It has begun!

Most of you know we live in a county park/campground, where Al is the Park Ranger. In exchange for Al being available 24/7 (and I DO mean 24/7!) we live in a county provided house inside the park. The house is a pre-fab modular home that was built in the 70’s. Over time the windows have rotted, the roof needs replaced (and we found out the attic is full of bats), the siding is falling off, the block walls in the garage are buckling, and the basement is wet and moldy. None of these things can easily be fixed. The Supervisors decided it wasn’t worth putting money into it to get by for a few more years, so they are going to replace it. It will be built on the same footprint as the old one, with the same basement walls but new garage walls and waterproofing on the rest of it.

I know some of you are saying “but my taxes are going to go up”. That’s not probable from this project alone. It’s a capital improvement of the county’s infrastructure. We pay taxes in this county as well on our 3-plex, and I don’t want them to go up either. But the house is falling down and it’s time to get it fixed right. Even though we don’t own this house it is “our home” and has been for 20 years. Our kids grew up here. We have spent tons of our own money over the years to make it livable like we want it, including carpeting & tile on the porch and downstairs, new interior doors, paint, and much more like it was our own home. And since it will be built with county money, we plan to make sure that the new house is done extremely budget conscious. We will be doing many things to save money like lay the flooring (that is reclaimed), paint, countertops and anything else we can do to save the crazy labor costs just like we would if it was our own money.

Okay…..with all of THAT out of the way, let’s get started!

Since we have the camper, we can easily move into it during construction. Al ran sewer, water & electricity to a pad in front of the house and this will be our home for the next few months.

We bought an outdoor carpet last week and Al made a table and set up his grilling station. With the TV & stereo in the garage, we have a great outdoor “living room”. For the last few years we have been going to Texas for a month every spring in the camper, so we have some practice with living in it long term, and it’s not too bad. We will see if I still have that same sentiment at the end of 4 months!  They say we should be in the new house by November 1.

We will have a front row seat for the construction.

This week they are stripping the house of the trim, doors, a couple newer windows, fans, lights, kitchen flooring and anything else that can be reused, either on this house or somewhere else in the county.

We are reusing the kitchen cabinets and the kitchen flooring, so they are coming out as well to be put into storage.

With the new house I’m looking forward to many things: central air (we have two window AC units that we purchased that don’t do the job), winter tight windows & doors (no more shoveling snow inside), forced air heat (no more loading the wood furnace and having to open/close the windows to regulate the heat) and so much more.

The schedule is to demolish the house on Monday. It should be interesting!

Chicken Update

Remember the baby chicks?

They have a new home!

Our coop is really only made to house 10-15 full grown chickens, so we couldn’t keep all of them. They were getting bigger, and no longer needed mama. Matt had a co-worker in Des Moines that had been thinking about getting chickens, so they agreed to take our babies.

Matt and Erin agreed to take them back the last time they were home. But they had to be caught first.

And have their wings clipped.

You clip chickens wings so that they won’t fly. When they try they are off balance, and will stop. You just cut the feathers partially off one wing. It doesn’t hurt them because you just cut feathers, although from all the squawking, you would think their whole wing has been cut off.

Matt’s co-worker has 5 young boys, so I hoped that it would all work out good. I think it’s good to teach another generation how to respect and treat animals, and to show them where some of their food comes from.

We also gave them one of our older hens that wasn’t looking too good. The rooster REALLY liked her and kept pulling her feathers out. She was looking pretty bad, and I didn’t think she would probably make it if we kept her. She must have been laying the super tiny eggs, because we haven’t had any since she left. She wasn’t much bigger than the chicks, so it worked out good to send her too.

They all went into a box (with lots of holes) and headed to Des Moines.

This week we received a cute little thank you note in the mail that all was good and they were enjoying them.  It was sweet.

On a bad note, however, with the crazy amount of raccoons in the park this year, we have lost 6 more, including the rooster, so we are down to only 8 hens. :(

Spring time chicks

Every morning we let our chickens out to “free range” in the yard. I feel that they are healthier eating bugs and grass outside the pen plus it saves on feed costs and keeps the coop cleaner. We usually open up the pen first thing in the morning, and by dusk they go back to the pen on their own and we just have to shut the door. We count heads just to make sure everyone is in every night.

A little over 3 weeks ago, we were missing one hen. Al looked around to see if he could find feathers or any sign that something had killed her, but we couldn’t find anything. We thought maybe something had scared her or something and would be back the next day. The next night she still wasn’t back, so again Al looked through the long grass along the edge of the yard.

We put a short fence around the flower beds to keep the chickens out a few weeks ago, and Tai was pawing at the fence trying to get to something in the flowers. When Al came back up we found the missing hen.

She was sitting on 8 eggs next to the house under the flowers. While I don’t really want more chickens right now, we decided to leave her and see what happened.  Once a day she would fly back to the pen to get food and water, but then go right back and sit on the eggs.

Yesterday was 3 weeks to the day that she started sitting. The windows were open on the porch and I could hear her making a different sound then normal. So I went outside and found 8 baby chicks running around after their mother.

We were going to leave her in the fenced in flowers, but then thought that she would be a great find for a raccoon that happened to come into the yard, so after dark Al moved them into the coop. When you mix chickens, it’s better to do it in the dark, otherwise they may fight or peck each other and kill the chicks. While I didn’t want more chickens, I don’t want to find them dead either.

