Because when I make a post, it frequently doesn’t appear…

Because I am not receiving email noticies of comments…

Because some readers have complained that they are not gettting notices of new posts…

Because this site is down frequently…

Because every action takes entirely too long, and frequently defaults to an error message…

I am going to move to a new host.    The new site will be: 

http://krissimplyliving.blogspot.com/

I duplicated the Pants on the Ground post there, and will from this point on be posting there and not here.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v470/Ldychef2k/?action=view&current=DSCF2849.flv

But first a bit of an update.  One of the two raised beds is finished and is half planted.  We are having several days of welcome rain, so I got the turnips and spinach planted, but the carrots and peas are going to have to wait until Monday.  Speaking of peas, my winter peas are setting pods right now, and I am on cloud nine !  This morning, I thought birds had gotten on to the table and eaten my one big, fat pod!  It was just gone, and there are no cut worms or gophers or anything like that four feet off the ground, so all I could think was birds.  Thus, I took sticks and tied strips of mylar to them to make scare crows of sorts  And of course, as I was putting the tiny sticks in the pots, I found the one little pod.  I had turned the container the last time I was out there, and forgot!  So, I opened it on the spot and ate my first peas raw, standing in the soggy garden.  I was thrilled! 

The second bed is going to get manure, a three inch layer of compost and then some peat on top.  So, that will be easy, except the shoveling of 64 buckets of compost! 

I have pulled back all of the black plastic from the garden area, and am going to till it when the ground dries out a bit.  I would love to be able to shovel some of that soil into the raised bed, but it contains bermuda seed, so I better leave it as a base for raised beds three and four. 

Have I told you that the money came from the insurance company?  Yep.  I had to make a few very tough decisions.  First, I set aside $600 to repair and replace the fence.  I hope it will be enough.  I have found a guy on Craig’s list who is selling slightly blemished 1×8’s for 75 cents and 4×4’s for $2.  I know that the next two paychecks are going to be extremely low, because there has not been enough work to do.  So, I paid many of my bills ahead. 

I have applied to Habitat for Humanity for help with my roof.  I will need to buy the materials, which will be about $4000.  That’s a whole lot more than I have.  If I don’t have enough, they will put a lien or a note on my house which I can pay off later, or when the house sells in the distant future.  I think that is going to be what I will have to do.  Pay half now and half later.  Then, H4H has a work crew come out, and I have to supply a few workers as well.  I think I will be accepted because I am well within the income, age and disability parameters. 

Okay, so that left me with a couple hundred dollars.  And that is where the “blowing the challenge out of the water” comes in.  You see…and here comes the surprise…my daughter and her family have invited me to go on a cruise with them on March 29, to Mexico.  This is something that is not even on my radar, let alone a sure thing!!!!  So, I have to come up with some spending money.  It’s a four night cruise, and I need a couple of items of clothing, because pretty much all I wear is jeans or sweats and Big Dog shirts!  And I don’t really have any shoes.  I am feeling incredibly guilty about spending that last bit of money on myself; I haven’t really done that since my divorce. 

I would like to have maybe $25 a day to spend.  I won’t be able to join the rest of the family for their $40 glass bottom boat tour, but that’s okay with me.  And I will drink water instead of the $5 sodas!!!  So, I think $25 a day is plenty.  I just have to earn it!  I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time on the internet reading about cruises and learning the rules and what is available to do on the ship. 

AND –I had to apply for a passport in like 24 hours!  This was how I knew the Lord was in this.  I needed my birth certificate, and that was going to take a week to ten days.  The time it takes to process a passport can be up to eight weeks, and the cruise is the end of March.  So, we were looking at possibly a ten week wait.  So, the first thing that the Lord did was have me ask my parents if they had my birth certificate — and they did!!!   Next, I went to fill out the passport forms online and found it was $160.  Hmm…that was possible, but there would be no spending money and no dress and shoes.  Then I saw a PassCard.  Used for those who are only going to Mexico or Canada!!!  And the wait is four weeks.  AND….$45.  Go God!!! 

So, filled out the forms online and printed them. ran to Walgreen’s and got the pictures, ran to Mom’s and got my birth certificate, ran (okay, drove) to city hall and submitted it all and paid the fees, and it ought to be here in plenty of time. 

So, the long and the short of it is, the Lord has blessed the Austerity Chick, the old fat lady who is living on $12.50 a week (and quite successfully so far!), with the vacation of a lifetime.   Just amazing, isn’t He? 

