It wasn't my fault. I swear.
I blame the poor directions. You're lucky my husband threw it away before I could take a picture of it, because believe me there would be one up here. That nasty mold.
What the heck am I talking about?
Well, I got excited when we joined a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where we get enough ORGANIC vegetables to be the main ingredient in every meal and still have left overs....for only $17 a week. After going out of town for a few days, and buying some vegetables that didn't come with the CSA, we ended up with a WEALTH of vegetables that we would not be able to consume before they started to go bad. That's why I was excited to read about natural fermentation. It's a way of pickling food without sugar or vinegar, just using salt, whey or some other starter.
I had read about it previously on some of the blogs I subscribe to, but had never really had the desire to try it since we were buying vegetables from the grocery store on an "as needed" basis, which meant we had a lot less. Can't we all use more vegetables in our diet?
So I chopped up some carrots into carrot sticks and added them to a canning jar with the salt water mixture. I covered it with a towel, but no lid, just like the directions said. See how this isn't my fault?? They said to leave the lid off! It seemed a little fishy to me since they're supposed to ferment for two weeks like that. But I trusted the directions.
Bad idea.
After only a week, there was a thick film of mold growing on the surface of the water. I had just started some green beans a day or two before, and even THEY had started to grow just a little bit of mold. So I went back into my email to search for a few of the blogs I read that mentioned lacto-fermentation. They say to put a lid on the canning jar, but to make sure to "burp" it everyday. Basically, open the lid once a day to release the pressure that's built up from the fermentation process, or the can may eventually explode.
The carrots were sadly NOT salvageable. Like I said, my husband threw them in the trash before I could take a picture of them (he knew I would if I got the chance). BUT the green beans were not beyond hope. So they have now been fermenting for almost two weeks, being "burped" daily. And we are about to see how my almost failed, sort of failed, but recovered experiment with natural fermentation went! (I hope with yummy fermented green beans!)
Friday, August 26, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Two Essentials for Would-Be Cooks
If you came to dinner at our house, you would hardly believe that a little over a year ago, I barely knew how to cook an egg, let alone make a nutritious and delicious meal. I don't make great meals every time, and some nights I am lazy, but most nights nowadays my meals come out great! And healthy!
I never would have gotten to where I am now without two very important tools: a slow cooker and a pressure cooker.
I see both of these as almost opposite sides of the spectrum. A slow cooker--often called "Crock Pot" which is actually a brand of slow cooker--allows you to slow down the cooking time needed, while a pressure cooker allows you to speed up the cooking time. Both have been life savers. And while I don't use them now as frequently as I used to, they helped me to see how easy cooking can be. I would not be the cook I am today without them.
Let's focus on the slow cooker for a little while. Generally speaking, a slow cooker is the ultimately lazy cook tool. You throw everything in the pot, turn it on and come back to a finished product! It's also really nice because they are really inexpensive. You can get a slow cooker that will work great for about $20. I suggest getting one that is at least 4 quarts and has a dial that allows you to choose between settings (off, keep warm, low & high).
Now the down side of using a slow cooker is that it requires you to be a bit of a morning person. You have to know what you're doing and get it all ready in the morning in order for it to be ready by dinner. I am NOT a morning person, so I *try* to plan the night ahead to get all the ingredients together, chopped, thawed, etc. so literally all I have to do in the morning is throw everything in & turn it on.
There are TONS of slow cooker cookbooks, check out your local library to avoid buying one. They even have cookbooks that only have recipes with 5 ingredients or less, for the super lazy cook! Also just try googling a few ingredients and "slow cooker recipe."
Now onto pressure cookers. These are definitely nice for when you look at the clock at 5pm and go, "Uh-oh, what am I going to make?" Or when you had something planned and lost track of time and suddenly don't have enough time to cook it. This happens FAR more often than I'd like to admit....
Pressure cookers are wonderful because you can either find a recipe for the pressure cooker (there are many online), or in the case of not leaving enough cooking time, you can simply adjust your regular recipe to cook in the pressure cooker. The essential part of using a pressure cooker is liquid. You need some sort of liquid because the pressure cooker uses the steam to pressurize the cooking; this is what makes it cook quicker. Generally about 1/3 of the time needed otherwise.
