation for not being fun to have around and their presence supposedly makes the milk taste more ‘goaty’.

When I ordered two bales of hay, it was with the thought it would get me through until the next hay season. Then we got a third goat (it was going to be for my daughter and then ended up a better fit for us), and now with the male goat…we’re going to be needing much more hay than I initially planned for! In a non-shmita year, I would order a bale at a time, but now even though I have a lot left, I need to order more this week while the hay farmer still has non-shmita bales (from the year before last) available.

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When I bought barrels for animal feed from a private seller a few months ago, he offered me a couple of rusty hoes for free (just the head, no handles). Seeing they were heavy duty metal, I accepted them, figuring we could sand them down and get new handles for them. I’ve been very disappointed with how poor the quality of new garden tools are – almost every rake and shovel I’ve bought has broken after less than a year of use. Not heavy duty use, either. The first shovel that I bought seven or eight years ago is still going strong, though, even though it’s seen much more use than all of the new implements put together.

I haven’t gotten to sanding them down these rusty hoes yet (and it’s not on my list of immediate projects to do since they’re usable without sanding) but we did get new handles that fit perfectly at the hardware store. Additionally, I’ve bought a couple new shovels and two hand trowels. The trowels look like excellent quality and if I can keep track of them and not lose them (I tend to put them down and then forget where I put them…) they should last a long time.

After a year of not touching the garden because of shmitta, there has been a lot of work to do – weeding, trimming, pruning. I’ve gotten a lot of garden clean-up done in the last couple of weeks. This week I’d like to get some seeds into the ground and will see if I can get a crop before it gets cold. The vegetables I’m thinking about traditionally are planted in the spring so I don’t know if planting now is being smart by optimizing the planting season or being overly optimistic. We have a warm climate and sometimes even in January it’s warm so it theoretically could work; all I have to lose is some seeds and some time, so I’m willing to experiment.

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There’s lots more to do this week, but these are my ‘discretionary’ projects. I’m conscious of how much these activities add to my day, but I do them to the degree that it works for me, and it’s a nice feeling to be purposefully busy.

Avivah

Busy in the kitchen – it’s the fall and it feels like harvest season!

canning, food preservation, Gardening, Healthy Living, home remedies, Intentional Spending, lacto fermentation

My newest grandson’s bris was a week ago on Thursday, and all of our family members stayed for Shabbos, which was lovely. We held off on my birthday circle for a week to celebrate with more family present. I don’t remember what inspired me to begin the birthday circle tradition and when we started – though I know it’s been at least ten years – but it’s become so rich and meaningful to hear people share what they appreciate about the birthday celebrant, and I personally found it very touching and affirming. (My 28 year old son was amazed at the depth of what his 12 year old brother shared – he said he couldn’t have thought of things like that at such a young age. But then again, he hadn’t grown up listening to birthday circles for years by the time he was 12!)

Sandwiching the enjoyment of time with extended family has been different kitchen projects I’ve been busy with of late.

Making applesauce. Canning applesauce. Using apple scraps to make apple cider vinegar. Canning pomelos. Using the pomelo peels to make a citrus cleanser. Making washing soda. Mixing up a new batch of all purpose cleaning powder (which I’ve been using as a frugal eco alternative to laundry detergent). Making meat broth. Canning meat broth. Canning meat. Canning beans. Canning beef stew. Canning 21 pints of mandarin oranges, then turning them into 7 pints of jam. Making lacto fermented lemons. Harvesting moringa. Drying moringa.

Most of these were new projects to me, and new projects always take more time since I have to learn about it before doing it.

I canned low pressure foods like meat and beans when living in the US but sold my pressure canner when I made aliya over ten years ago. Since the winter I’ve been thinking I really, really want to have a pressure canner again, and been wondering how to get one from the US to Israel (since the shipping and taxes are so high if I have it shipped directly, it would be almost three times the cost of the canner itself!). It finally occurred to me to ask my sister if I ordered one and had it sent to her in the US, would she be able to mail it to me? I am so deeply appreciative for her willingness to help me out, and though I had only asked this favor with the agreement I would pay shipping costs, she refused to let me reimburse her (and shipping was more than the cost of the canner). I can’t tell you how happy I was when it arrived three weeks ago – it’s like having an old friend back in my kitchen with me!