Okay, back to work.  going to work more hours at the computer to try and make enough money to be able to miss work for five days AND have a little spending money.  This is surreal !!!

I buried a sort of a soaker hose in a double S configuration under the last several inches of dirt.  You can make a soaker hose if you have the determination !  Fold over the exit end of the hose and crimp it, wire it HARD.  Then taking an ice pick or an awl, punch dozens and dozens of small holes in the hose.  Bury it under the dirt, leaving the inflow end hanging out for coupling with the regular hose from the spiggot.  Typically, soaker hoses run just under $20 for 50 feet.  Or, you can get damaged hoses from FreeCycle and use the above technique.  Works great! 

I planted the berries today, two blackberry vines and two raspberry vines.  I had to change the plan a bit, because one of the proposed sites was just a maze of roots from the mulberry tree.  But it all worked out.

My 10 year old DGD spent some serious time shoveling today.  She is moving the mound from the gopher condominium into the second bed.  I have cardboard three inches of leaves in it so far.  Now we fill three inches of dirt and home made compost, and then some peat to top it off. 

Not earning much money this week.  There just isn’t anything to do.  It worries me sometime, but the Father is in charge. 

I pulled out an old journal today and was glancing through it.  Found a piece of wisdom the Lord gave me a couple of years ago.  Something like this:  You keep yourself so busy working for your dreams that you don’t give Me time to give them to you out of My grace and mercy. 

So, I think I will count on that grace and mercy when payday comes and I have only earned $500 instead of the $700 I need to squeak by !  He will provide. 

I may have some big news the end of the week….we shall see what the Lord wants to do.

Okay, so here’s what I have been doing the past two days.  You saw the picture yesterday, so you know I have built two raised beds.  Here’s the story:

Raised beds are really the cadillac of garden layouts and plans.  They cut WAY back on weeding, control many forms if insects, and are easier to work in because they are, well, elevated!  I have looked at the plans for many gardens, and came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be able to afford the wood, and I probably wouldn’t be able, working alone, to screw the planks together anyway.  So, I resigned myself to struggling with weeds and snails, etc., within wide rows of crops.  But I did keep praying.

Then came the storm and the dismantling of my fence by God.  Eight foot lengths of the fence were picked up by the wind, flipped in the air, and landed flat on the ground.  Only one board actually broke.  So, I figured that I would get enough money from the the insurance to stand up those sections and re-attach them to 4×4’s or possibly metal poles in cement. 

The insurance paid more than I thought it would.  So, instead of using the old fence, my son-in-law convinced me to buy premade panels and attach them to metal poles in cement, which (drum roll) left me with 40′ of fencing with which to build the raised beds!  Yay, God!!! 

So, I decided that since there was no work to type yesterday morning, I would figure something out.  The wood was too brittle and dry to use screws, so I puzzled about how to stand up the boards.  Finally decided that I would use stakes on either side of the board to hold it upright, and ultimately more versatile, as I could move the borders if needed. 

So, I disassembled the fence to get twenty 4′ boards, and grabbed some stakes from the garage.  I needed more, so I had to spend $4 on those. 

I folded back about half of the black plastic in this section of the yard, leaving a nice wide border for working on the fence.  I then staked out the North/South borders of two 4×16 foot beds with a two foot walkway between, and went about breaking in my newly assembled rototiller (patting self on back).  It was WAY easier than I thought it would be.  In fact, the whole process of marking and rototilling the two beds was less than an hour. 

Took all he rusty nails out of the boards, placed them on the ground and then two at a time staked the abutted ends every four feet, and on the ends.  It was starting to get dark at that point.

I did some research on the most successful methods of gardening.  This was before I found I could do the raised beds, so I dreamed about the “Lasagna method”, but never though I could do it, even though it WOULD work in a regular bed.  The entire yard had been bermuda, and bermuda is a tough booger.  In fact, when I rolled back the plastic, there was some albino bermuda growing under it.  Even after two sprays with Roundup and four months of smothering! 

So, basically the lasagna method means that instead of blending various soil amendments and spreading one deep layer, you simply layer the components one on top of the other. 

I chose to plan my layers by degree of decomposition in order that the bottom layer would have time to compost itself.   So, in order to block weeds for a few months, the bottom layer is sheets of cardboard which I have been saving for pathways.  With raised beds, I don’t need to line the pathways.  At about 9 last night, I was out back hosing down the cardboard to give it a head start on the decompsition by being wet all night. 

