Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

The mortgage posted to the account today and we are officially under $16K left to pay it off. $15,805.41 is the exact total. Over 80% of the payment goes to principal now. Of course we will probably sell it before it is paid off, but I still like watching it roll back past each $1000.

Speaking of things that roll, our car just hit 11,500 miles and we've had it for 16 months. Which averages out to 718.75 per month, but honestly the bulk of it was put on during our summer driving vacation in 2011, driving back and forth to Virginia Mason for tests, the surgery, more tests, follow ups and more follow ups. In an average month I'll probably drive 300 miles. In a non-average month, like when we go to the zoo or the science center it might be closer to 500, but those months are rare. When we lived out in the country we were easily driving 15,000 miles a year. We drive so much less in town.

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DH is home safely now. Looks like he might only need to work one extra week around Christmas and not two. His alternate piped up wanting some extra hours, too. So they decided to split it. It'll still be a nice amount of extra money, just not as much as we were expecting. I'm not counting on it for anything anyway. I know better than that.

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I slept pretty well last night, but I guess my body is making up for that tonight by keeping me up hacking. And it was so darn hot in the house I opened the window, but I only got to air it out a little before PePe went for a stroll and marked his territory. The skunk comes through at least once a week and always, it seems, when I am too hot and need to open the window, the stinker.

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DD went to school today and seems to be feeling much, much better, which gives me hope that in a couple of days I will be, too. DS is not as sick as me yet, but he held off on showing symptoms longer, so he's probably just a few days behind me.

We managed to do math, vocabulary, grammer, usage and mechanics, and literature before I had to stop and die for a while. DH stepped in and did science and history. Hopefully he can do that for the rest of the week while I try to get better.

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I cancelled my physical therapy today on account of how I feel, so that saved my $90 for the week. I've rescheduled for Monday, though. Hopefully I won't be contagious by then.

...or five prescriptions later... Well, okay probably not the actual flu, just Super Bad Sinues: The Sequel. And one of the meds is for sleep, because with the super cough (codeine cough syrup, I love you) I haven't been doing much of that. At least everything was generic and I only shelled out $17.81 for all five. Nice.

As for the chickens, well, we have had several escape artists as of late. They are determined to be free range all of the time, and not just part-time. But holes have now been patched in the fence, the gate has been fixed, and wire has been placed higher. Only two of them, Curious and Georgie, got out today. They are the lightest, smallest birds. They fly the easiest and the furthest and we will likely never be able to keep them in. Despite Georgie getting her tail feathers clipped by the neighbor's dog not too long ago, she is still determined to range, though she is sticking to the yard.

I suppose I won't complain too much about Curious and Georgie, since they are the two best egg layers in the bunch. Still, it's not like they have a small enclosure. I have seen yards that are not as big as their huge pen. But the grass is always greener and the bugs are always bigger and the slugs are always...sluggier on the other side of the fence. Well, thank goodness for patient neighbors who are charmed by them and like the free eggs they get slipped now and then.

We have been letting the ducks out a little bit to free range during the day when doing garden work, but they don't really seem to like being out. They like the fenced area and they like their miniature pond and they absolutely do not like the neighbor's dogs. They are too fat to fly and never try to escape, although Lady Henry Inigo Montoya does go off away from the other three quite a bit. She has very little tolerance for Patches and his romantic overtures.

Egg production is starting to slow down as the days get shorter. Well, the 3 female ducks are still laying pretty consistently, but we are only getting about five chicken eggs a day from twelve hens. We are thinking about putting in a light, but 8 eggs a day is fine for our needs and we will probably only do so if it slacks off to a lot less than that.

The garden is still plugging along, but the days are getting cooler. The forecast is looking in the lower 60's for the rest of the week, with rain on Friday. I can't remember the last time it really rained, June maybe, and we are in for a stormy weekend. The nights are still staying above 50 so the tomatoes are still going. Not sure how much longer I can expect that. There are tons of green ones just starting to turn color. I guess if I need to I can pick them and wrap them in newspaper and let them ripen inside. Not a big fan of green tomatoes or I'd just dehydrate them.

I have five ripe tomatoes sitting on my table that I need to figure out something to do with. Maybe I'll make chili this week. In the crockpot so I don't have to put out any effort. Or I suppose I could can a single pint. Just in a smaller pan, not my full-size canner.

I did up what I think is the last of the prunes and they are on a tray in the freezer. There might be a few more, but I'll need DH at the top of a ladder to tell me if there are anymore on the tree and he won't be home until Wednesday. I am too short to reach, but I think I still see a few up there. I was right and ended up with about 8 quart bags full (or will do when the rest of these get packed into the last bag).

I'm still getting a couple handfuls of green beans every three days or so. There are a couple of yellow zucchini struggling along and I may get two more cucumbers before the weather turns. I should be able to harvest another broccoli by week's end.

I really need to do up a meal plan for the week. I am kind of doing the whatever is easiest route right now, but that way leads to overspending. Dinner tonight was scrambled egg sandwiches and stir-fried green beans. Simple, easy, not too much effort.

DD is going to try to go to school tomorrow after being out sick for a while. Ugh. 7 a.m. Even the chickens don't get up that early right now. DS felt good enough to do all of his lessons today, though he is still feeling yucky. The nice thing about homeschooling is he is able to sleep in when he doesn't feel well and it's okay if we don't finish lessons until 7 p.m. I am not, nor ever will be a fan of Algebra, but it's really not fun when your brain feels like it is full of snot. Still, we beat it (the algebra, not the snot).

