Curb Appeal

Andy had a commitment this afternoon but I really was getting tired of looking at our sorry window boxes:

So, despite my misgivings in trying to do any sort of project while in sole charge of the kids, I decided we were going to go for it. Surprisingly, despite the loss of about a cubic foot of potting soil (some was spilled while "helping me", some was deliberately dumped instead of helping me, and at least a handful was eaten by Elias) we managed to get it done. we cleared out the dead plants and old soil, and refilled them with shade loving flowers - mostly varieties of impatients and begonias, and a couple blue flowering vines that supposedly like shade. I ended up with 5 extra 6-packs of impatients, so I planted them around the stairs.


and after:

whole front of the house:

It really does make a huge difference from the street, but looking at these pictures it's not really appearing as a dramatic effect. The pictures aren't really capturing the extent of the improvement, but oh well. It really does look much better now.

In the back of the house, we have the truly awesome Hen Palace, built entirely by Andy and I have to say I am impressed. It's really nice.

Here are some interior shots of where the hens roost at night, for safety. you can also see the nest boxes he built with a separate hinged roof, to make egg collection easier:

The thing is a veritable 5-star hen hotel. It has indoor and outdoor areas. shaded and sunny areas. some grassy area, some dirt for pecking and scratching....and yet. One thing we didn't anticipate is that we would end up with the 5 dumbest hens on the planet. In all the chicken books I read, it just explained what sort of living environment was ideal for hens - some indoor area, some outdoor area, secure from predators, etc. It provided plans for building a luxury chicken coop just like the one we built. But our stupid chickens can't figure out how to get in and out of the coop (where, according to the book, it is their instinct to go in at night and roost, and come out during the day and forage, peck, wander around, whatever.) When the coop was completed, we put them in to the run, where they pecked around. as night started to fall, they showed no interest into going into the coop to roost. So we had to actually enter the coop ourselves, catch them, and put them in for the night. In the morning, we opened the door. surely, they would walk down the ramp into their fenced area to forage around and do what hens do. Nope. By noon, they were still all in the coop. I started to worry about them starving, so I moved their food and water (which is supposed to be out in their run) into the coop and tried to shoo them down the ramp. no such luck. they're STILL in there now, and it's 5pm. The door is open, they just can't or don't want to walk through it. dummies.

......I'd Be Rich

If I had a nickel for every conversation I had, exactly like this one:

Person: "So, how are you guys settling into Lakeville?"
Me: (politely, if unenthusiastically) "Well, thanks."
Person: "you guys are right in town, right? Do you LOVE it?!"
Me: "We're settling in. Getting the house in order. Starting to come together."
Person: (visibly consternated that I am not singing loudly the praises of the eden that is Lakeville) "wait, you guys haven't been here for a summer yet, right? you came in the fall."
Me: "right. well, technically we got out here mid august last year, but we were in a rental far from campus while we sold our house and got our bearings and figured out where we wanted to live. We didn't move to Lakeville until November."
Person: "Ahhhh. that explains it. Just wait till the grove opens and you're here for a summer. You'll love it. Especially where you are."
Me: (inwardly rolling eyes, outwardly polite.) "So I've heard. Can't wait! thanks!"

....I'd be rich.