This morning came partially rotted leaves from my multiple trees which fell in November.  Most of them were perfectly dry, with pockets of stinky rotted leaves!  So, I spread three inches of leaves in each bed and watered them down this morning.  In fact, after each layer I watered it it.  And those layers were:  Next, 2″ home made compost, 1″ well composted steer manure, 2″ compost and 2″  peat.  That’s ten inches and the boards are 8″, but I still have a couple of inches to go (alternating compost and peat) to fill to almost the top…because the weight of the dirt compacted the leaves, just like it is supposed to.  I confess that in anticipation of the insurance money coming this week, I did spend a bit on the peat. 

And on some soaker hoses, which were 60% off at Big Lots.  With water meters coming soon, I couldn’t risk the expense of allowing free flow of water throughout the beds.  So, I have one soaker hose for each bed, which I will bury about four inches down and hold in place with U-shaped pins I made from wire clothes hangers.  The beds are 4′ wide and 16′ long and the soakers are 50 feet.  So, I can start at the corner closest to the spigot and bury the hoses in a long, thin S-Shape, with the input end extending out over the top of the end of the bed, where I can attach a regular hose from the spigot and do my watering slowly.  I have a splitter for the faucet so we can run two hoses off of one faucet.   

I was really happy with the compost pile I have been building the past six months.  I did learn one important thing about the diameter of the sticks that can be composted in:  I had thought it was the diameter of a pencil, but it is actually more the size of a lead from the pencil!  I had to pick out a TON of sticks. 

My 10 year old DGD was on a mission the past few months.  She would dig around the garden and find worms and add them to the compost pile.  I swear, there were literally hundreds of them in there!  Such great vermicompost…!!!   She has her own pair of gardening gloves, some small size tools, and a knee pad, so she is always prepared to help in the garden.  A great, great kid !!!

Okay, amost midnight.  I am VERY tired—the happy kind !  We are expecting heavy rain this week, so I will wait a while to plant.  That will give the leaves and cardboard a headstart on breaking down and attracting even MORE worms !!! 

Thanks for hanging in there with me.  Sorry about no pictures today.  I was focused like a laserbeam on dismantling fences, building wood frames, lifting 210 gallons of rotting leaves and innumerable 5 gallon buckets of compost (about 40 pounds each)and smoothing, layering, and watering it all in.  Oh, and I worked at my real job, too !  

Nite all !!!

I have been praying for wood for the raised beds

Well, my four year old granddaughter came over at 11 to spend the afternoon while her mom and older sister had a mom and daughter date.  (Daughter is in graduate school and working full time, so she takes the girls once in a while on a date so they can stay connected.)  We played Polly Pocket and worked together to make the pork and apple stew. 

Which went as follows! 

Remember that my mom brought by some pork and some chicken breasts the other day?  Well, I had seen this awesome recipe for pork and apples at http://creativecanning.blogspot.com/, so DGD and I set about making it.   (Corrected link)

Since she is four, she got one cube of meat and a plastic knife and went to town cutting it up!  We ended up with this: 

I lightly floured it, browned it in a big pot, and then added the rest of the ingredients.  (Follow the above link for the exact recipe.  I didn’t have any apple cider, but I had some sherry wine, so I used that.  Also, I had just dehydrated all my onions, so I just tossed some of those into mix.

Using the same plastic and regular knives, we then cut up and added the rest of the apples from the fridge.

Ended up with this:

I generally cook the meat all the way through before canning it, but this time I just coked it about half way.  Maybe it will be tender and moist, instead of tender and dry.  Sometimse that happens.  Anyway, filled seven quarts, had a bit left over, and had it for dinner as I mentioned. 

Here are the jars.  Not sure why the colors are like that, but they all sealed, so we are golden.

 You might think I am done for the day by this time, right?  Oh, no my little chickadees!  I did it today…the thing I have been putting off for two weeks.   I assembled AND used my rototiller for the very first time !!!  It’s a little lighter weight than I would have liked, but it was inexpensive, relatively speaking, and it works great, but it bounces about a little bit. 

Wait, you have to hear this…

While the pork was processing (and I was coming back in every five minutes to check on it), I went out to the black plastic and folded it back about 7-8 feet.   Leaving a two foot path between the existing broccoli and brussels sprouts, I used stakes and string to set the first edge of the proposed bed, then went over about 5 feet for the second edge.  Put the tiller (I am going to be a 13 year old girl and name it Tillie) on the edge and made five or six passes up and back, raked it smooth, then used PVC pipe to indent the soft dirt to plan the beds.  I am going to do a form of lasagna gardening, layering nutrients such that over a couple of years I will have elevated beds.  You are supposed to use peat moss, but I will have to get that on 90% off clearance…or use something else.  Steer manure is 97 cents for two cubic feet, so that may be what I start with.  The worms went nuts under the plastic, so I know that will help. 

