Out of our three hens -- Portia, Ellen and Red, our little Miss Red has taken a gold medal in egg laying, even if her first egg doesn't look much like anything you'd find in the market (super OR farmers). It actually looks like a tube of liquid make-up I bought a long time ago, even down the the color. Anyway, of all my hens, Red is by far the tamest, with the most personality. If she's not petted enough, she won't hesitate to pack at my ankles. In the mornings she squawks the most to be allowed to free-range around the yard. She Da Man. Or Da Head Hen.
So this morning, when she got the undeniable feeling that something strange was going on deep inside her, she showed up outside the window to our library, looking in at me and squawking plaintively. Poor thing. She was clearly saying, "What in the HELL is going on with me? Help!" An woman who has ever been in labor understands this. It's the universal language of birth. So I went outside to help. I opened up the chicken coop for her, picked her up and said a few gentle encouraging words to her, scratched her waddle (which she loves) and set her down. Immediately she ran upstairs to the actual coop and nesting boxes and deposited her achievement. She then ran back down the ramp and squawked for another 15 minutes or so, before getting back to her usual, bossy, lovable self.
The start of fresh egg season is huge to us, because owning our own flock was one of the reasons we bought country property. Thanks, Red!
In a couple of weeks the guys from Lowe's will be coming to rip out the carpet in our main rooms and install Pergo in its place. I can't even begin to convey how excited I am. Parts of our carpet were used as litter boxes by the former owner's cats, so we are thrilled indeed to finally be able to get rid of the stinky carpet, seal the concrete underneath it, and put some wood flooring under our feet.
There's also an energy conservation issue at stake here. Wood floors require sweeping, and wall-to-wall carpet requires an electric vacuum. One uses energy in the form of human calories, and the other in electrical kilowatts. Honestly, since we've lived here, vacuuming has become my least favorite task. It takes forever, and seems to suck up both lint AND time. Plus places like dining rooms are no place for carpet -- wood flooring will be easier to remove spills from and our chairs will move more easily on wood than carpet.
Just one more way we're turning this house into our homestead.
Oh, you can't feel it in the air yet, but there's no question that cooler days and nights are just around the corner. This week it's been 100 degrees, but as the ancient Chinese wisdom says, whether it's something good or something bad, "this too shall pass." So the other day I made a trip into town, first to the propane place and second, to the fireplace store, to get us set up for cooler weather. Because it will be here before you know it.
Our home runs off propane, which I'm learning is about the second most expensive way to heat a home -- the first being throwing dollar bills directly into the fireplace and lighting them. We bought $899 dollars worth of "pre-buy" (bought at cheaper summer rates, in advance of winter) propane, which should give us roughly two tankfuls.
So how much will we use? I have no idea. We're pretty energy efficient, but the men do love their long showers and I occasionally take a bath instead of a shower, which uses a lot more hot water. And that's not factoring how much propane we'll use to heat the home, which is kind of a mystery as it's our first winter here.
So we've been thinking about energy efficiency a lot this week. And that led us to the fireplace store. Because we knew when we bought this place that our fake, decorative fireplace just happens to run on...you guessed it: propane. So off we went in search of alternative heating options.
Long story short, we settled on a high-efficiency pellet stove. We thought about a woodstove, by far the simplest and most off-the-grid option, but as my husband pointed out, we're not getting any younger and splitting cords of logs may not be something that's feasible for us to consider doing in the long run. A pellet stove has more electronics and therefore a higher failure rate, but will not require the use of a full-time lumberjack.
So the stove should be installed next week and we should be ready for whatever comes in winter. I've got to say, I'm excited about it. I'm really hoping heating our home with the pellet stove makes our propane go farther, since it costs $600 a month as opposed to using wood pellets, which will cost about $70 a month (according to the fireplace dealer).
Either way, more money in our pockets and less going up the chimney will be a good thing. It's hard to imagine those cold days and nights now, but never too soon to begin planning for them. Because winter is coming. No doubt about it.
