Follow the shenanigans of a woman's attempt at going green while trying to raise a little one on a small ranch in Arizona with chickens and horses.
My New Year Resolutions
Sending out a warm thought to everyone for the New Year! Please be careful out there and enjoy the time with your family. I’m actually working tonight (boo hiss!).
So here are my New Years Resolutions:
- Have the best year yet in 2011!
- Finish my chicken coop by early spring and get in the chicks by March.
- Start building our guest house.
- Work on getting a garden into place and finish working on my landscaping- tough one since I do not have a green thumb and this is Arizona after all. Everything pretty much dies in the summer.
- Get in better shape, at least enough so that I don’t throw my back out every time I do major yard work or exercise.
- Get home for the holidays this time, either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Upcoming awesome things for this year.
- I’m supposed to be going to HAWAII in May!!!
- Naming Contest for the Chickies on the blog! I’m looking forward to this one!
Well, that’s it for now. It’s a short post, but then again, work and all.
HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
It Snowed in Phoenix & I slept through it…
So I guess it snowed a bit today in Phoenix, just some flurries, nothing stuck, but I slept right through it. We got an earthquake this year in the summer and I slept through that too. This is what happens to 3rd shifters. We sleep through excitement.
Now, I’m an Iowa girl so snow is not that big of a deal, but I haven’t seen snow in 5 years since I moved to Arizona so I do kinda feel bummed I missed even the little flurries.
We had a massive storm blow through last night. The walls to the chicken coop were setting out against the fence line so I’m sure they’re soaked to the core and 10 times heavier than usual. Hopefully they won’t warp.
This morning, I woke up to a lake in the front yard. Every time it rains hard, we joke about having lake front property. We call it “Lake Sanders”. Arizona’s clay soil can barely hold water until it’s just saturated and everything stays on top. This picture was taken in the spring when Lake Sanders really went bonkers.
We lost our cable and internet last night due to the storm and lost electricity a little earlier tonight.
In case of outages, my sister-in-law Heather (Flames and Wicks Candle Co) always comes to our rescue. I have a ton of candles from her, and all these little sample jars. I had 12 of them lit up tonight along with the other candles. Luckily it was only out for about 20 minutes this time. It’s usually 1/2 a day!
C is for Cookie, but G is for Godiva! @CrunchyBchMama
Courtney Makes My Day
Oh Courtney, (aka Crunchy Beach Mama), you wonderful wonderful woman, who sent divinity in a box to me today. This showed up on my doorstep from her
Oh my goodness… oh my chocolaty goodness.
Nom Nom Nom! and what a perfect day for it to. I’m used to sunshine and warmth nearly year round, blue skies and a bright sun and today was just one of those icky days. It’s cold, wet, and rainy outside. I had just got back in from rounding up two very stubborn horses, getting them out of the rain and into the barn while slipping and sliding in the mud. I was in such a hurry to get out of the rain that I didn’t even see the box, Ray spotted it when he followed me in a few minutes later.
The perfect day for a cup of hot cocoa and some amazing chocolate. You just cannot beat that.
THANK YOU COURTNEY!!!!
So we *might* get snow….
It’s cloudy, overcast and COLD here in Arizona.. Okay, cold is relative since I now feel cold if it gets to 50 degrees, but we’re actually getting a hard freeze over the next couple nights down into the teens. BRRR! We have to go get cheap sheets and try to save what’s left of my landscaping project. (We got hit with an unexpected freeze a month ago that harmed them badly, they can’t take another hit. As it is, it killed off all our grass but that’s okay, it’s bermuda, it’ll come back in the spring.)
Couple last pics of the girls visit, Krissy wanted a couple pictures with the horses before they left.
Diatomaceous Earth
So tonight, while trying to let my stomach digest the food I ate earlier, I did some research on keeping chicken coops cleaner and came across a product called Diatomaceous Earth, which is not only supposed to be incredible for chicken coops, but it’s good for digestion in livestock & humans, and is an incredible bug controller for inside and outside areas. (Think gardens, stalls, around your floorboards, etc.) Please note, this is about FOOD GRADE DE. There is a difference between that and others!
I heard about this once before, probably during a natural resources class, but somehow didn’t catch what it was about.
So here’s a little blurb I found on Diatomitecananda.com
Diatomaceous earth (DE) Fossil Shell Flour has been reported in scientific literature to absorb methyl mercury, E. coli, endotoxins, viruses (including poliovirus), organophosphate pesticide residues, drug residues, and protein, perhaps even the proteinaceous toxins produced by some intestinal infections. Pyrethroid insecticide residues probably also bind to diatomaceous earth, since pyrethrins from Chrysanthemum flowers bind to and are stabilized by this material. The only brand of pure DE currently recommended is from Perma Guard. Perma Guard’s Fossil Shell Flour has been approved by the FDA (as a 2% by dry weight food additive, as an anti-caking agent, or as a grain storage additive).
It’s something I will be looking into for a lot of uses around the ranch. It eliminates parasites and worms in horses (and humans!), is a major drying agent for chicken poop, helps control flies (which with 4 horses on the property, we have a LOT.). My only concern is this. If it kills bugs, isn’t that one of the things chickens prefer to eat?
I’ve got more research to view on it but it’s definitely worthy of interest.