Make sure not to fill the cooker more than 1/2 to 2/3 full (according to the manufacturer instructions) or it won't have enough room for the steam to move and to bring to pressure. This is why Kevin & I spent the money to buy a BIG pressure cooker, so we could make larger recipes. If you have an electric stove...you will need to use two burners. One on HIGH to bring to pressure and one on LOW to cook on. With gas stoves, you can go from high immediately to low with no problem. But unfortunately with an electric stove, the burner needs to cool off rather than adjusting from high to low.
You can supposedly cook rice and oatmeal in the pressure cooker, though you have to use the "pot-in-pot method." I've never done this. I'm not sure we have the right bowl, and I'm just a little skeptical of it in general. Especially since we just had to get rid of a rice cooker (selling it on CraigsList for $10 if anyone is interested!) because we found out while it cooks white rice GREAT, it does not properly cook brown rice, which is all we eat.
The down side of the pressure cooker is that it is a greater investment than a slow cooker. It's worth it to buy a nicer version, since it will work better and last longer. You're looking at a minimum of $100, versus the $20 or so for a slow cooker. I think it's worth it though.
So go ahead and slow cook and pressure cook to your hearts desire!
I never would have gotten to where I am now without two very important tools: a slow cooker and a pressure cooker.
I see both of these as almost opposite sides of the spectrum. A slow cooker--often called "Crock Pot" which is actually a brand of slow cooker--allows you to slow down the cooking time needed, while a pressure cooker allows you to speed up the cooking time. Both have been life savers. And while I don't use them now as frequently as I used to, they helped me to see how easy cooking can be. I would not be the cook I am today without them.
Let's focus on the slow cooker for a little while. Generally speaking, a slow cooker is the ultimately lazy cook tool. You throw everything in the pot, turn it on and come back to a finished product! It's also really nice because they are really inexpensive. You can get a slow cooker that will work great for about $20. I suggest getting one that is at least 4 quarts and has a dial that allows you to choose between settings (off, keep warm, low & high).
Now the down side of using a slow cooker is that it requires you to be a bit of a morning person. You have to know what you're doing and get it all ready in the morning in order for it to be ready by dinner. I am NOT a morning person, so I *try* to plan the night ahead to get all the ingredients together, chopped, thawed, etc. so literally all I have to do in the morning is throw everything in & turn it on.
There are TONS of slow cooker cookbooks, check out your local library to avoid buying one. They even have cookbooks that only have recipes with 5 ingredients or less, for the super lazy cook! Also just try googling a few ingredients and "slow cooker recipe."
Now onto pressure cookers. These are definitely nice for when you look at the clock at 5pm and go, "Uh-oh, what am I going to make?" Or when you had something planned and lost track of time and suddenly don't have enough time to cook it. This happens FAR more often than I'd like to admit....
Pressure cookers are wonderful because you can either find a recipe for the pressure cooker (there are many online), or in the case of not leaving enough cooking time, you can simply adjust your regular recipe to cook in the pressure cooker. The essential part of using a pressure cooker is liquid. You need some sort of liquid because the pressure cooker uses the steam to pressurize the cooking; this is what makes it cook quicker. Generally about 1/3 of the time needed otherwise.
Make sure not to fill the cooker more than 1/2 to 2/3 full (according to the manufacturer instructions) or it won't have enough room for the steam to move and to bring to pressure. This is why Kevin & I spent the money to buy a BIG pressure cooker, so we could make larger recipes. If you have an electric stove...you will need to use two burners. One on HIGH to bring to pressure and one on LOW to cook on. With gas stoves, you can go from high immediately to low with no problem. But unfortunately with an electric stove, the burner needs to cool off rather than adjusting from high to low.
You can supposedly cook rice and oatmeal in the pressure cooker, though you have to use the "pot-in-pot method." I've never done this. I'm not sure we have the right bowl, and I'm just a little skeptical of it in general. Especially since we just had to get rid of a rice cooker (selling it on CraigsList for $10 if anyone is interested!) because we found out while it cooks white rice GREAT, it does not properly cook brown rice, which is all we eat.
The down side of the pressure cooker is that it is a greater investment than a slow cooker. It's worth it to buy a nicer version, since it will work better and last longer. You're looking at a minimum of $100, versus the $20 or so for a slow cooker. I think it's worth it though.
So go ahead and slow cook and pressure cook to your hearts desire!
Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University
Back when I was in college, I took "Financial Peace University" (FPU). A 13-week course with two parts, the first about getting out of debt, and the second about saving, investing, insurance, etc. At the time, I was a college student, I had student loans and was likely to be in debt for many, many years. So I ended up skipping most of the second half of the courses since none of it applied to me and I could always come back and retake the course.
I found the course very helpful, some of what I learned was new, some was things I already knew. It helped put me in the right mind set toward money, mainly...pay off my debts. I am lucky enough that my parents taught me to be responsible with money and had no debts other than my student loans. Because of this, I found some of his material to be rather annoying and frustrating, though I couldn't really pin point all of the reasons why. Recently, I began following The Simple Dollar, a money blog which I really enjoy, both because he's a good writer, and I think he has very sound advice and money principles. Through reading him, I began to realize what my issues with Ramsey were and why I had issues with them.
So while I still continue to recommend people attend FPU, I do so with a few caveats.
Mainly, Ramsey's audience is people who have serious issues with credit card debt, and he makes little attempt to relate to anyone else.
Most, though not all, of my issues fall under this in some way.
Ramsey's audience is people in debt to credit card companies, many of whom have gotten there because they charged consumer goods on their cards that they couldn't afford in the first place. Because of this, he constantly talks about how there is never any reason to go into debt. While I do agree that you should never charge anything on a credit card that you can't pay off at the next due date, I totally disagree that there's never any reason to go into debt. Mainly, I reference student loans here. I never would have been able to get the education I did without student loans.
Education is often worth the debt. This is of course, assuming that you do everything to avoid student loans, or minimize them, such as filling out the FAFSA, applying for scholarships, grants, working, taking extra credits, graduating early, etc.
He wants you to get rid of credit cards completely, and treats credit cards as if they are evil entities. Again, keeping in mind who he is talking to, it does make some sense. If you can't keep yourself from spending money you don't have by charging it, then by all means, get rid of your credit cards. But if you have self-control, then keeping a credit card and paying it off every month will make your life a lot easier. Everything requires a credit check nowadays, not just for loans, but some employers will even check your credit. And while you can get a mortgage loan without a credit check (mind you, this is using the company he endorses--and has strict qualifications), they are not likely to give you as good of a rate as if you just learned to use your credit responsibly and had a good credit score.
You can certainly go without a credit card, and more power to you if you do, but it is likely to be an uphill climb in our consumer & credit-based society.
Because he wants you to feel the THRILL of paying off one of your debts fast, he advocates paying off the smallest debt first, regardless of the interest rate. To me, this is a bad idea logically and emotionally. Logically, you are going to save yourself money by paying off the loans with the highest interest rate first, this always bothered me since I'm a numbers person and the numbers just don't make sense. Further, this is a bad emotionally idea, because he's advocating using the same emotions that got you into debt. The thrill you got when you bought something. I just don't think that it's a good idea to use that same emotion to pay off debt, what you should be trying to do it learn to control that thrill. But that's just me.
Ramsey has good financial principles, but he reminds me of someone who thinks that because there are alcoholics, that all alcohol is evil and all people who drink it are sinful. I would argue that those people who have learned to use alcohol responsibly have learned to master virtue more than those who just avoid it completely (not true in every case, but a general principle). There's nothing wrong with avoiding it, but you also don't learn virtues such as self-control and mastering certain vices. It is the same with debt. Debt certainly can be used for evil, but it doesn't have to be. Learn the virtues that allow you to use debt for you rather than against you.
The other issue I have with him is he acts as if a 12% return on investments is guaranteed. While it is possible to make a 12% return on some investments, I would not recommend assuming you will make that with all investments. Not to mention to make those kind of returns, you would need to invest all your money in higher risk investments, which I would just not be comfortable with.
But I am no financial specialist. I'm just a housewife who likes numbers and has done some reading and research.
I found the course very helpful, some of what I learned was new, some was things I already knew. It helped put me in the right mind set toward money, mainly...pay off my debts. I am lucky enough that my parents taught me to be responsible with money and had no debts other than my student loans. Because of this, I found some of his material to be rather annoying and frustrating, though I couldn't really pin point all of the reasons why. Recently, I began following The Simple Dollar, a money blog which I really enjoy, both because he's a good writer, and I think he has very sound advice and money principles. Through reading him, I began to realize what my issues with Ramsey were and why I had issues with them.