I really don't like these invented holidays, like Columbus Day, that places seem to pick and choose whether or not they are going to shut down or stay open. Things like government services and the library are closed, but the schools are not. Big bank Chase was open for me to pay my credit card bill at, but my little credit union was closed so I couldn't pay the mortgage or get any cash out.

The kids were too sick on Friday to drag them anywhere and I wasn't thinking about the fact that things might be closed today, because it's just a made up holiday. No one in the real world takes it off or even remembers it's there until they try to go somewhere that is closed and has a sign posted. *sighs* To celebrate a day for the man who did not actually discover America (hello, Vikings) or even make it here, but landed himself somewhere in the West Indies, is silly.

I am just cranky because it is interfering with my desire to get budgety stuff taken care of. Oh, phooey, and I just realized that means none of the stuff out in the mailbox is going to go out today. Guess a trip to the post office is in order.

One of the things that helps me to stay incredibly organized when it comes to bill paying is my bill box. I love this thing. It is specially designed with 31 slots for each day of the month and two drawers beneath to hold things like stamps, address labels, envelopes, pens, whatever. As the bills come in I file them in the corresponding number that is one week before their due dates. I can tell at a glance that bills are coming due so I never have to worry about it.



I've had it for a few years now and I totally would not give it up without fight. What kind of methods do you all use to stay on top of the bills you don't pay online?

Anyway, here's what I paid out of Friday's paycheck:

$1000.00 Medical DS
___41.16 Security system for old house
___21.18 Medical DS
__400.00 Old house mortgage (plus extra to principal)
__200.00 Chase
__757.82 Car payment (plus extra to principal)
__300.00 Glasses (2nd month of 3 months same as cash)
___44.87 Phone for old house
___70.56 Internet
__144.00 Water/sewer old house (2 months)
__300.00 Mom's utilities
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$3279.59

I still have to buy some groceries, I'll have a $90 physical therapy session on Wednesday, and need to get out $25 to pay out the kids' allowances. Otherwise I am right on target for the month. Just having that big check ready to pay off the forward head posture treatment for DS tomorrow has lifted a tremendous weight off my shoulders. I can face the rest of the month without it looming.

I cleaned out my purse and put all of the money that was left from the last payday into the coin jar. It was $25.63, plus one Canadian penny which went into my Canadian coin jar. I'll try to make a deposit into the CU on Monday. I have over $50 so it's time. I need to go to Trader Joe's anyway, so I can combine trips. This money is headed for the freezer fund.

Tomorrow I need to sit down and pay the bills from yesterday's paycheck. I have already written out the $1000 check to finish paying off DS's forward head posture treatment. It will be nice not to have that hanging over us anymore. I will pay that in person on Monday.

I talked to DH tonight and he has hit the $110,000 mark for the year, so that means that this was the last paycheck they will take Social Security tax out of for the rest of the year. That means an extra $700 take home pay per month until January. I will be so glad for the day when 2/3 of our take home pay isn't going to pay for new medical debt and old medical debt. Life is going to get very easy when that happens because we will be used to living on 1/3 of our income and can start to save like crazy.

When our ducks were little they went into the chicken coop right along with the chicks and hens, but as they got older they had difficulty climbing the ramp with their big webbed feet. Also, since the ducks didn't perch at night to sleep, once the chicks learned to perch the ducks ended up sleeping on the floor underneath them. Chickens poop a lot at night and this was not a happy or healthy situation for the poor ducks. They would either stay there or they would move into the nesting boxes, contamintating them.

Our first solution was to take an old desk and an old vanity cabinet from before the bathroom remodel, take off the doors, put hay in the bottom, herd the ducks into the desk half and then push the two together so that the openings were closed off.

Eventually they got too big for this and wanted more space so we expanded their den. We moved the desk to the right like so:



And the vanity went to the left like this:



We ran chicken wire along the back, stapling to one end of the desk and one end of the vanity.



We filled both the floors of the desk and the vanity with hay. Across the top of the vanity we placed one of the stripped down box springs salvaged from those awful ones that came with our mattress set and broke 3 days after the warranty was up.



At night we place the other box springs in front of the opening to the den.



We use bungy cords to hold the front box springs to the top box springs and the chicken wire to the top box springs. This seems to racoon proof it. I've seen racoon scat around it over the past two weeks but they haven't been able to get in and dine on our ducks.

We place sod and hay in the center section that is open the ground. The ducks love it and they love their new den, too.

In the winter we will use the thick cloth coverings that used to be on the box springs for extra warmth over the chicken wire. We will staple it into place and then remove it in the spring.

On the back side of the desk we cut a little hole and placed an old wire shelf over it. It is easily removable by us, but not the racoons, and we can reach in and get the eggs they lay before we let them out in the morning.



The whole contraption works perfectly for us, and we didn't have to pay out for new materials. We simply recycled what we had on hand, keeping it out of the landfill, and giving it a new purpose. It's not pretty, but it's more than functional and our ducks are delighted to have the extra space and an area open to the ground.

I really, really hate it when the blogs malfunction in such a way as that when you go to post your entry it tells you that their records show that you are already logged in as yourself. I'm like, no duh, and thanks for eating my entry. And then it says you're logged out, even though you just logged in before you sent in the entry, so you go to log back in and guess what? You're not logged out after all. Still, your entry has been eaten. I wish there was an autosave feature like on livejournal so you could just backtrack and get your entry back.