Everyone told us to buy a house in Lakeville. Despite this, we started our house search in Great Barrington and Egremont, MA. I was dead set on living over the MA border. Our realtor gamely showed us houses, but kept hinting that if we were working in the Lakeville/Sharon area, we really should consider looking at properties in CT, because we'd really hate the winter commute and she was sure we were just going to want to be in Lakeville in the summer anyways. It's so great! So we looked at places in Lakeville and Sharon. We saw a huge house in Sharon that I was in love with, 2 miles from the hospital I work at, 5 bedrooms, being sold by an elderly couple who needed to go into nursing care and so priced lower than it was worth. We almost moved on it, but we kept getting nudged by well meaning locals in our house search back into Lakeville, to a house near the lake. We ended up in this little house in the middle of town 1/2 mile from the town beach, which everyone calls "the grove". It was really small, and didn't have a huge yard, which we assumed we would get since we were moving to the country. It was a little oddly laid out. The space definitely could have been used better in the original floor plan, and it would take more money than we want to put into it to make those changes now. It needs some updating. And yet, everyone - including our realtor, who would have made twice as big of a commission on the sharon house - kept telling us that if we were considering getting a place on Prospect St. we'd be crazy not to grab it, and so we did. I've been tepid on the house from the get go. I figured it would be passable once we did the necessary improvements, but I definitely didn't LOVE it and there were aspects of it I really didn't like. However, despite the fact that I come from a long line of people who are constitutionally incapable of admitting they were wrong under any circumstance, a character trait which I definitely inherited more than a touch of - I hereby announce to the great wide internets, everyone was right. Lakeville IS great in the summer. Today was the opening weekend for the town lake, so I put the kids in the stroller and rolled on down to see what this vaunted grove was all about. It's a great little beach - tons of sand, tons of grassy area, the requisite fries n' soft serve hut, docks for boating and swimming, grills for grilling, etc. There are lifeguards, a little kid section (blocked in by docks, supervised by a lifeguard, with water that only goes up to about Owen's waist) so you really can just let the littles go play. And the best part is that the grove is only open to people who either live here or rent a house for more than a month (and can prove it with a utility bill or a lease), and because the town is so small, it's always people you know and never crowded. Most of Owen's preschool class and their families were there - this is a small town, so that's about 9 kids - and the kids had such a blast that Elias went missing around 5:40 this afternoon, and after a frantic search we found that he had literally fallen asleep in a corner. All the summer people are here this weekend opening up their summer homes, the restaurants all opened up their outdoor seating, and there starts this weekend a series of festivals, fairs, and town/region celebrations that happen every weekend all summer to entertain the weekenders.

I 100% recant on wondering at times if this house was a bad idea. What I didn't realize about living in a town that is primarily a vacation town is that we now have a vacation house. Sure, it's a bit smaller than would be ideal, and needs some updating, but I definitely made a 180 on the whole Lakeville experience today. There are worse things than having a weekend house that you don't even need to pack the car and drive to on the weekend because you're already there.

Chickens. The first two weeks.

Why chickens? Most of the people aware of our little chicken adventure have been enthusiastic and supportive (backyard chickens are definitely an "in thing" right now - but you don't have to take my word for it. If backyard chickens ever had any hipster cred, they lost it all when Willams Sonoma started selling a line of $1000+ chicken accessories. not kidding. click the link) But some people are perplexed by and/or outright hostile to the whole chicken situation. So before I update my loyal readers on the status of the chicks in our basement, I'll try and provide a few of our reasons for getting them in the first place.

I'll tell you one reason we did NOT get chickens: To save money. If you think keeping backyard chickens is in any way an economical choice, you're dreaming. Take a walk over to your local supermarket and head to the dairy aisle. You can probably get a dozen large white eggs for less than two dollars. At that price, we're going to need to get 90 dozen eggs (that's 1,080 eggs) out of these biddies before we even recoup the investment we've already made, and they're two weeks old. Just to be clear, that's not counting any chicken feed, grit, bedding equipment and whathaveyou we spend on them going forward. Not to mention, chickens only lay for two years. Did you know that? They also don't start laying for about 6 months after you get them. After they're "layed out", you just have a passel of avian pets that do nothing useful for you. Luckily they don't tend to be long lived, but you still probably have about a 2 total years where the birds don't lay. Also, chickens are incredibly temperamental animals. They won't lay unless they have between 15-16 hours of light. That means, "naturally", chickens won't really lay in the winter. If you want them to, you need to light their coop on a timer so that they have the appropriate amount of exposure to light. They hate to have their feet wet. If they get "stressed" - and they're easily stressed - they'll lose their feathers, stop laying, or turn on each other. In order to keep them happy, fed, and healthy you need to put in a lot of time and energy. I read a 300+ page book on chicken keeping, and then used another as a cross reference. So if time is money, then we're even further in the hole. And our chicken coop is home-made from scrap lumber by Andy. Imagine how many eggs we'd need to break even on one of those spiffy Williams Sonoma jobbers? Obviously, there are lot cheaper ways to get eggs then ordering 6 silver-laced wyandottes from mypetchicken.com. So we certainly didn't do it out of some misplaced effort in frugality.

We did get them, at least in small part because I am highly uncomfortable eating and purchasing standard supermarket eggs (and dairy products and meat, for that matter, but those are blog posts for another day). I read Peter Singer's The Way We Eat several years ago when Andy and I were first married, and then I made him read it. Although I wasn't completely convinced (and Andy would never be) to adopt a vegan diet, I was forever convinced that I couldn't participate or support industrial agricultural practices. And the worst of the worst - believe it or not, truly the most inhumane farming practices of all - are commercial egg productions. I've read more and more the last few years about the conditions that make those supermarket eggs so cheap. If you missed that Nicholas Kristoff column I recommend you read it - once you do, it's hard to un-read it. It's horrifying stuff.