So while I still continue to recommend people attend FPU, I do so with a few caveats.
Mainly, Ramsey's audience is people who have serious issues with credit card debt, and he makes little attempt to relate to anyone else.
Most, though not all, of my issues fall under this in some way.
Ramsey's audience is people in debt to credit card companies, many of whom have gotten there because they charged consumer goods on their cards that they couldn't afford in the first place. Because of this, he constantly talks about how there is never any reason to go into debt. While I do agree that you should never charge anything on a credit card that you can't pay off at the next due date, I totally disagree that there's never any reason to go into debt. Mainly, I reference student loans here. I never would have been able to get the education I did without student loans.
Education is often worth the debt. This is of course, assuming that you do everything to avoid student loans, or minimize them, such as filling out the FAFSA, applying for scholarships, grants, working, taking extra credits, graduating early, etc.
He wants you to get rid of credit cards completely, and treats credit cards as if they are evil entities. Again, keeping in mind who he is talking to, it does make some sense. If you can't keep yourself from spending money you don't have by charging it, then by all means, get rid of your credit cards. But if you have self-control, then keeping a credit card and paying it off every month will make your life a lot easier. Everything requires a credit check nowadays, not just for loans, but some employers will even check your credit. And while you can get a mortgage loan without a credit check (mind you, this is using the company he endorses--and has strict qualifications), they are not likely to give you as good of a rate as if you just learned to use your credit responsibly and had a good credit score.
You can certainly go without a credit card, and more power to you if you do, but it is likely to be an uphill climb in our consumer & credit-based society.
Because he wants you to feel the THRILL of paying off one of your debts fast, he advocates paying off the smallest debt first, regardless of the interest rate. To me, this is a bad idea logically and emotionally. Logically, you are going to save yourself money by paying off the loans with the highest interest rate first, this always bothered me since I'm a numbers person and the numbers just don't make sense. Further, this is a bad emotionally idea, because he's advocating using the same emotions that got you into debt. The thrill you got when you bought something. I just don't think that it's a good idea to use that same emotion to pay off debt, what you should be trying to do it learn to control that thrill. But that's just me.
Ramsey has good financial principles, but he reminds me of someone who thinks that because there are alcoholics, that all alcohol is evil and all people who drink it are sinful. I would argue that those people who have learned to use alcohol responsibly have learned to master virtue more than those who just avoid it completely (not true in every case, but a general principle). There's nothing wrong with avoiding it, but you also don't learn virtues such as self-control and mastering certain vices. It is the same with debt. Debt certainly can be used for evil, but it doesn't have to be. Learn the virtues that allow you to use debt for you rather than against you.
The other issue I have with him is he acts as if a 12% return on investments is guaranteed. While it is possible to make a 12% return on some investments, I would not recommend assuming you will make that with all investments. Not to mention to make those kind of returns, you would need to invest all your money in higher risk investments, which I would just not be comfortable with.
But I am no financial specialist. I'm just a housewife who likes numbers and has done some reading and research.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
It Happened Again!
Well, you may call it dumb luck, you may call it unluckiness. I just find it amusing. Here I am, on my way to pick up my new milk kefir culture and kombucha SCOBY (more on those some other time) from a lady who was selling some on Craigslist. I'm minding my own business, and lone behold, as I'm pulling out, there they are...two squirrels mating! Now some one please tell me...is it summer mating season? Or do I just attract mating animals? Or maybe because I'm pregnant too, I'm more in tune with those animals being impregnated? Yeah...that must be it....
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Homemade Yogurt - It's Easy, Frugal and Yummy!
What do you need to make homemade yogurt? A lot less than I ever thought you would. Kevin loves eating yogurt for breakfast, and when search for ways to be more frugal, it was suggested that we make our own. In fact, he now prefers my homemade yogurt to commercial yogurt! (This makes me happy.)
Now, you can buy a yogurt maker, and they're really not very expensive and they work just fine. But we barely have enough room in our kitchen for all the stuff we have now, let alone another one-use kitchen appliance. (See one to the right, only costs $40).