Can you guess what just happened to me? The first time in three weeks that I didn't copy paste because the blogs have been behaving themselves, too. Grrrr. Now off to recreate a post.

When our ducks were small they stayed in with the chickens at night, but as they grew it became harder and harder for those big webbed feet to walk up the little ramp into the chicken coop. Plus, they didn't perch at night, which meant sleeping underneath the chickens. And chickens poop a lot at night. It was obvious pretty quickly that in order to maintain a happy duck flock we'd have to do something different.

The immediate answer was that we had an old wooden student desk and an old bathroom vanity cabinet. We took those out into the poultry enclosure took off the cabinet covers and took out the drawers. In the base we put hay. At night the ducks would go into one of the open cabinet spaces and then we would push the vanity and the desk together, blocking any openings with the cabinet doors, a piece of plywood, and on old screen door.

Eventually this became too small for them as they hit maturity, so we decided to use the bad box springs we had gotten from our mattress purchase in January (they broke right after the warranty was up) to make the duck den more roomy. We opened up the desk and the vanity and turned them parallel to each other.

Looking right, the old desk:



Looking left, the old vanity from before the bathroom remodel:



Chicken wire runs along the back between the desk and the vanity. It is stapled on:



On top of the open space rests one of the srtipped down box springs:



Then at night we put the other stripped down box springs in the front opening.



We use bungy cords to hold the top box spring to the front box spring and the top box spring to the chicken wire at night, just in case of racoons. In the winter we will place a piece of plywood over the chicken wire in the back for more warmth.

Out of the back of the desk we cut a hole and then covered it with an old wire shelf. The shelf comes off and we can reach in to gather the eggs the ducks lay before we let them out in the morning.



The den is open to the ground in the center and the ducks love that. We put in strips of sod and hay. We've had this new contraption going for a couple of weeks now and they couldn't be happier with their expanded home. And I love that we recycled things on hand and didn't buy anything new to make it. And despite seening racoon scat nearby, they have not been able to get in and put our birds on the menu. Heaven help us if a racoon ever learns to work a bungy cord, though.

It's not pretty, but it works.

DH just called and it looks like he will have to work an extra week in November and an extra week in December. That will be approximately $8000 net income (possibly more depending on where they take stuff out at, could be as much as $8500, but I'm guesstimating on the low side). Actually, it might be more than that also based on when they stop taking out that one tax which usually hits some time towards the end of October. DH is going to run the numbers tonight in his withholding spreadsheet and get back to me with the real numbers.

There will be two more plane tickets he will have to buy, which will be about $650 each, and two extra hotel nights, at $100 each, so after that, we should have an extra $6000 at the least to work with that was not expected. That will be nice after having things be so tight with all these medical expenses. At least this means we don't have to come up with extra money for the four weeks off he would have normally had to take off at Christmas time. We can use that $6000 to get us through that and he will only have 3 weeks off with no pay at Christmas. God always seems to provide.

Of course he won't be coming home until Christmas Day, but oh, well. At least we'll be doing a little more than treading water. It has been such a tough year with all the unexpected medical bills. I am really looking forward to 2013 being a fresh start. It should be a good year for us. 13 is this family's lucky number. Like crazy lucky in ways we've never been able to explain. Here's hoping that continues.

I got a little lax about reporting the stuff I paid within the last few days and figured I should do that before writing up what is coming out of today's payday. This all came out of the last paycheck from two weeks ago. I did find out what the new monthly amount on the car insurance is now that the other car has been sold and we only have to deal with the van. It was a drop of about $26 a month.

$158.50 WMTC
__66.02 Electric old house
__59.89 Car insurance
__45.67 Old house insurance
_225.00 Medical
__39.53 DH Life insurance
__90.00 Physical therapy
__32.70 My Life insurance
_153.00 Storage
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$870.31

I also saved out $500 for DS's medical which will combine with $500 out of the paycheck today to pay off the remaining $1000 owed for his forward head posture treatment, which will continue for a while, but thank goodness will be paid off. I really did not like the way it felt to have that looming over us. One more month and I can get back to using that $500 a month on debt repayment.

Electric out at the old house is way up because of the workmen using power tools and lights on the weekends and possibly hot water to wash up in. It amazes me that 8 days of use a month can make the bill jump by $45. And I will be so glad when we don't have to pay for storage anymore, but until the house sells and we can buy a new one, there it sits.

Oh, and I also got a bit of gas the other day, $20.53, at a station near home because I didn't want to drive across town to the Costco where it's cheaper. That should be enough to keep us good until DH is home on Wednesday and can fill up the tank and also run in to Costco proper and pick up toilet paper and vitamin D.

So far I have preserved a basket of Italian prunes. About half the basketful fits on one cookie sheet. I washed, pitted and halved them (no need to remove the skin) and arranged them like so:



They take about four hours to freeze solid and then you can bag them up. One cookie sheet filled two quart-sized baggies.



I tasted one to make sure I like them prepared this way. It's like eating a popsicle made out of prunes, so good. Better even than frozen blueberries or grapes. So far I have preserved 4 quarts. I think I may end up with about 8 quarts so I will need to be stingy with these throughout the winter, handing them out only when someone has a very sore throat, or the digestive issues the prunes are known for fixing. We have lots of frozen blueberries and raspberries as well as tons of jam, so I think piecing them out as needed is the best option. I really don't want to buy much in the way of fruit out of season so this will definitely help to extend what we have.

