an imperfect something

 

Of the four seasons none is met by my household with a greater sigh of relief than spring. Is it the same at your house?

Autumn gives reprieve from the oppressive heat of summer.

Winter begins a well earned break from summer and fall chores.

But spring…
 

SPRING is JOY personified.
 

Under the influence of the season I remember that we came here with the dream that one day this little acre will be lush and productive, and full of life-giving abundance; just like the earth in spring. And, this year productivity begins in the kitchen garden.

Not long ago we saw a video of a man who grows 30 fruit trees, 80 medicinal plants, 20-something berry bushes plus veggies in a 650 square foot garden. That’s abundance! That’s the dream!

Instead of looking at the whole property and being overwhelmed, Renoman and I have decided to focus on making the most of our 600 square feet of garden space…we learn and experiment and hopefully will grow green thumbs alongside the veggies, because we decidedly do not have them now!

It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes.
 

 

So far our imperfect something includes garlic, already 8 inches tall - except for bulbs I accidentally planted too deep; they are only up about 3. (I did mention the absence of green thumbs). Spinach is planted in little rows between the garlic spears.

 

 

Peas are planted along one section of the deer fence, and carrots & radish spiral in a roundish plot beside them. I’ve never had much luck with carrots…so my fingers are crossed that this will be, The Year of the Carrot.

Are you familiar with Freecycle? It’s an international, online community where members ask for things they need and give away things they don’t.

I asked for a comfrey plant the other week. Almost right away I had an email from a lady regretting the day she ever brought comfrey to her garden…

…and she asked, did I know what an invasive and utterly horrid plant it is? And I replied that I had only heard about how helpful and hardworking comfrey is. As an afterthought I should have sent this video with my reply…

 

Thankfully, another Freecycler was dividing her comfrey and offered me a piece; much bigger than I hoped! And, it transplanted beautifully.

 

There are three heritage piglets in my good neighbour’s barn and soon meat king chicks will be peeping in a corner of our bathroom. We’ll have animal antics all spring and summer and healthy meat for the freezer come fall.

 

I am already looking forward to having pastured pork lard to render for pies. Hopefully, I won’t scorch it as I did the tallow I rendered for soap last fall.

I’ve traded my dishcloth-making crochet hook for a bigger size.

With help from Youtube videos and fellow blogger, Vibeke, who inspires me with her beautiful crochet and blog, I’ve begun work on an afghan...my first. Another imperfect something, perhaps?

It is very exciting and I can’t wait until I have something substantial to show you!

 

Oh, yes! There’s been another mile stone for me health wise. We’ve removed the wheelchair ramp. Do you know what that means? I climb stairs well, and more importantly, descend them too!

Renoman is replacing the ramp with a deck just big enough for a chaise lounge, table and chair.

Won’t you come to share a pitcher of rhubarb juice when the deck is finished?

Wouldn’t that be cozy?

We could talk about gardening in small spaces, and handiwork projects and dreams that inspire us, all the day long.

Until next time…

breaking free

It’s been kind of hard to hold it together. I feel like I’m offending people all over the place. Mood swings and impulse control issues. Most likely it’s all happening mainly in my head.

 

I hope.

 

Today, I’m feeling pretty spunky and clear so I thought I’d come and visit you, my lovely friend, and explain what's been going on.  

Bluntly put, I’m in withdrawal.

I’m tapering off the final of my several oral drugs [still taking the daily injection]. It feels so good to say good-bye to this pharmaceutical and I’m truly happy about it. It feels like a huge triumph to have come this far in my recovery.

Progress over the past 2 1/2 years has been a miracle to me. The human body is so resilient. The human spirit unbelievably strong.

I remember lying at the hospital in emergency wondering if I'd ever be able to walk again.

I remember trying to push the words from my addled brain to my lips. "What... if... never... walk?" Four little words that took so much effort to say, but at that time seemed like the most important thing for me to know.

Now, it's 2 1/2 years into recovery and it's time to cross one more medication off the list. It is past being useful. I think.

I'm speaking totally normally now...walking, sometimes without a cane.

There is one problem though. It seems the only way out of recovery is to go through it.

The physical withdrawal from this med is uncomfortable, and psychologically what is going on inside my head is truly bazaar.

I looked it up on a couple of sites the other day.

And learned that coming off it is comparable to alcohol or benzodiazepine withdrawal. Does that paint a picture at all? What is benzodiazepine anyway?

