Long time no write

It's been a busy busy week.

Serious stuff---I quit my job. Yay! Sanity is more important than money any day and it was beyond time to make this move. I have been offered the opportunity to be a back up teacher for a local hospital (for newborn, childbirth and breastfeeding classes) and my first two classes went quite well, with very good reviews from the students, so hopefully more of that comes my way. I'm going to talk to the other hospital in town (that currently offers none of those classes :-o ) about teaching over there too. I'm just waiting for CAPPA to send me a copy of my childbirth educator certificate b/c it seems to have disappeared when we moved. We will be pinching pennies even more than normal for the next year or so until Josh finishes his PhD, but of course we sat down and looked at our budget before making this decision and we think it will work out. This will also afford me the opportunity to take full advantage of the day to complete gardening/canning/preserving tasks---and becoming proficient at that stuff is a LARGE part of our long term goals.

More fun stuff---the winter harvest is just about over. My brussels sprouts are sad sad little plants. They made gorgeous sprouts and then it got warm and the sprouts opened up. Then it got cold and the plant shot up and added more sprouts, then it got warm....ah, you get the picture. We didn't get anything from them. The cabbage all got turned into sauerkraut (well, it's fermenting as we speak...it needs another week or so before it's sauerkraut). And the carrots......I have pictures to show you of the carrots. Here's Sierra showing off what happens when a carrot hits a clod of dirt:


And here's a japanese imperial carrot that did not hit a dirt clod. These things are so long I'm pretty sure the grew all the way to the bottom of the raised beds and into the soil below!!


One tray on the dehydrator full of carrots (we ended up drying 6 trays worth, about 1/3 of the carrots are still outside in the ground)

And that same tray the next morning:

Carrots dehydrate down to nothing, which is great--a garden full of carrots can be condensed down to a couple quart freezer bags. Then through out the year, whenever I make any kind of soup, I just throw in a handful of dried carrots and they plump right up!

One chicken has decided she is the queen of the roost. She demonstrates this by shaking a tail feather in the face of confinement:


She never explored the room, just perched up there and then got back in the tub. We decided it was time for a bigger (less escapable) enclosure anyway though. The chickens also got to spend the day outside in the coop. It's still not totally done, but it holds them just fine for the moment (they won't move outside full time for a few more weeks). Here's a few pictures of the coop:



And the chickens enjoying the nice weather today;