This year I want to spend some time learning more about herbal remedies. I’m heavily reliant on vitamin C, because if you know how to properly dose (most people think that 1000 mg is a normal dose to take when sick and that’s hardly worth anything), it takes care of just about everything. Literally. However, it’s something I order from afar that I can’t manufacture on my own (at least not yet – as I wrote that, it occurred to me that maybe that’s something to research, too!) and with a shaky supply chain it’s foolish for me to rely so heavily on someone else for something critical to my family’s health. While every locale has its own medicinal plants available, learning to use them it requires learning and that takes time!

One beautiful plant I have growing in my garden is ‘sheba’. I didn’t know what it was when I bought it – I thought it was pretty so I planted it. I misspelled it in Hebrew when searching for the English translation, so I didn’t find out what it was for quite some time. I asked others who grew it if they knew what it was, and they told me it was very healthy and useful in multiple ways…but didn’t know the translation. I was excited to finally learn that it’s called wormwood, one of the most powerful anti-fungal herbs in the world. Right in my garden without me realizing it! This morning I was noticing how lush it’s become and it needs to be harvested. That’s now been added to my list of things to learn about. 🙂

Busy and blessed, that’s me!

Avivah

Is there anything cuter than baby chicks??

Gardening, Homeschooling

Every morning, I go out with the leftovers from dinner to feed the chickens – as soon as they see me they run from the far side of the yard for their breakfast! Our chickens have a very nice life free ranging in the yard and they return the favor by scratching around in my garden beds, eating bugs and fertilizing the soil – it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. Then they turn my scraps into eggs – and now, into baby chicks!

Yesterday afternoon ds14 came in with great excitement to announce that there were two newly hatched chicks. His hen made her nest at the base of the pandorea vine, and was almost completely surrounded by the leaves. I could hardly make out one chick – he said the other was under its mother.

This morning, I thought I’d be helpful and put food next to her nest so she doesn’t have to go hungry while sitting on her eggs. But she jumped up with the others to get food, so I peered in. I saw one little chick looking solemnly out at me. I stepped back to look around to see where the other chick was, and saw it had followed its mother. Then that one ventured out to join them, so all three had breakfast with the others.

Many mornings after putting ds9 and ds4 on their school van mornings I go out and sit in the yard and just sit and watch the chickens. They’re very entertaining, much more than ducks.

I thought that ducklings were the cutest thing ever, but I think it might actually be baby chicks. I had the strongest desire to just scoop up and stroke the little chick learning to walk on his new legs, but I didn’t. Instead I took a picture for you.

Ds14 has had a variety of experiences raising poultry – starting with ducks, then quail, then chickens and lastly geese, and has decided that chickens are the very best. (I agree.) These chickens hatch their own eggs, versus him needing to incubate the eggs for all the other birds. Did you think that all birds hatch their own eggs? Not at all. It’s been bred out of them, I suppose. After all the ups and down and various experiences he’s had, it’s been especially gratifying for him to watch his flock multiply without his intensive involvement.

As we were watching together, he commented, “It’s so nice for the chickens to have mothers.” As attentive and responsible as he is, it’s a qualitatively different experience being raised by a mother hen, who keeps her chicks warm under her, teaches them to run and forage, shows them how to be safe, and protects them from threats.

Mother hen with chicks that are less then a day old

It’s also really nice for him to watch things come full circle. He bought the original chicks in the beginning of the spring when they were two weeks old. A few died in the early days, a couple were sold as they got bigger (not more than one rooster, I insisted!) but mostly he’s watched them grow and it’s really nice now to see them with chicks of their own.