But of course, just because you object to industrial agriculture practices doesn't mean you need to turn into some crazy back-to-the lander trying to homestead with a chicken coop in your backyard and a dairy goat in the front. It's perfectly possible to buy cruelty-free eggs at the grocery store, which is what we usually do. (Actually, now that we've moved out to farm country, we generally buy them straight from one of the nearby farms, or one of our chicken keeping neighbors.)So the chickens weren't obtained because we have no other way to access eggs we're comfortable eating, that's merely a major perk. We got them, largely, because we wanted the kids to learn something about the relationship between humans and animals with respect to food, and a little bit about the effort required to obtain food, and a lot about the appropriate way to treat animals that provide you food.

I. know. You're rolling your eyes. Listen, in many ways, I am one of the most cynical people on the planet. But I do think that it's a shame that I got to the age of 25 or so before I ever had a serious thought about the treatment of animals in factory farms. And laugh all you want, but this is something that is important to both Andy and I. Am I aware that our kids will totally go through a rebellious oscar-myer-bacon-on-paper-plates-washed-down-with-high-fructose-corn-syrup-while-denying-climate-change phase? yes, I am - and that's fine, but I do believe that when they get over that,they will come out of it as adults with at least shreds of what we teach them now. It's really important to us to model a environmentally and socially conscious brand of consumerism. Some people feel strongly their kids need to go to church every week whether they like it/understand it or not, and we feel strongly that our kids need to recycle and go without hot dogs if we can't find ones we feel good about buying whether they like it/understand it or not. And I seized upon chickens as a bit of a teachable moment to that end. So far, the chickens have been an incredibly rich learning experience for the kids. We talk about them every day - what they need to stay healthy, how chickens behave, what their habits are and how they adapted those habits based on their environment, why they do the things they do (even when they all ganged up on the weakest one and started to attack it). Owen has made a lot of thoughtful connections and comments between the chicken that we eat and the chickens in the basement, and if we end up with a vegetarian out of this that's fine with me. We've talked a lot about how some people think it's ok eat animals, and some people don't, and that we do but only if they are well taken care of.

So, speaking of well taken care of, I'd say our personal chickens are, for the most part. We started off with 6 - and the kids named them Bossy, Chirpy (real creative, there), Rosie, Zebra, Jo, and Caboose. Caboose was so named because she was pretty runty and always seemed to be 'resting' in the rear while the other ladies were eating, drinking or running around. Sadly, Caboose's retiring nature ended up being a symptom of failure to thrive, and we had to remove her from the group so that she wasn't pecked to death. Andy's uncle Tim was thankfully here the day that Caboose needed to be put down and he knew how to do it humanely from his work at the Audobon Society. So now there are 5. 4 of them seem to be growing like weeds and seem larger every time I go down there. The 5th - Jo, we've decided, although the names are hard to keep track of for the other 4 since they all look exactly the same - is much smaller. I'm hoping this isn't a slower-motion version of Caboose's failure to thrive, because Tim isn't coming back to visit anytime soon and I'm worried I'm not up to the putting-down task. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

They're in the basement, still, and will be there another 2 weeks before they move outside. Let's bust some chicken myths: 1) do they smell bad? In a word, no. We have far too few chickens to have any discernible smell. They have pine shavings as litter just like a hamster or rabbit would, and as long as you change it every other week or so you won't have odor problems with fewer than a dozen chickens, especially those who, like ours, have access to the outdoors. In the books I've read, odor control is addressed when people have more than 20 chickens - 20 seems to be the threshold where odor becomes a problem. They certainly don't smell like anything right now. 2) are they loud? Well, you can hear them. They're not loud. they peep, they cheep. I did a lot of research and deliberately got a quiet breed so we wouldn't bother our neighbors, but in general only roosters are really loud, and we (knock wood) have none of those.

Otherwise, we are looking forward to getting them outside. Andy is still working on constructing their coop, a project which the boys have also been involved in and are loving. Once it's constructed, we'll have an enclosed coop for sleeping and nesting and a 10 foot run for the chickens to forage and enjoy the great outdoors in, safely. We're hoping to roof at least part of their run so that they can enjoy the outdoors in the winter, too, when it's not too cold. As soon as the chicks are outside I'll post more pictures, but it's hard right now because that red brooder lamp makes all the photos of the chicks look weird. So for anyone that's not totally chickened-out after this long post (ha! I slay me), stay tuned as the chicken adventure continues.