This morning the 8 chicks are sitting in the corner of the coop under their mama and two other hens that have been broody anyway. I don’t think they will have any trouble protecting the chicks from everyone else, and I guess we have 8 more chickens!

The egg with the lowest cholesterol

Our chickens are laying anywhere from 5-9 eggs every day. While that seems like a lot, keep in mind that these are bantam chickens, which means that their eggs are much smaller then regular size eggs. It takes 1.5 –2 to equal a regular egg.

Even though they are small, with so many they add up in a hurry, but we haven’t had any trouble giving them away. We have plenty of friends who regularly ask if we have any eggs, which is great.

I never get tired of seeing all the cool colors of the eggs. They are in every shade of white to blue to green to tan to brown. The brown ones sometimes have speckles, some days more then others.

Lauren gave me these cool porcelain egg holders for my birthday. I love them!

Al went to gather the eggs the other evening and came in and asked me if I thought I could tell which egg had the lowest cholesterol. I told him that no, I could not tell which had the lowest cholesterol.

But upon a closer look, yes, I think I can tell which one it is.

I have no idea which chicken laid this tiny tiny egg. It’s not much bigger then a quarter.  This is the first one that we have seen this small, it will be interesting to see if we have any more. It’s too bad that it wasn’t before Easter. It would be cute as a deviled egg.

Reminds of years ago when Al made deviled eggs out of extra quail eggs for Easter. All the kids loved them. :)

Camper shrimp boil

When we are here we usually go to a local restaurant and have a traditional shrimp boil. It’s very good and has crab legs, crawfish and shrimp, along with the usual ingredients. It’s $20 per person, plus your drink.

Several years ago we started doing the shrimp boil at home after we return since we usually bring home some great gulf shrimp, and we can bring a little bit of Texas home to the kids. We have it timed pretty good when to add what and how long to cook it. 

The “chef”

And we can do it a whole bunch cheaper than $20 per person, although we don’t do the crab legs or crawfish.

At home, however, we just pour it out on our large table and everyone digs in.

That’s a little harder to do in the camper. It would be great to do it outside on a picnic table, but it was a little cold and windy last night. I think we came up with a decent solution……through it in the sink.

We did this a couple weeks ago with 10 people (sorry, no photos) and again last night with 8 people.  It actually works pretty good.

And it was yummy!

The Fire truck

Every year when we are in Texas, we go to the Fulton Oysterfest. Al loves raw oysters, and it’s just a nice evening out to go people watch.  (can you tell it’s been sunny here? He’s a bit sunburned)

One of the annual contests is the Decorated Oyster Contest. You make something decorated with oyster shells basically. He came up with the idea last year while we were here and started collecting shells that would work. The festival is to raise money for the Fulton Volunteer Fire Department, so he thought a fire truck would be appropriate.

This winter before we left he started on his masterpiece and made a wood base and started adding oysters to it.

It didn’t look like much at first, but it was so detailed at the end.

Right down to the fire extinguishers

Hatchet (cut out of a beer can)

Ladder and sign

And fire hoses. These were made out of sea whip sea grass that we find on the beach. They made perfect hoses.

We took it over Friday night to see what the competition was. Someone made a flag. Last year the first place entry was a flag not too different then this one. Real creative……

A red fish and pelican

And a couple others that I didn’t get photos of.

We sat. And Al ate oysters. We listened to the bands. And perused the vendor area.

Then it was time………

2nd Place!

When the announcer presented the (2 foot tall) trophy he shook Al’s hand and made small talk (where are you from, where are you staying, etc.) and put his hand on Al’s arm. Then said “you’ve got a pretty big arm”. Al said “so do you” and the announcer said “just don’t hit me with it”. It was cute. Al doesn’t embarrass easily, but I think he was a little red in the face. Or maybe that was the sunburn, who knows. I’m sure that’s what HE would tell you.

The pelican won first place, which was a good choice.  The photo doesn’t do it justice, it was nice.

After the contest they auction off the entrants that allow them to, to raise funds for the fire department. The others brought anywhere from $35 to $125 (for the pelican), but Al’s raised $250! The person who bought it wanted to talk to Al, so he went up near the stage and she was almost in tears when she told him “you have no idea what this truck means to me”. No other explanation, though, so  we don’t know what the background is, but I’m glad he made her happy by making his oyster fire truck.

I know I’ve been slacking on blogging this trip. I promise to do better in the coming days. We only have 10 days or so before we leave, so we have to enjoy every day we can.

Beer Can House

“A Houston Landmark”

It was cold, rainy and dreary when we visited Houston last weekend, but I had a couple things I wanted to see, including the Beer Can House. It’s a landmark, so we might as well at least drive by, right? 

It was seriously covered and decorated with beer cans.

It was started by John Milkovisch in his retirement in 1968.  He started with high unique treatment of the concrete when he got tired of mowing.

Then he moved on the siding and it grew from there.

It is located in a nice neighborhood not too far from downtown. There were small homes like this one, as well as new 3 story $750,000 houses. The streets were narrow, and I’m sure the neighbors get tired of people stopping to gawk at the beer cans.

I can’t say it was on my bucket list, but I can say I’ve seen it. :) I was unique and fun. And I may actually use some marbles somehow in our new deck this summer.

Here’s the whole story and more info (in case you want to see it for yourself!) : http://www.beercanhouse.org/

and more photos: http://www.flickr.com/groups/beercanhouse/pool/with/3694183069/