These tiny guys aren’t the first chicks to hatch this season. Four chickens went broody all at once – one hen made her nest in one area, and three others all sat in nests right next to one another. The first eggs to hatch were from one of the three hens – only two eggs hatched, and those hens sitting right next to the mother were just as proud and protective as if they were their own (none of the other eggs hatched). Those chicks are now about six weeks old, and they still all travel together, as well as another hen who latched on to them as soon as the first chicks hatched. My son says they have four mothers; I think of them as one mother and three very devoted aunts.

The second hen hatched three eggs, and she runs around on her own with them.

Mother hen with six weeks old chicks

It was a surprise when ds found the new nest a week or two ago; it was well hidden and he wasn’t expecting it. There are eight more eggs still in the nest and when dd21 checked them she said they all look viable. We were pleasantly surprised that they were fertile since the rooster was rehomed before Sukkos. I don’t know what we’re going to do with them if they all hatch, but one thing is for certain – they aren’t all going to stay here!

Avivah

The critical importance of opportunity for expansion

Gardening, Parenting

As you know, I enjoy gardening and I often notice how the natural principles of growth and development express in the garden just as in parenting.

Part of my evolving garden landscape – so many lessons in this small space!

Recently, I planted a number of flower bulbs, some in the ground, and others layered lasagna style in two pots. In each pot I planted the same bulbs in the same pattern. Once I finished, I placed the two pots three feet from one another, one on each side of our patio bench swing. It became quickly apparent that one was getting more sun than the other, as one grouping of bulbs was sprouting much more quickly. When I noticed this, I placed the lagging bulbs in the sun to help them catch up. I took this picture after it had been catching up in full sun over a week.

Every child is born with potential. Some get the sunlight and water they need in the ideal proportions, and their beautiful growth is visible. Others who may have the same potential don’t have their needs met in the same way, and as a result they appear more limited. However, the limitation wasn’t inherent in who they are, but in what resources were available to them.

Here’s another illustration. These two plants were identical when I purchased them. One was planted right away, the other was transferred to a pot while I decided where its long-term location would be. The one in the ground not only had more light, even more significantly it had room to spread its roots and grew dramatically bigger in a short time.

Right – bush planted in the ground with room to spread its roots; left – bush whose growth was limited by the pot size

Roots need to reach and seek new footholds to become stronger and more established. I’ve noticed that many parents and educators have a lot of fear about giving children room to grow. While hopefully everyone will agree that children need love and warmth, many will argue that it’s dangerous to allow children unsupervised time.

My twenty year old daughter is a dorm counselor in a seminary, and the girls were complaining that they came to Israel for the experience, and instead are spending much of their free time doing the mounds of homework they are assigned. She went to the dorm mother to ask about why the girls are given so much homework. Before she told me the answer, I interrupted and said, “Let me guess! Because if they aren’t kept busy they’ll get into trouble.”

Yep, that’s exactly what my daughter confirmed she was told.

For years I’ve said that kids need to learn to manage their time, and they can only do that by being allowed to have unstructured time. Sometimes that will be filled productively and sometimes the person will be bored. Boredom isn’t dangerous. Boredom is a learning opportunity.

What’s dangerous is not allowing people room for personal expansion. If the potted plant above was left in a pot long term, it would never look much bigger or better than it does right now – let alone become the very big and lush bush it’s genetically intended to be.

Learning to manage one’s own time is a skill that develops over time. You can’t expect anyone to suddenly have lots of time on their hands and to make good use of it, if he hasn’t had opportunities to take responsibility for his time prior to that.

When I plant something in my garden, I don’t know how big it’s going to get or how well it’s going to grow. Sometimes it gets too big for the space I allotted it, and I move it to where it will have more space. Some may later need to be carefully pruned.

But I can’t plant something in the garden and not give it room to put down its roots. That will compromise the inherent potential of the plant. The roots are what provide support for the visible strength and growth of the plant, and strong roots are what support our children for their entire lives.

Avivah