Time to get to typing.  But before that, here are some pictures of the 5′x20′ bed I did in……44minutes, pulling plastic to putting Tillie in the garage !!!!!!!!!   FORTY FOUR MINUTES. 

It’s only 4:00 in the afternoon, and I am already blogging because I have to work the rest of the day and I might not get to it.  So, here’s what today was like.   A BLESSING!!!!

I have received gifts galore today.  First and foremost, my granddaughters spent the night!  They were full of energy and vinegar, that’s for sure!  Lots of playing and the sister stuff you have when one is four and one is ten.  Their mom picked them up at 10, on her way to the grocery, and she brought me back some carrots and celery…which is SO needed right now. 

You see, my friend Sherry (she had knee surgery this week..praying for you Sherry!)  gave me a 19 pound TURKEY  last week!!!  I decided to go ahead and cook it, so I wrapped it up in foil, with some bacon salt on the skin, and slow cooked it 12 hours.  Lots of delicious broth, super moist and tender meat.  So, I wanted to can the meat and make a lot of broth, but I always add onions, carrots and celery to the broth to enhance the flavor.  I only had onions…because I had so many 20 cents a pound yellows in storage!!!  So, I got the carrots and celery.

I boned the turkey, tossed the bones, skin, etc., along with the aromatics and a whole lot of water into my biggest stock pot and started boiling them.  Here’s the contents of the pot: 

So, I started filling the jars with the chunks of turkey, and added some dehydrated carrots, peas, parsley, leeks, and celery. 

After the stock had cooked about an hour, I filled the jars and they are now in the pressure canner.  I added more water to the stock pot after I used 1/3 of it for the 15 quarts of soup, and will let it reduce by half, get all the goodness out of the bones and veggies, and then tomorrow will can some turkey stock.  This is the life, I tell you !!!

In the process of all this, I decided to dehydrate the rest of the onions, so 15 onions are sliced and dehydrating in the garage !  It’s boring to photograph a black box sitting on the workbench, so I am not doing it !

Yet another blessing — My mom stopped by with a large tray of chicken breasts, and two pork roasts !  How awesome is that?  I will freeze the chicken individually, and will make pork with onions and apples with the roasts!  Been wanting to try that recipe for a long time.  Looks like this is my chance!

Another blessing was being outside today!  It was clear and perfect.  So, swept the garage, tidied up the patio from the wind’s dance that spread it all around.  Then I raked up debris and piled it with the rose trimmings from the other day.  I am kinda liking the back yard looking more and more like a farm and less like a wannabe entertainment area.   I am not going to water the lawn this year, because I will be mowing the yard myself from now on…and I eventually want this area filled with raised beds.  In the summer, it has full sun for at least six hours, ten closer to the fence. 

Speaking of fence, the neighbors have propped it up on their side, but it still leans a bit. I am really looking forward to getting it fixed. 

So, the house is as clean as it gets (not very), the yard looks less like the Wreck of the Hesperus, the house smells amazing, the garage stinks to high heaven, and now I have to hit the transcription because we had NO work this week and I am $100 short on my earning for the pay period.  Not good.  But, as we all know…little is much when God is in it !!!

Have a great weekend, and if it is snowing where you are…I promise not to get all Neener Neener on you !

So, I called some roofers.  My roof is completely shot, and has been for ten years.  The repairs cannot be made because of the advanced state of deterioration if the roof in general.  I can’t even get them to tell me what that would cost, because they know I only have $600!!! 

Okay, what to do?  I guess that the best thing will be to do the fence repairs ourselves and then apply whatever we can toward the roof.  I expect the roof to cost about $7000-8000.    As best as I can tell, I will have about $2000 total left from the insurance money.   Looks like the Father’s going to be busy ! 

I decided I better see what options I have, because doing nothing isn’t an option. 

First, I emailed the charity I work for and sent pictures of the roof.  The director told me to continue in prayer and we will talk about it on my next volunteer day. 

I felt that I needed to do more research, so I called Self-Help Enterprises and Habitat for Humanity.  Left a message for the first, and am filling out an application for the latter.   Not sure the Lord wants to use any of these three agencies, so I will leave it to Him in prayer and see what He has planned.  Sometimes His more creative solutions bring Him more glory, so I will be on the lookout for that. 