There are a bunch of windfalls on the ground, too, so I might make jam with them if there are enough. They will be well-cleaned and skinned since they are on the ground. I think I would make it a chunky jam with some good-sized pieces in it for the full effect of the fruit in this case.

DS got a hold of one of the ducks today.



This is Henry Inigo Montoya aka Lady Henry Inigo Montoya because she grew up to be a girl instead of a boy. Lady is the gentlest and friendliest of the ducks and best egg layer. She's a real sweetheart.

Today's harvest, about 50 Italian prunes, 2 big tomatoes, a couple of little ones (including one green one that got knocked off the vine), a little cucumber that the plant died on (death by chicken), another handful of green beans, and my very first broccoli. I also got brave and cut some grown chard. I am going to saute it. It is generally treated as an ornamental around here, but it does so well I decided it was time to try cooking it myself. I have had baby chard in salads and I've eaten it in soups, but I've been ridiculous about eating it any other way.

I am going to freeze the Italian prunes. The nice lady at Throwback at Trapper Creek told me how she freezes hers and I will use that method. I just really don't feel like canning and this way I won't be adding any extra sugar.



This was part of my mother's corn harvest. She didn't take care of it at all, basically planted it and forgot it and since it didn't rain more than twice this summer, her lack of watering majorly stunted it. Yet it's a testament to her soil that it still produced some tasty kernals (we ate it for lunch) even if the ears were tiny. If it hadn't we would have just tossed it to the chickens.

This is my first year gardening in this climate since, oh, maybe 1989, other than fruit harvest, and while I gardened at the other house, we always had our first killing frost before October. The only things I ever saw there were pears and apples after September. The difference between a climate in the foothills of Mt. Baker and a maritime climate are quite wonderful to me.

I've definitely got some changes I will make next year if we are still living here, or ideas for whatever house we end up buying if we sell the old house and can buy before spring. It will be in this climate no matter where we buy, pretty much. Most of the houses on smaller lots in this town tend to have the best sun in their front yards. I have no issue with mixing vegetables in all the flowerbeds if that is my only way to do it. It is actually becoming quite common to see front yard gardens here these days. They are usually in raised beds, but they are there.

My biggest thing is to get the stuff into the ground sooner than June instead of letting it languish in pots, then putting it in the ground and hoping really hard. I knew better than this, but um...well, we all get lazy or sick or keep putting it off and these things happen. It just can't happen next year if I want to plant enough green beans for the year.

I also will have some diatomaceous earth on hand to deal with the slugs and I absolutely will not listen to my mother about using straw mulch. All that was in the rains of spring was perfect slug habitat and they decimated my cauliflower crop to the point that I didn't get to harvest any of it.

I need to keep my seeds in one location so that I am not frantically searching for them a month or two later when I am ready to plant them. I swear I lost my packets of green bean seeds no less than five times (bought more twice) and ended up planting starts instead, which is why I don't have any to preserve this year as they were close to sold out when I got the ones I have and so I only have had enough for about 2 meals a week.

So basically, the last week of April and the first week of May, I need to be organized, not get sick, and not get lazy. And also hope for a somewhat cooler, but still hot, July.

I paid out $225 for medical today and forgot to get a receipt. I will get one tomorrow as I need it for the HSA. DS got his x-ray today and we will have the results tomorrow, so it's not an extra trip to get the receipt. If all goes as the doctor suspects his forward neck posture will have been corrected almost completely.

I also picked up two self-adhesive Ace-type bandages for my daughter at $3.99 each, plus tax. Lost my receipt to the wind and don't want to do the math, but approximatly $9 for that. It's not tax deductible anyway, so I don't need the receipt, but just like to keep things exact in my records. I'll do the math later.

I made a payment to AMEX online yesterday of $500.

I put $10.26 into the coin jar this week. I got a rebate check from my insurance company's safe driver thingy for $19.83. All of that will make it's way into the freezer fund.

The lady who works on my leg cancelled on me again today. She rescheduled for tomorrow. I really hope she can make it this time. It has been 3.5 weeks now and it is starting to affect the way I walk. I know she was hurt, but she has managed to see some patients, and I've been cancelled on four or five times now. I can't put off this treatment much longer. I will need to see someone else soon, or I'll be back to walking with a cane or worse, a walker. I really don't want to leave her, but loyalty only goes so far and I can't cripple myself over it.

I set up the October budget spreadsheet and have everything on track for the month.

Homeschooling is still going along pretty well, though I have had one or two days where I just wish I could bundle DS off to school and have someone else deal with him for seven hours. When DH comes home for his two weeks off shift I think I am going to just take a few hours and go to the library and sit in a chair and read and just be away. Or the park if it's not too cold. Somewhere free. I just need some serious "me" time. I'd go to Barnes and Noble, but they took out the couches and comfy chairs. It's no longer inviting. Did they do that in all of them or just our local ones?

I used to love to go to B&N and look through their cookbooks. I would buy one book, but with me a cookbook has to be thoroughly gone through for me to know I would make the recipes and being able to sit in a comfy chair and go through them carefully and gently until I found a good one. It was a nice ritual. I don't really buy books from them now that I can't do that. I won't just buy one and hope it'll have recipes I can use.