I can hardly remember where I learned that you can make yogurt at home, but I'm glad I did. Eventually, I stumbled on this recipe to make yogurt in a slow cooker! From A Year of Slow Cooking. While it is simple to make, I found it to be frustrating. In her pictures, it looks like she has a much older slow cooker. They tend to be more reliable and better working. We got ours at our wedding last year, and we love it! But I found that with making yogurt, it doesn't always keep a steady temperature, so rather than setting it and leaving it, I constantly had to come back and check the temperature with our instant-read thermometer. Not only that, but it took significantly longer to cool off that she claimed it would.
THANKFULLY, I found new directions online that made it easier! Unfortunately, my husband just reinstalled Windows on my computer and lost all my bookmarks, so I am unable to share th e link with you (I've tried to find it!). It still uses a slow cooker, but a little differently.
I thought it might help to explain the basic process for making yogurt in general.
To make yogurt, all you need is a pot, a slow cooker, a big towel or two, a thermometer, milk, store bought PLAIN yogurt--this is the yogurt that comes in a big 32oz. tub. Make sure it is PLAIN, not sweetened or flavored. Once you've made your own homemade yogurt, just throw a cup of it in the freezer to be used the next time. When you want to make more, thaw the yogurt & use where you last used the store bought stuff.
As you notice, there are only two ingredients...milk and yogurt.
Yogurt is a live-culture food. It has, believe it or not, live bacteria in it. But this is GOOD bacteria. It's the kind of bacteria that lives in your intestines and helps you digest things. Good bacteria helps fight bad bacteria, so trust me you want it!
So in order to make yogurt, all you need is to make an environment where the yogurt cultures will multiply, without any other bacteria multiplying too. So we first have to raise the temperature of the milk to between 180 & 200 degrees to kill off all other bacteria. Next we have to cool the milk to between 100 & 120 degrees, which is the optimum temperature for the yogurt to multiply. If possible, we wanna keep it at this temperature for 4-6 hours.
Got it? Ok!
----------------------------------------------------
1) To start out, plug your slow cooker in and set it on low to warm up.
2) Put 1-2 quarts milk (4-8 cups), (or more, depending on how much you wanna make) into a pot. Heat it on LOW, stirring occasionally to prevent burning, until it reaches between 180 & 200 degrees. I usually try to hit between 190 & 195 degrees.
3) Take the pot and place it in a bowl of ice water, and stir until the temperature drops below 120. This will happen much quicker than you may think, at least it did for me.
4) Pour all but one cup of milk into the warmed slow cooker. Mix one cup of yogurt with the reserved milk.
NOTE: Homemade yogurt will not be as thick as commercially processed yogurt. You may add dry milk to the milk/yogurt mixture to thicken it. However, Kevin & I have found that while the yogurt comes out a little bit thicker (not much), it is also a little lumpy/chunky.
5) Add the milk/yogurt mixture to the rest of the milk & stir.
6) Put on the slow cooker lid, unplug it and wrap it in a big towel or two. This will add insulation to try to keep the milk at that ideal 100-120 degrees.
7) Let the yogurt sit for 4-6 hours at least. You may find that it doesn't stay at the ideal temperature for the allotted time, so it may need longer to culture. I like to do all the steps right before bed, and let it culture over night. The live-culture in the yogurt will keep the yogurt from spoiling, but once it's done, it should be transferred to the fridge. I just make one quart at a time and put the homemade yogurt back in the (washed & sanitized) 32 oz. container we got the original store-bought yogurt in.
6) Put on the slow cooker lid, unplug it and wrap it in a big towel or two. This will add insulation to try to keep the milk at that ideal 100-120 degrees.
7) Let the yogurt sit for 4-6 hours at least. You may find that it doesn't stay at the ideal temperature for the allotted time, so it may need longer to culture. I like to do all the steps right before bed, and let it culture over night. The live-culture in the yogurt will keep the yogurt from spoiling, but once it's done, it should be transferred to the fridge. I just make one quart at a time and put the homemade yogurt back in the (washed & sanitized) 32 oz. container we got the original store-bought yogurt in.
----------------------------------------------------
NOTE: This is UNSWEETENED yogurt. You're probably not going to want to eat it plain, though some people do. Options for sweetening/flavoring include:
* honey *
* fresh fruit *
*frozen fruit*
*pudding powder*
*granola*
(more on homemade granola some other time)
and the list can go on.