Meanwhile, everything seems to have ground to a halt.  I still haven’t assembled the rototiller, mainly because if I get it together I will want to use it, and I need to wait until something gets done with the fence.  I have some seeds sprouting in the kitchen, and some of them (sage, rosemary) are taking a LONG time !  I think that’s normal, but I am still convinced they have died!!!!   

The grandkids are here tonight.  I made them some white bread and had those Smores sandwiches left.  The 10 year old wants an apple!   Is she really related to me?????

Oh, I found a wonderful site for canning recipes!  I can’t WAIT to make all of them ! 

Haven’t had much of a chance to work today, so think I will get on it.  Hope you early birds got enough sleep last night !!!  Could you ask the Lord to give me clarity on some of these things?  I would really appreciate it.

I went to get the organic waste trash can and got distracted in a big way.  I have been slowly cutting away the foliage and fruit from the lemon tree that Maureen and her husband are going to take down for firewood pretty soon.  I have done three trash can loads, and it doesn’t look like I have made a dent at all.  But I have good intentions. 

Anyway, I moved some branches out of the way to roll the trash can through the gate, and some dead bushes caught my eye.  They have been dead, actually, for three or four years, and I have just not had the ooomph to cut them back and dig them out.  Until today.  So, I cut back three of the five that are there (one is still alive) and went to dig them out when I found that two of them were so decayed at root level that I just had to yank them out by hand!  I was Wonder Woman…in sweats…..  So, the trash can is now full of about half the brush from the bushes.  I realized halfway through that the brush was pretty good tinder or kindling, so I decided to see if Maureen wanted any of it. 

After clearing out the brush, I found just a ton of stuff under the debris.  Oddly, I found firewood which was eaten up by rot and bugs.  Mentioned it to my daughter and she told me that when she was a kid, if I asked her to bring in firewood she would throw it over the fence if she saw a spider !!!  Cracked me up…

Anyway, I raked away the debris and most of that area looks great!  I still have a couple of boxwoods to cut and dig, but there really isn’t any room to work right now.  That will get better. 

After the lemon tree comes out, I think it may be time to demolish the patio cover.  It is seriously rotten, and parts have fallen down.  That will take away a lot of shade from the house, as will taking out the tree, but I think it’s a bit of a danger to have chunks of wood and 2×8’s falling to the ground willy nilly !  So, that’s added to the list. 

Had a great time going to Lowe’s and Home Depot today and pricing materials to repair the fence.  I am a little confused, however, as to the plan!  I thought we are going to either replace 4×4’s or replace them with metal posts in cement to support the fence sections.  But the list I was given to price out had both.  I don’t understand why we are doing both.  I think we need a meeting. 

My daughter just completed a week of leadership training at the hospital where she works, and she is fired up!   She is working full time and going to graduate school three nights a week and now she is in charge of some projects in order to advance her position at work.  She is such an amazing woman.  Oh, did I mention that she has a 4.0?  She said the nicest things to me on the phone tonight.  It made me feel like the best mom who ever parented an awesome child! 

Today I also pulled about 20 pounds of ground beef out of the “staging area” (freezer — the place food waits to be canned) and made what I dare say are the best meatloaves ever canned.  I only had eleven wide mouth quarts, so I ended up making three large meatloaves in pans to give away.  A friend had knee surgery today, so she will get one to help her family eat while she is recovering, and I think I will give one to my daughter.  The third?  It’s delicious !!!  I was very brave and went against the food police, adding two cups of bread crumbs to the 20 pounds of beef.  You aren’t supposed to use fillers in canned meatloaf because it supposedly gives an uneven heat distribution and thus possibly creates pockets of deadly poison.  I added ten minutes to the processing time and decided to risk it.  You aren’t supposed to can butter either…but I like to live on the edge.

Great day today.  the girls are spending the night tomorrow night, so that’s a HUGE thing to look forward to.  The 10 year old and I made S’mores Sandwiches after school today.  I melted some chocolate from my food storage, we dipped graham cracker squares (a gift) and put miniature marshmallows between them (left over from Christmas).  They had not dried by the time she went home.  She has no idea how delicious they are.  I will have to make more so she will know. 

Okay, bedtime.  I changed the theme/format of the page today because…well…it was a beautiful day.  I also have this irrational notion that changing the color and decorations will make the site work better.  Makes sense, right? 

See you tomorrow !