I'd like to find some animal husbandry books, particularly on rabbits, but I'm not going to buy anything I can't take the time to comfortably look through first and know it will meet my needs. Because of my leg I can't just stand there for a half an hour looking either. Take away the little things and you take away my desire to shop there, pure and simple.

The pot roast did not go in at the right time yesterday so we ended up just eating leftover homemade pizza and leftover homemade chicken noodle soup. That bumps the pot roast to tonight.

Monday--
Pot roast
Baked potatoes
Green beans
Prunes

Tuesday--
Picnic ham
Kohlrabi
Drop biscuits with homemade jam of choice

Wednesday--
Baked potato soup
Cole slaw
Frozen berry smoothie

Thursday--
Chicken Stir-fry with lots of veggies
Pears

Friday--
Homemade pizza with homemade sausage, ham, bell peppers, onions, and pepperoni
Cole slaw

Saturday--
Pork chops
Fried potatoes
Green beans
Pear sauce

Sunday--
Leftovers (and if no leftovers, pancakes and ham)

Yesterday was tomato day, as in I spent a good amount of it blanching, peeling, cutting up, and blending 25 pounds of tomatoes that had been sitting on my kitchen table for over a week. I put them in the crockpots. It filled the 8 quart to the top and then the 4 quart 3/4 of the way full. I left them to cook down on low for 24 hours and then just combined the two crocks together. I did not notice a difference in consitancy between this batch, where I peeled the skins off, and the last two batches when I didn't. What I did notice was it didn't take as long to cook down, closer to 24 hours than 36.

I currently have the 8 quart one full to the top. I bumped it up to high to make sure that it would boil. In about an hour I will put it all into jars and can them. I should have at least 15 to 16 pints if it doesn't cook down too much more in the next hour. That should put me up to half a year's supply of homemade and canned tomato sauce. I don't know if there will be any at the farmer's market next Saturday, but if there is I'd like to do at least one more batch. I've got a few ripening on the vine and whatever is ripe I always throw in with my farmer's market buys.

Once they are in the canner I can clean out the crock and start my pears cooking down for pear sauce and can that tonight. I wonder if pears will cook down faster than apples since they are a softer fruit? I will need to check the crock sooner to be on the safe side, I suppose. I'm not sure I'll get any of the baking done that I wanted to do this week, except for the cloverleaf rolls, but that's okay. My ear is completely pain free now, but I'm still kind of slacking in the energy department.

I would really like to can pear chunks as well if I have the time to do it this fall. I don't much care for the consitancy of canned peaches, but canned pears I enjoy much better and it'd be nice to have some on hand for when the pear season ends in December. And it's easier to find organic pears for a reasonable price, anyway. I'll have to buy more lemon juice. Between the tomato sauce and the pear sauce I will wipe out what I have on hand. Pears don't have enough natural pectin to not put it in. Tomatoes probably do, but all the recommendations suggest its safer to raise the acid content of them with lemon juice if you are using a water bath canner, which I am.

My chicken noodle soup that I made tastes even better today after sitting in the fridge. The flavors have just melded even more beautifully. I knew that happened with chili and stew, but I'd never had it happen with soup, usually because it's gone so fast. It's nice not to have to make lunch right now when I'm so busy with preserving, just pour out some soup and heat it up.

One of these days I really need to make up stock in my giant stock pot instead of the crockpot so I will have enough to can it. It doesn't seem worthwhile to get out the pressure canner to can two jars of stock, or three jars of chicken/turkey and vegetable soup minus the noodles. But I really want to have some on hand that I can just add noodles to it later on as I use it, so I'll have to get with that in another couple of weeks. I want to do it while organic carrots and organic celery are still in season. Organic onions and garlic are always cheap.

We'll need to roast and eat some whole chickens between now and then so I have the carcasses to work with and maybe some turkey thighs as well for the meat for the soup since I have some in the freezer. I have two whole chickens in the freezer, so we'll definitely have one of them for dinner one night this week.

I will have to stop at the farm stand tomorrow and pick up a cabbage and a lettuce. That should be all the produce I buy this week for my weekly menu planning. The rest will be from food on hand in the fridge, the garden, and the freezer or pantry.

No ear pain today and only a slightly sore throat when I swallow. That's a huge step in the direction of feeling better. Now if my nose will clear up I think I will start feeling like a human being again.

I switched things around in my menu planning and made the chicken noodle soup today, mostly because I hadn't baked the potatoes for baked potato soup and the other was easier. It turned out incredibly well. I made a couple of changes to my usual recipe, adding in some garlic powder and ground celery seed and it made it much more savory. I've finally got it to where I think it tastes better than my favorite restaurant bowl of soup, which makes me happy because I've been futzing around trying to do that for years. I think we'll skip the baked potato soup tomorrow and just have more of this. It is so delicious.

The tomatoes on the table are all ripe now so I will start the process to make them into sauce tomorrow, but not until after I make the pear sauce, which I should have done today, but didn't. I'll start it going early so that I can have the tomatoes in by 2 p.m., so they will done by 2 p.m. Sunday and canned in the afternoon. I'm going to blanch and peel this batch and see if that makes a difference in consistancy. It'll be nice to have my table back.

I've checked the 10 day forecast and only one day is scheduled to dip below 50 degrees at night, and that's just 49 so I think I'll be okay on my tomatoes still on the vine for a while yet. Days all look to be upper 60's. I was hoping for some nice days at 70 or above, but it looks like a no go. I can definitely feel fall in the air. Hopefully that won't change to winter any time soon.