There are still a couple of weeks to go before I get my equilibrium back. My Nurse Practitioner told me to take it slowly…decrease no faster than one increment each week, she said.

All this to finally say what I wanted to tell you in the first place. I will be taking a little break from blogging. Just until the fog in my head clears, and until I’m not afraid of what I might tell you anymore!

I try to keep the blog light and cheerful for you, and I really don't want to let you down. So, a break right now seems like a good idea.

Please forgive this little blip, but life isn't always cheerful and light, and this is a moment of un-cheerfulness in mine. The silver lining is that it's only a moment and my body will be one step closer to being totally drug free and that is a very cheerful thought indeed!

God bless.

‘til next time…

 

 

the easter bunny can't do this...

I love chickens! I like the way they walk. I like the way they scratch at the earth.

Or, pick seeds one-by-one from dry sprigs of grass.

I like watching them drop, flop and roll in a dust bath. And just when they look like they’ve breathed their last breath – I like the way they get up, shake themselves off and start scratching again.

I like the way they cluck, cluck, cluck when they find something fabulous to eat…and how their roost mates drop what they are doing and immediately run to eat some too.

 

 

I love collecting eggs.

Especially if they are still warm from the hen. They make ME feel proud to have them even though it was the hen that did the work of laying.

An egg fits perfectly into a cupped hand.

Or an apron pocket.

And even though I can’t break the shell by holding it end to end, it will crush with barely a squeeze holding it side to side.

 

 

Is it Easter? Not at all. Though it feels like it every time I open the fridge to get the eggs. They're from my good neighbour's barn. Her chickens have started laying again.

Like pulling on a pair of freshly laundered socks, sunlight is stretching the shortened days of winter into Spring.

Hens are stretching their well rested legs and going back to the nest boxes. It’s time to start laying the eggs that Winter’s Light has held captive.

We had been getting our eggs from the farmers market all winter. Recently, we made the switch to my neighbour.

My neighbour keeps lots of breeds.

Each hen lays a coloured egg unique to her.

 

 

The rainbow that greets me every time I open a carton from these hens is exciting! Lunch has changed from a parade of predictable brown eggs to a cheery arrangement of tan, blue, olive and pink.

It may sound silly to admit, but opening a carton of these eggs starts me smiling. It’s a smile that grows a little wider each time I crack an egg and see orange, sunshiny yolks smiling back at me.

It’s as though aaalll the sunlight stored from aaalll the days of winter is finally bursting forth from its imprisonment. And, I love that flurry of orange as much as I love chickens.

 

‘til next time…

 

p.s. Remember to join our community chicken board at Pinterest, and pin your favourite chicken photos.

p.p.s. In case you're curious, it’s the nutrient lutein that gives yolks their orange colour.

 

 

 

You can feed your chickens naturally sourced lutein by offering them leafy greens like kale, chard and spinach, calendula (the whole plant), alfalfa and tomatoes. 

white flour in your food storage? how did that get in there?

 

Welcome to Food Storage Friday! 

I do not store white flour. But, I’m going to tell you how.

 

A friend new to food storage asked me how to do it.

 

So, I explored a bit.

 

I’m going to share what I found with you.

Everyone knows there isn’t much nutrition in white flour. So, for the sake of this conversation, let’s call it comfort food.

Comfort foods aren’t necessarily nutritious, are they? They simply give comfort to the people eating them.

Think of grandma’s apple pie, or mum’s cinnamon rolls. Not much nutrition, but plenty of pleasure, good memories and love.

You should include comfort foods in your home storage.

 

 

 

I started looking for any information related to storage of white flour. I wanted something to back up what I eventually tell my friend.

I contacted customer service at two flour companies...Robin Hood™ and King Arthur Flour™…
 

Read the food storage page at the Mormon website…

Lurked on survivalist forums and blogs…

And visited the THRIVE™ food website.

I’ve steered away from claims that sounded like a ‘hoping for the best’ attitude…

 

…and kept focusing on methods that are tried and proven.

 

Food is too expensive to mess around with wishful thinking. Besides, would you want to break open the food storage in an emergency situation only to find that the hoping-for-the-best attitude didn’t preserve the food?

 

what are manufactures saying?

Both flour companies told me that all-purpose white flour, without doing anything more than putting it in air tight containers and sitting it in a cool place, has a shelf life of 18 months…

 

…from production date.

