I think I was out from 11:30 to 2:30 today. It was hot, the car gets even hotter, and I forgot to take a water bottle with me. Plus I kept forgetting to put up my sunshade whenever I parked.

I did my big run to the Food Co-op. I got my freshly ground peanut butter so I will make peanut butter cookies tomorrow. I didn't get the Camano Island eggs this time. Instead I got some from Misty Meadows, which is an even more local farm (same county).

http://www.mistymeadowsfarm.com/eggs.html.

They do have a few stores in the greater Seattle area that they provide eggs for. I will report in on them when I have eaten some tomorrow. They are more expensive than the Camano Island eggs, but I figure our new hens will be laying in about four to six weeks and that's not too long to pay a little more for eggs if they are as good as everyone raves about.

Of course I got several other items, including Muir Glen Chicken Noodle soup. This is the only chicken noodle soup DS will eat other than homemade or Campbell's (which has so much stuff in it that I don't want him having/and or he is allergic to). now when he is sick he can have that if I don't have enough stuff on hand to make stock.

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Speaking of stock I have been keeping two bags in the freezer lately. One is of chicken bones that I have picked the meat from and one is of things like onion and garlic skins, onion tops, carrot peels, celery leaves, etc. From what I have been reading there is actually a lot of flavor in those things that you would normally discard and you can use them to make your stock instead of using actual vegetables that you then throw away. We shall see. If it doesn't have the flavor it should I will just throw in the appropriate vegetables. Either way what is left after cooking will either go on the compost or to the chickens.

Another thing that I read is that you need the bones of four or five chickens (or at least two turkeys) to make really good stock. There just isn't enough there on one chicken carcass to get the really good meaty flavor. I've always had to highly season my stock in the past and think this might be the reason why. So I am saving all of the bones from the chicken I make. Well, not what we eat directly off of, but whatever is left over and I pick all the meat off.

I also read that for really good beef stock you need at least five pounds of beef bones and you need to roast them first. Well, I guess I knew that they should be roasted, but not that you needed that many to make a good stock. I am really learning a lot from some of these books I got from the library.

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I am thinking about possibly making some homemade soap. When we get our beef, I am going to ask for some of the suet (the fat around the kidneys) for making tallow. I mean, I am paying for the whole thing (or half of the thing) so that should include the suet as well. You can get the organ meats if you ask for them, so I imagine the suet shouldn't be too hard for them to throw in. If not, oh well. You can make soap from vegetable oils instead of animal fat, so that is another course I could take. I have reserved the book Smart Soapmaking at the library and it should be arriving at my branch early next week.

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I am also hoping that Joel Salatin's book Folks, This Ain't Normal will come in soon. I am third on the hold list, the library has 5 copies, and three of them are overdue. The other two are due on the 21st and 22nd. I hate it when people keep books out past their due date, especially new books that they know other people are waiting to read. Joel is a big advocate of pasture raised, humanely raised, organic livestock. He is the guy that the author of Omnivore's Dilemma visited and he runs Polyface Farms, which is featured in the documentary Food, Inc.

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One of the chickens (Queen) dug up some of the plants in the vegetable garden. Fortunately I saw them and got them back into the ground in time. I then mulched around all the plants with straw, hoping that if we hide the dirt it won't tempt them to scratch in it so much. I also put up some white wire fencing from the old house to hopefully mark it as off limits. They could go through it though, so I am also going to get some rodent wire mesh and some zip ties and attach it to the fencing. A determined chicken could fly over it, but would probably have a hard time getting back out and would think twice before doing it again. Hopefully that won't cost too much.



The chicken was very indignant, as you can see in the photo, when I told her off and picked her up and stuck her back in the fenced area. She wouldn't even look at me. But then later when she got out again and I was sitting on the porch swing (which is not on the porch) she came over and snuggled my feet, so I think she's forgiven me.