The next time I go the the farm I am going to ask them if they have any soup bones for sale. I want to make a nice, rich beef broth as the base for beef stew. It's the next thing I want to master. Years ago Stagg used to make this fantastic beef stew, but then they ruined it by adding pearl onions and peas, and then they discontinued it altogether, at least in our area.

I put up with Dinty Moore for a while after that because they don't have chemicals in their stew, but then they changed it so that it had less beef and more carrots and potatoes, then they changed it again so that the consitancy of the beef was more mush than meat, and then they started shorting the carrots and putting in more and more potatoes all while the price steadily rose. Do they really think we don't notice these things? It's like when they keep the pizza box the same size and shrink the contents. Not that I buy frozen pizza anymore, but you get my point.

The last change put me off it altogether because I like my carrots to equal my potatoes in stew, so ever since I've tried to backwards engineer the original Stagg stew from memory, but so far no go. I think it may be in the base so that is what I'm working for. I did see beef marrow bones at the store but I'd really prefer to stick to the organic, grass fed, pasture-raised beef.

The one trick they cannot pull on us is that they can't make 1 pound of beef or 1 pound of carrots or 1 pound of potatoes be less than they appear to be. The price per pound is the price per pound. They can't sell you 10 ounces of ground beef in a 1 pound package like they try to do with those 14.5 ounce canned goods that used to be 16 ounces, though the cans are the same size. It's only the processed foods that they pull these tricks on. All the better reason to stay away from it, to my way of thinking.

I had enough points today to cash out at Swagbucks for another $5 gift card for Amazon. I'm waiting for one to show up any day now and then this one will show up in a week. Right now I've got $25 in gift cards in the account and have received a total of $35 from them. I wish I hadn't let DS do the ordering when he ordered his book because he accidentally wiped out that first $10 of gift cards I was saving, but there's no use crying over spilled milk. It's building up again and it looks like I might be doing about $25 a month worth of gift cards from them. If anyone is interested in doing Swagbucks who is not signed up, there is a referal link in my sidebar. I spend maybe 10 minutes a day on them, so $25 a month feels like a decent return for it. This is all earmarked towards my daughter's MacBook fund.

I should be able to cash out at American Consumer Opinion Panel soon. It should have been today, but it's still sitting there pending. That will be a $14 check when it's finally available. I like them a lot compared to other companies, even if they don't have a referral system. They have good surveys, but it is hit or miss sometimes on whether or not I qualify. I tend to go through a month or two where I qualify for everything and then it'll be a dry spell where I qualify for nothing. Oh, well. Every little bit helps. It's earmarked for the freezer fund.

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Homeschool went great today. It's the smoothest day yet and we were able to get everything accomplished in four hours. I know not every day will go like this, but it goes a long way towards making me think we're going to be just fine.

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I feel a lot better today. My ear still hurts but it is now a dull ache instead of raw, open fire. And my throat only hurts when I swallow and not all the time. I am still coughing, but that's better, too. Now if I could get a full, good night of sleep I think I will be well and truly on my way to getting over this thing.

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We got 12 chicken eggs and 3 duck eggs today. That means every single female bird laid an egg today. I'm not sure that has ever happened before. Pretty cool. We gave my in-laws 3 dozen eggs yesterday and I will take a couple dozen in when I go to see the woman who works on my leg and the receptionist who works at the office there.

I think I'm going to have to make a quiche and a frittata and another meatloaf this week. These all make great lunches and breakfasts, something easy to warm up without stopping to cook while doing homeschool or for DD to take to school.

As soon as I feel good enough I am going to do some serious baking and use up some of the duck eggs. I'd like to make a batch of soft pretzels and a batch of cinnamon rolls for the freezer as well as saving out a few of each to eat now. I'll also make a batch of cloverleaf rolls to eat instead of bread, since it uses eggs and my bread doesn't.

I might even make some egg noodles. And a couple batches of peanut butter cookies, since I have two cups of natural fresh peanut butter in the fridge. But that's definitely next week. Maybe some of it on Sunday. We'll see. I just want a stockpile of baked goods in the freezer for when I get sick again. I've managed bread and pizza dough this week and that's it. Makes me feel like I'm slacking, but I'm not going to push myself when I feel so icky. Not worth it.

Well, I cancelled my dentist appointment for tomorrow. My ear still hurts too much and my throat as well, to sit through a cleaning and after having been on antibiotics for over a week with no progress, I'm sure this is a nasty virus. I didn't want to get them sick there, so I've saved or at least put off, the cost of a cleaning this month. I go three times a year due to some damage caused earlier in life and the third appointment is not covered. I've rescheduled to mid-October, which shifts the payment to a better month and hopefully that gives me enough time to get over this forsaken thing.

Oh, it is better than yesterday, though so hopefully that means I'm on the upswing. Yesterday was "oh my gosh, I think I'm going to die from this ear pain, will it never end," and today was "I think I'll live but I'm not going to enjoy it." LOL So a tiny bit of progress. At least I have my sense of humor back, right?

I have missed three weeks of seeing the woman who works on my leg due to her car accident, so that $90 a week has eased things a bit. She called me today and we've tentatively scheduled for Monday, but with the understanding that either one of us was likely to cancel depending on health or injury status. It was good to hear from her. She's become a dear friend over the last couple of years and we chat non-stop when we have a session.