* honey *
* fresh fruit *
*frozen fruit*
*pudding powder*
*granola*
(more on homemade granola some other time)
and the list can go on.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Lasagna Gardening
"I'm on Oprah's website," my husband grumbled to me across the room. I was puzzled, because he despises Oprah. When I asked him why, he replied that he was looking up about "lasagna gardening," to which I so eloquently replied, "Huh?"
He went on to explain to me that it was the type of gardening we were going to do. This year we made a pathetic attempt at starting a potted garden along with what we could grow in our two aero gardens. The tomato plants died...twice. The sunflower grew to be six feet tall, bloomed and proceed to die two days later. The basil plant almost died, was revived, and somehow is still sprouting leaves, even though most of the plant has turned to more of woody substance than an herb. The strawberries took forever to sprout, they're going on strong, but are still tiny and not likely to fruit this year, or even the next. The huckleberry are growing strong and continue to flower and fruit, despite something continually eating all the leaves. (We thinks it's one of the dogs, since we don't think the deer would venture that far up the patio.) We planted the eggplant and something grew. We're not sure if it was the eggplant or a weed. Now something else is growing. Again not sure whether eggplant or weed. But they're both doing great, so we're keeping them both alive for now. In our aero gardens we grew tea and cherry tomatoes. They both grew really well, but got overgrown from lack of regular maintenance and pruning by us.
My husband was really disappointed with the outcome from this year, so he got permission from our amazing landlords to start an in ground garden and he's been planning for months. A few weeks ago, he started digging the hole. We've been vermicomposting along with keeping an outside compost pile and he wanted to mix it in with the soil we'd been using to help growth. Upon the first day of digging, we discovered that the dirt was in fact pure clay soil. Making it very hard to have a successful garden without either spending lots of money or using lots of chemicals.
.
Now the phrase "lasagna gardening" probably conjures up thoughts of trying to grow wheat to make pasta, tomatoes, herbs, and some how growing ricotta cheese from a plant...at least it does for me. However, it is a method of gardening in which various types of organic matter are layered on top of each other like a lasagna. Like the lasagna layers seen below (not from our garden).
We layered alternating layers of brown organic matter, green organic matter, manure, and clay soil. Because of how lucky we are and because we'd been keeping a regular compost, all of this was free. (Thanks to our very generous landlords who let us use all their shovels, etc. so we didn't have to buy any.)
Brown organic matter is things like fall leaves, pine needles and shredded paper. We used old decomposing wood shavings from what we believe to have been a tree that fell down in the woods and one of the neighbors decided to have shredded.
Green organic matter is things like fresh grass clippings and leaves, garden trimmings and vegetable scraps. Here we utilized our compost.
We were lucky enough to get the manure for free from a horse farm down the road us. And the soil was what we dug out of the hole when we started.
Lastly we added a bunch of vermipods, which we had left over from when we started vermicomposting (more on that some other time). Vermipods are little balls of clay that contain eggs for 5 different species of earthworms. Each species does it's own job in helping make the garden healthier & better. Some eat the compost, some help aerate the soil, some live in the manure, and so on! Above you'll see the vermipods, worm seeds & worms!
Now mind you, we won't be planting anything in this garden until the spring. That's because the layers need time to decompose and turn into what they call black gold. This is the term they use to call compost once all the matter has been broken down. As the name implies, it is black gold to the garden, leaving all sorts of nutrients for the plants to soak into their roots.
So from Oprah, to Italian classic dinners, to gardening and lastly to black gold for us in the Spring. All that hard work resulted in black gold for free for us! Needless to say, my husband and I are looking forward to next fall when we harvest the plants that grew as the result of all the hard work we put it these last few weeks!
See below for a picture of our nearly completed lasagna garden. We still have two layers left to go. Then we're gonna surround the garden with flagstones and Kevin's going to plant white clover over the finished garden to help protect it until we can plant in the Spring.
Matchmaker...for Turtles
I love living where we live.
Really the only downside of where we live is that we don't own it. We're renting.
We live in the middle of nowhere, half a mile down a gravel road into the woods. Most people freak out the first time they visit us. (This also makes it difficult/frustrating to sell things on Craig's List.)
We're surrounded by all sorts of wildlife. But they're in their natural habitats. So we're able to observe them without them being a nuisance. While a deer or two can wreak havoc on a suburban neighborhood, our herd of fourteen deer rarely bother us. They may graze on the lawn grass, but barely touch our garden because they have plenty of natural ways to feed themselves.