Healthy Shephard's Pie

Why am I posting a recipe on a family blog? A few reasons. The first one is, I get a LOT of requests for this recipe. This is my go-to recipe for a potluck, or a meal when someone is sick or just had a baby, and I also make it about twice a month, so I frequently end up serving it to guests or playdate friends. I think almost every time I make it, someone asks me for the recipe, which I take to mean it tastes pretty good. I'm also posting it because as far as I know, I made it up, and it tickles me that the most popular recipe in this house (by vote of our kids) is one that I make - although it should be fairly noted that daddy the professional chef kicks my butt at everything else, from pancakes to frittata. And the third one is, I have found a rare recipe that is both FULL of vegetables and truly kid friendly - there are some kids who are so picky that they won't eat this, but I've served it to many a child on a playdate and it goes over well most of the time. If you, like me, are always searching for vegetable-full recipes your children will eat, try this one. As an added bonus it's gluten, soy, egg and dairy free and can be made vegetarian, which is quite adaptable in this age of many food allergies and intolerances. Finally, a friend of mine with lots more blog readers than I have said I should post something on the blog people might conceivably be googling to find, which will direct them to my blog and introduce the possibility they will keep reading it. (to that end: healthy dinners, healthy kid dinners. dinners with lots of vegetables. etc. find me, google!) So here you go, this is my own version of shephard's pie. Make it, enjoy it, and snicker at your kids eating cauliflower with gusto.

Ingredients: (this recipe makes enough to feed my family of 4 hearty shephard's pie eaters for 2 nights)

5 lg yukon gold potatoes
1 head cauliflower
1 medium onion
1 yellow bell pepper
2-3 grated carrots or about 1 c. chopped baby carrots
frozen peas
1.5 tbs olive oil
1 lb ground beef, turkey, or 1 large can each (the double size ones) kidney beans and chickpeas (if you want to make it vegetarian)
olive oil, chicken stock, margarine, coconut milk or whatever you usually like to mash potatoes with (if dairy is fine for you, use milk and butter)
ketchup
soy sauce
worstershire sauce
spicy brown mustard

Directions:

In a large pot of salted water, place the potatoes and cauliflower, all chopped up into small pieces. Put the heat on high and bring up to a boil.

after you do that, dice the onion, bell pepper and carrots and saute in the olive oil about 5-7 minutes.

Then add your meat (or beans). Cook through.

when the meat is cooked, turn off the heat, leaving the pan on the stove. add approximately 2/3 c ketchup, 1/3 cup mustard, and a generous amount each of worstershire and soy sauces to the vegetable and meat mixture. unfortunately I forgot to measure how much I usually use. Anyway, just taste it and see it tastes good. those four things mixed together are hard to get wrong, really.

Then put it all into the bottom of your biggest pyrex because this recipe makes a lot. sprinkle a half bag of peas over it.

Finally, drain and mash your potatoes/cauliflower. I usually use either chicken stock, olive oil and salt OR unsweetened coconut milk (the beverage, not the stuff in a can) and smart balance, but you can use whatever you like. don't forget some salt. it just depends what I have on hand. Mashed anything tastes pretty good no matter how you do it.

Finally, spread the mashed on top of the meat and peas, put in the oven for 30 minutes or so at about 350, and voila. dinner for two nights. plus lunch for the kids sometimes too. I don't know precisely how many servings of vegetables are in each serving, but I'm willing to guess at least 5. onions, carrots, bell pepper, peas, cauliflower and potato in every bite, so you can choose not to count the onion or the potato as vegetables and still end up with 5 veggies per serving. And it truly is kid friendly - I think it's the ketchup.

Finished product from the side:

Clean plate club:

Enjoy!

Deep thoughts.

Owen: Mommy, what's a disability?
Me: Well....it's like when a part of your body doesn't work, or when you can't do something that you used to be able to do.
Owen: what does that mean?
Me: Well, for instance, some people are blind. they can't see anything. that's a disability.
Owen: Miss Marcie said a disability is like when you only have one leg.
Me: Um, ok. yes. that's also a disability.
Owen: So... she said if you only have one leg, you would get a fake leg.
Me: Um, right.
Owen: So, I was wondering, if you only have one leg, how would you get to the fake leg store?
Me: Well....someone would drive you?
Owen: Right. Well, how would they get to the car, then?
Me: They would...I think someone would carry you.
Owen: But what if it was a GROWNUP that needed to get to the fake leg store. How would THEY get to the car?
Me: They would get pushed in a wheelchair - I really don't think you need to worry about this.
Owen: ok. thanks mom. I'm a robot, anyways.