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Homeschool has gone much, much better this week. We are getting through things better. Math and literature take more than the allotted time, but the other subjects go faster so it all evens out. Today we only put in a half an hour more than the required time and I can see that things are beginning to go more smoothly on DS's end as he gets into the swing of it. I am pretty sure neither one of us is going to go crazy now.

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The garden continues to chug along. Today I picked green beans, tomatoes, a kohlrabi, and some more prunes. The broccoli is getting bigger right on schedule and there are several tomatoes getting red and another kohlrabi that will be ready soon.

The pears on my table are now ripe so I will try to make and can the pear sauce tomorrow, though all I want to do is just bite into those lucsious things and eat them straight. Must resist. There will be more for that.

About half the tomatoes on the table are ripe, too. I hope the rest get there before I need to do something with the ones that already have because I don't want to make two small batches of sauce I want to make one big one.

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I am making chicken stock overnight in the crockpot. I've got 4 chicken carcasses and a bunch of vegetable peelings that I've been saving in the freezer as well as a fresh leek and some sad looking but still decent parsley and other herbs from the garden. In the morning there will be beautiful, delicious broth for mere pennies. I may end up doing chicken noodle soup tomorrow instead of pizza because of my throat. I have some diced, cooked chicken in the freezer I can throw in to make it pretty easy as well as some fresh veggies I can chop and let simmer all day tomorrow. If I have enough leftover stock I will can it, otherwise I will freeze it.

And I think that about covers it.

While looking at house listings last week, we ran across two rather surprising options. One is a 1900 farm house, 4 bd, 2.5 bath, 1827 square feet on almost half an acre. Although it is two stories, the master is on the main floor. It also has low porches so not a lot of stairs. And a great, big, wide farm kitchen with lots of light. It's $229,000. I think it's so low because it is near the freeway. The house has special insulation so that you can't hear freeway noise inside the house. Freeway noise outside the house doesn't really bother us because we lived off a highway for ten years and there are plenty of trees towards that side of the property to mute it.

Then there was a 1959 rambler, also on almost 1/2 an acre. It's not as many square feet, 1453, but has a bigger garage and several outbuildings. It is fully fenced. It has a great kitchen, but definitely looks like the era it comes from. It is in a more out of the way location, but not so far as too make anything difficult. The only thing is that there is a fair amount of traffic and the driveway is sharp. Fortunately it is also big enough to turn around in and come out face first instead of trying to back out. Because of the slope it sits on (part flat, part hill) it might be difficult to mow, but it has a ton of established fruit trees on the slope so the land is productive, and we could get a pro in to mow if it was too hard to maintain. It is $235,000. There is also a McMansion for sale next to it for $800,000. Way out of our price range, but it's a pretty view to look at.

We've done drive-bys and these are definitely on our list of ones to visit if they are still there in a couple of months or if they happen to have an open house.

It is nice to see that there are houses in the low end of our price range with actual land. I'd far rather have a mortgage of $200,000 than $350,000. For the most part that has meant looking at houses on 1/4 acre or less, but knowing there are older, less expensive houses with almost 1/2 an acre to be found is nice. And there is no rush. There will be plenty of time to really look once the house sells. If it sells.

Two other options we have looked at before are still available. One is in the perfect location and is really nice, if a tad bit on the small size. Still big garage and a shop for storage so I can work with a smaller house in those cases. It is really nice and has just dropped from $250,000 to $243,500. I would have to take down a couple of trees that aren't too big to make any sort of a garden and it is a smaller lot than I want, but again, perfect, perfect location. I'd be doing a lot of container gardening. But there'd be no chance of keeping chickens. Rabbits, yes, but not enough open space for chickens.

The other is the first house by the freeway, the one with the perfect gourmet kitchen and large back yard, garage and shop. This one we've been inside. Plenty of space and manicured flower beds I would turn into a vegetable garden. Again, freeway noise in the front yard, funeral home/crematorium, memorial park, and elementary school nearby, but you can't hear any of the noises from any of those things in the back yard or the house and I'd spend no time in the front yard as it's tiny. It's sitting at $300,000 now, was at $315,000 for a year. It's quite large, one floor, and handicapped accessible. I think we could get them to come down on price if we were serious about it since it has been on the market well over a year, coming up on 18 months. It's a little further from the perfect location house, but still pretty close, within walking distance to both my mother's house and Trader Joe's and the high school.

We are still a few weeks out from putting our house on the market. The outside painting of the house, front and back porches, and shed is complete. Two interior rooms have been painted and next weekend they hope to finish with that. They also need to put up the new gutters and drainpipes, replace the broken window pane and paint the play structure, as well as paint the new porch overhang on the shed roof and put new roofing on the shed roof since it is two different colors from a previous repair after a major windstorm a few years back. The house looks pretty nice now, though I don't like the exterior color much.

Originally I asked for a pale blue with gray trim, this is sort of a beigy-green with white-gray trim. But I did okay it. The painter gets to keep any leftover paint from previous jobs and he had a bunch of this from one, so we got the outside paint free and I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth. If I had to live in it, that would be another thing entirely and I would have paid to tint the paint a different shade.

Once all the painting is done we will have someone come in and give an estimate on carpet cleaning and whether or not it's worth it to bother or just put in new carpet. I think we can keep all the carpet in the bedrooms, but the carpet in the living room and great room will have to be replaced. We'll see. Then once the carpets are done it will be ready to be sold.