Some of the other wildlife we see regularly (or at least see signs of) include moles, foxes, coyote, great blue herons, blue jays, cardinals, osprey, squirrels, field mice, snakes, dragonflies, butterflies, bats and bald eagles. We live on the peninsula where they purchased land to become a park in order to protect the nesting place of bald eagles. One has nested on the next ridge over from where we live.
When it rains we see even more animals! Turtles, frogs, earthworms, more dragonflies.
Let me repeat myself, I love where we live!
Well, last night it rained! As I was taking our dog Chewy out this morning, we saw that there was a turtle in the middle of the road. They like to come out into the middle of the road a lot after it rains. And sadly, we have found more crushed turtles on the road after a rain storm than anyone ever should. So generally, we try to move them out of the road when we find them.
Well, this morning I was in a particularly silly mood and decided to bring my husband a little turtle wake up call. I brought the turtle back to the house. You would be surprised just how much liquid a little turtle can hold! She peed on me TWICE on the way to the house...ha ha! And farted once. I never knew turtles could fart. And yes, she was a girl, you'll find out how I knew later.
Unfortunately, my husband was already up and about when I got back and made me release her into the bushes outside our apartment. And we left to run a few errands. When we returned, my husband declared there was a turtle in our way! So we stopped and discovered that in fact there were TWO turtles in our way...and they were mating!
Sure enough, a male turtle had crawled up the hill behind our apartment to find the turtle I'd brought over and decided to make some little turtles babies! Some of your may find this disgusting and possibly disturbing. But I found it very interesting and mildly entertaining. So I had to go grab my camera and document it!
It was a really exciting two minutes, because about thirty seconds after I took this photo, the male finished his business, rolled over and quickly trotted back down the hill.
So while I generally avoid meddling in the matchmaking a humans, today I am proud to declare myself an expert matchmaker of turtles! ;-)
~ Barely Beginning
Really the only downside of where we live is that we don't own it. We're renting.
We live in the middle of nowhere, half a mile down a gravel road into the woods. Most people freak out the first time they visit us. (This also makes it difficult/frustrating to sell things on Craig's List.)
We're surrounded by all sorts of wildlife. But they're in their natural habitats. So we're able to observe them without them being a nuisance. While a deer or two can wreak havoc on a suburban neighborhood, our herd of fourteen deer rarely bother us. They may graze on the lawn grass, but barely touch our garden because they have plenty of natural ways to feed themselves.
Some of the other wildlife we see regularly (or at least see signs of) include moles, foxes, coyote, great blue herons, blue jays, cardinals, osprey, squirrels, field mice, snakes, dragonflies, butterflies, bats and bald eagles. We live on the peninsula where they purchased land to become a park in order to protect the nesting place of bald eagles. One has nested on the next ridge over from where we live.
When it rains we see even more animals! Turtles, frogs, earthworms, more dragonflies.
Let me repeat myself, I love where we live!
Well, last night it rained! As I was taking our dog Chewy out this morning, we saw that there was a turtle in the middle of the road. They like to come out into the middle of the road a lot after it rains. And sadly, we have found more crushed turtles on the road after a rain storm than anyone ever should. So generally, we try to move them out of the road when we find them.
Well, this morning I was in a particularly silly mood and decided to bring my husband a little turtle wake up call. I brought the turtle back to the house. You would be surprised just how much liquid a little turtle can hold! She peed on me TWICE on the way to the house...ha ha! And farted once. I never knew turtles could fart. And yes, she was a girl, you'll find out how I knew later.
Unfortunately, my husband was already up and about when I got back and made me release her into the bushes outside our apartment. And we left to run a few errands. When we returned, my husband declared there was a turtle in our way! So we stopped and discovered that in fact there were TWO turtles in our way...and they were mating!
Sure enough, a male turtle had crawled up the hill behind our apartment to find the turtle I'd brought over and decided to make some little turtles babies! Some of your may find this disgusting and possibly disturbing. But I found it very interesting and mildly entertaining. So I had to go grab my camera and document it!
It was a really exciting two minutes, because about thirty seconds after I took this photo, the male finished his business, rolled over and quickly trotted back down the hill.
So while I generally avoid meddling in the matchmaking a humans, today I am proud to declare myself an expert matchmaker of turtles! ;-)
~ Barely Beginning
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