It happens every year at about this time...tomatoes ripen and need to be canned for the winter months, when they'll be used in chili and stews. This year, we moved at a time when I normally would have been putting in the summer garden, so I have nothing growing to put up (except a few quarts of nectarines from the tree we inherited from the former owners). But my husband was able to procure, through a farming friend, all these lovely organic Roma tomatoes, and so canning will begin in earnest tomorrow. I'm also going to finally put the solar food dehydrator I got last year to use, and hopefully cut up and dry some of these so we can have sun-dried tomatoes for our pizzas. Feels good to be doing this, and to know that it won't be long now until fall comes, when I will be able to put in a garden and get back to the homesteading business, as usual.
One thing I've noticed about where we live is that people do not wave to each other as much as they did in the old town. Even in our new neighborhood, where there are few cars and therefore more chance to acknowledge those who pass you on the other side of the road, I've seen plenty of people drive by me, stone-faced, pretending they do not see me give a little wave or nod to them as we passed on a quiet country road.
I'm not exactly sure why this is, but it may have something to do with the fact that many residents here are ex-pat Los Angelenos. In Los Angeles, nobody waves as anyone. Matter of fact, you can consider yourself lucky if no one shoots at you. And lest you think I'm slamming LA with no real knowledge of it, that's not the case. I lived there for the first 30 years of my life.
But here's the thing. The people here are people who managed to somehow get out of the city and relocate to paradise. I mean it. And they must KNOW it, right? That's why they left. You'd think such an abundant blessing in their life would make them so grateful they'd want to blow kisses to their friends and neighbors ... even the ones they haven't met yet. Instead, they seem like they took the blessing of being relocated north, into the seventh realm of Heaven, and simply brought their LA manners along with them. "I'm here -- but who gives a shit if you are?" is what it says.
In case you're wondering if it's just on the road we see this, it's not. People routinely jostle us out of the way in the grocery aisles, walking down the street, or in department stores. They're either totally bullheaded or totally unconscious. It's almost as if they're in a dream where they are the only real person and everyone around them are shadows.
So my husband and I have started the Wave Brigade. Regardless of whether they wave back, we will smile and wave at our neighbors. We will be polite in the shopping aisles, and we will let people turn in front of us if we can do so safely.
It's gotta start somewhere. Why not with a wave?
The air is clean here and I find myself standing outside, breathing in lungfuls of it the way a thirsty person drinks water. When the wind comes up, it's not filled with dust but rather the smell of the sea, and I indulge in healthy lungfuls of that as well. I have noticed there is not nearly as much dust as where I used to live, and what dust does settle on the furniture is softer, more like lint particles and less like dirt particulates.
The actual dirt or soil, on the other hand, is much poorer than where we came from. It's rocky. We live on a hilltop, and you can tell the builders literally scraped a flat spot on the hill in order to build this house and yard. The dirt at the bottom of the hill, which is still our property, is much better. Of course it is. It's filled up with the sediment of all the topsoil that washed down the hill over the last 20 years.
So we're going to have to plant species of plants around the property which don't mind poor soil -- things like grapes and lavender. And the soil in our raised vegetable beds will have to be imported from someplace else and kept enriched with healthy additions of compost, once our animal operation gets going. This is not the kind of yard where you can go out, plant a broccoli or snap pea and expect it to thrive. It's always a trade off, but I'm thinking that while you can enrich your soil or plant in raised beds, if your air is bad it's hopeless.
So it will be awhile before we start seeing food from this ground we live on. But until then, I'm going to dine on the fresh air, and be thankful for that.
Not everyone who lives in the country should be living in the country. Some people are just more comfortable with the appearance and amenities of city life. For example, the lady who lived in our house before us landscaped her yard area in much the same way a person in the suburbs would. There is a vast expanse of lawn -- a half-acre by our estimation -- a few shrubs around for contrast and some trees here and there. Only one serves any purpose, it's a nectarine tree and produces tons of delicious fruit. The others just exist, producing oxygen I suppose, but not much else.
There's a large side yard which will be eliminated as well. That's where our chicken house and raised vegetable beds will be going, which will also use much less water than a lawn does.
Outside our back door there's another medium-sized lawn, and this lawn will be staying. It will be where our dogs, and maybe someday, our grandkids will play. It's a nice place for grownups to hang out, too. Because this lawn is a reasonable size and shape, we will continue watering it, but by eliminating the other two lawns, we will reduce our water usage by two-thirds, at least. Not bad.
Let the lawn-killing commence.