 

They also said that you can store it in the fridge or freezer if you like, but that will not change the shelf life.

 

I feel confident saying that the production date is not the day you buy your flour from the grocery store! Who knows how long flour has been stored before transit, spent in transit and left sitting on the grocer’s shelf after transit. 

 

read the code

Are you interested in knowing how to decipher the production date? Robin Hood™ explained how to read theirs.

"All of our products feature a manufacture code that indicates the date the product was made. It might look something like this 1 122 420 0321.

The first two sets of numbers in the manufacture code indicate when a product was made. The first number represents the year it was made. For instance, the 1 in our example code means it was made in 2011. A number 2 would mean it was made in 2012, and so on.

The next three numbers represent the day of the year the product was made. In our example, the 122 (or one hundred and twenty second day of the year) is May 2.

The remaining numbers are plant codes.”

 

prolonging shelf life for flour

Knowing how to store flour short term is very well, but to find a convincing answer for my friend what I really needed to know was…

Is there a way to give white flour a long term shelf life?

The flour companies did not even acknowledge that I asked this question.

 

answers from folks who walk the talk

I got some satisfaction from the Mormon long-term food storage page where I learned that white flour can be sealed with an oxygen absorber in #10 cans and Mylar bags to extend the shelf life.

They call it, oxygen reduced packaging.

However, they did not say how much oxygen reduced packaging extends the shelf life of flour.

 

I visited THRIVE™. It's a company that specializes in freeze dried and dehydrated food.

They sell bleached, white flour in#10 cans!

 

And, the ad copy says the flour has a 5 year shelf life and is good for up to 2 more years after opening.

 

Eureka!

 

The information finally pulled together and gelled.

Now, I’m ready to go answer my friend's flour storage question.

And we’ll talk all-things-food-storage over a fresh batch of mum’s cinnamon rolls and a tall glass of milk while I'm doing it! 

 

re-cap

§  Kept in air-tight containers in a cool place, untreated all-purpose flour has an 18 month shelf life from the production date whether it’s stored in the freezer or not.

§  How to read the manufacturer code on a bag of Robin Hood™ flour.

§  Yes, you can prolong the shelf life of white flour past 18 months.

§  Flour shelf life in Mylar bags or #10 cans is 5 years before opening and up to 2 years after if stored in a cool place.

 

‘til next time…

 

a community board on pinterest!

 

Attention Pinners!  The Little Acre that Could is inviting you to a party…a Pinning Party! It’s going to be a collaborative board and it’s going to be fantastic! I’ll tell you how to do it in a minute, but first a few words about why I’m having this party.

Here in North America it’s almost spring (blessed be!), and the chick orders are soon going in to the feed stores. Before long you’ll be listening to contented little peeps coming from your dining room or bathroom or living room or corner of the barn…wherever you like to set up the brooder over at your place.

While we wait for those tiny peeping balls of fluff to arrive I’ve found a way to help us get our chicken fix.  I’ve set up a community board on my Pinterest page where you can pin your favourite chicken photos.

You can pin anything from the cutest baby chick photos ever to ideas for that awesome coop you just know   is ‘pin worthy’.

Most importantly, you can add links to your own fabulous chicken posts!

Just email me at thelittleacrethatcould@hotmail.com   with your Pinterest name or email. [edit: only email addresses work for the invite.]  After I receive your email I will start following your boards, and then I will send you an invitation to the collaborative board.

You click on the link in the invitation to accept.

The board ‘click for chicks’ will show up in your board list and you start pinning!

Here’s an example of the process.

I follow Tammy from Our Neck of the Woods on Pinterest. I emailed her an invite. She clicked on the link in the invitation to accept and then started pinning her favourite chicken photos to the ‘click for chicks’ board. (Beautiful chicken photos of her own chickens I might add.)  

Piece of cake!

By the way, if the photos are from your own webpage or blog, like Tammy’s are, your blog will get new back links. If you are someone who likes to keep track of that sort of thing you know that’s pretty awesome. Right?

No Pinterest account? You can sign up for one here.

Installing the Pin It button to your tool bar will make pinning so much easier.  

Not interested in joining Pinterest, but still want to party with us? Send me your favourite chicken photos to the above address. Include the link to the original page if there is one. I will publish them for you in a post right here on my blog.

A pinning party! Oh my! I can feel a chicken fix coming on soon. This is going to be so much fun!  

Linking to The Backyard Farming Connection   

‘til next time…