Happy Birrrrrrthday, Owen!

Owen turned 4 March 15th, but judging by the number of times it was celebrated this year he's approximately 8. I know everyone wants to get a slice of the birthday action, so you can't begrudge both sets of grandparents wanting to have a birthday party, and of course on his actual birthday they made a little to-do in his preschool class. So this was party number 4, capping off a month of birthday revelry. I was a little worried about hosting up to 12 preschoolers here in this little house, but I shouldn't have worried. We had a turnout of 8, which turned out to be just the right size, and a good time was had by all.

One thing I love about 4 year olds in general and my four year old specifically is their love of costumes. Owen wanted a pirate party, and luckily we have a pirate costume:

I found bandanas, eye patches, and pirate tattoos for ridiculously cheap at oriental trading company (ps: environment, exploited chinese laborers - lets just get this out of the way now. I apologize.) and as the kids came in we got them get dressed as pirates.

I started the party by reading "How I turned into a pirate". I saw this at another party and thought it was a great strategy. that was a superhero party and when we got there the birthday boy's mom read a superhero book, which got all the kids in the superhero theme. It went really well.

Next, I had the kids decorate brown paper bags with pirate stamps, stickers, and markers (to later use as goody bags when we broke the pinata). I spent a lot of time rounding up pirate art supplies, including stamps and stickers, and expected this activity would last at least 20 minutes. Definitely not. It was well recieved but the kids spent five minutes each on their bags and announced they were done and went back to swashbuckling with balloon swords. Oh, well. Either way it was fun, though I suspect if it were girls this activity would have lasted longer.

Next I had planned a beanbag toss and a pinata. The beanbag toss was fun although none of the kids paid any attention to the line we had taped on the floor to stand behind and throw the beanbags. They all stood about 6 inches from it and then expected to be praised for getting all three beanbags in. We did the pinata next, which was awesome. One kid ended up going bananas on it and it broke in a very satisfying explosion of more pirate tattoos, chocolate dubloons, ring pops and plastic dinosours (again, oriental trading company is a party planner's friend).

Next came cake. The cake! Andy had made this totally awesome pirate cake last night, which took him forever and was truly a work of art, with multiple poop decks and some serious cake architecture, but sadly: the weight of the two sides of the cake boat were too much for the frosting and the whole thing came apart spectacularly at about 9:15 pm. We had to completely redo the cake (and by we, I mean, Andy had to completely redo the cake and I drank wine, kept up a running commentary on how great the first cake was, and did a 10pm run to CVS for more frosting). The second cake still came out great:

I had planned for all this to take the 2 hours of the party. ha! all of the above took 1 hour and that's a stretch with me dragging my feet before cake trying to figure out what else to do. Lesson learned: NEVER overestimate the attention spans of 4 year olds. After cake came about an hour of wild running around, swashbuckling, and just general 4 year old hillarity - (also a couple meltdowns and one potty accident, but really, far less than might be expected in a free-for-all of 9 kids) and overall everyone had a great time.

After everyone went home, Owen said it had been the best time ever, which Andy and I took to mean the party was a success. And we gratefully wash our hands of any more birthday celebrations for a year.

ARRRRRRGH!

When in Rome....

This is a fully grown silver laced wyandotte:

We now own 6 of 'em. Only they haven't hatched yet. We hope they're all ladies, (the hatchery gives us a 90% guarantee) but if one or more of them isn't, andy will have to practice his butchering skills because we're not keeping any full grown roosters in our backyard.

The hatchery will ship our day-old chicks on April 23, and we should recieve them 1-2 days after that. And the chicken-keeping portion of the lakeville experience will begin.

if you're nice to us, we'll give you fresh eggs. The ones we have leftover from bribing our neighbors with, of course!

For those of you interested in how the chicken experiment goes, I've read 2 books on chickenkeeping front to back and I'm ready to go. I plan to use the blog to chronicle the experience in a fair amount of detail because I know several people who are very interested in how it goes. So April 23 is d-(ish) day...stay tuned!