Everyone seems to be agreed on $110,000 as a starting price (except DH and I). We want to see what a realtor says. House is assessed for taxes at $91,000. I am thinking more along the lines of $90,000 as a starting place.. I know how long houses sit out there if they are overpriced. We paid $65,000 and honestly I'd be happy to just get $10,000 above that at this point. It would give us $40,000 for a downpayment, pay the realtor, and pay off the remaining mortgage, and give us a little extra in the bank for all those unexpected expenses that crop up when buying a new house.

The garden seems like it really ought to be slowing down. The days are in the high 60's to low 70's and the nights have been in the high 50's. Still, things continue to grow and some things are just coming into their own. We are eating as much from the garden as possible right now. I am buying no produce this week. It is nice to keep the grocery budget lower by making use of the bounty, but not have to skimp on what I feed my family.

I will need to get on a ladder to get the prunes off the higher branches this week. I've pretty much picked the lower branches clean. So far my plan to can has been thwarted by the fact that everything is getting devoured fresh. Ah, well. Maybe once I get those tall ones down.

Here is today's harvest:



The kohlrabi will be eaten at breakfast and lunch tomorrow. I'm pretty sure the prunes are probably gone, consumed to the kids. The green onions will be used tomorrow in a lunchtime low-carb meatloaf and the green beans will be in tomorrow's dinner.

Over half of my table is taken up with produce ripening. I will be making pear sauce in a few days with these:



And I hope that these will be done ripening by the weekend so they can go into the crockpots for sauce and then to be canned.



I am hoping to harvest this broccoli by the end of the week:



And in the patch on the far side of the house I see that the Romanesco is finally heading up. It'll probably take more than a week for these to start to be ready, but at least they finally are producing.



I've never eaten this type of broccoli before. It's an heirloom variety I guess and supposed to be very tasty. Let's hope so because I have quite a few of them planted.

I still have quite a few tomatoes coming on. I pulled the blossoms off several of the plants so they could focus on sizing up and ripening the remaining green tomatoes between now and cold weather. Anything that is a blossom now would have no chance to become anything before first frost so it makes no sense for the plant to split its energy.

This lovely pink rose is growing up through the center of the blackberry brambles. It is a gorgeous spot of color.



There were only five chicken eggs today and 1 duck egg. The days are getting shorter, which means they may not lay as much, but they may be hiding their eggs again, too, since most of them can get out now.

Georgie has managed to get herself up on the roof of the house several times now. She flies to the top of the tall gate and then from there flies to the roof. It is so funny to see her walking along up there. Of course by the time anyone can get a camera she is back down. No one else seems to be following her example, not even Curious, the hen that is Georgie's twin and was always the adventure leader up until now. But then they are both mischief makers or they wouldn't be named after an adventurous monkey, now would they?

My ear was still killing me yesterday so I didn't get around to making up a menu plan. It is a teensy bit better today. I'm hoping that means I am on the upswing.

This week's menu is made up with everything I need already on hand, either in the pantry/fridge/freezer or from the garden (lots of green beans and prunes, as you can see). Grocery shopping is the last thing I want to do right now with this cold.

Anyway, this week's menu plan is as follows:

Monday--
Pot roast
Stir-fried green beans
Italian prunes

Tuesday--
Chicken stir-fry with broccoli, celery, carrots, green beans
Italian prunes

Wednesday--
Roast chicken
Baked potatoes
Stir-fried green beans
Pears

Thursday--
Homemade pizza with homemade sausage, orange bell pepper, and yellow onions
Garlic bread
Cole slaw

Friday--
Baked potato soup
Italian prunes
Cole slaw

Sauturday--
Chicken noodle soup
Drop biscuits with homemade jam

Sunday--
Teriyaki beef
Egg fried rice
Stir-fried green beans

Well, with 147,530 miles on it, our 20 year old Crown Victoria has gone to its new home. After putting in $1000 worth of labor fixing up and painting our old house, it's gone to one of the workman who bartered that labor for it. It was a little sad seeing it being driven away, but also nice knowing it's gone to a good home with people who really needed a nice family car. And he knows how to pop the dent out that my mother gave it when she backed her truck into it with the tailgate down.



I think this is the only nice photo I have of it that doesn't have a family member in it. That was the first nice car we ever bought and only the second car I'd ever owned. It was a 1992 that we bought in 1998 for $13,000 with only 19,500 miles on it. It had been beautifully maintained and it purred like a kitten. It was one of the most comfortable riding cars I've ever owned. When we bought her they said she should get to 200,000 miles easy, possibly 250,000 on that engine. She was still beautiful.

We weren't driving it because it needed brake work and a new battery, so we've essentially been a one car family for quite some time, but now it's official. On Monday DH takes the little paper down to the courthouse to make it legal and then he goes to the insurance company to drop the insurance on it. It won't be much of a difference because it only had the most basic stuff on it as it was so old, but it will be a little less.

It kind of feels like the end of an era seeing it go, but I'm glad it went to be reused instead of recycled. It was in too nice of a physical shape for me to be happy with the idea of it going to a junk heap when with a little work on the brakes it is perfectly useable for several more years.

It will cost us $5 to transfer title, but that's an acceptable amount to us for the amount of work we got on the house for it.

I feel like I have been sick with one thing after another since we came back from our mini-vacation to the Tacoma zoo a few weeks back. First it was food poisoning or a stomach virus that lasted for three weeks, then a head cold, then I was just getting better from that and came down with a sinus infection. Now in the middle of being treated for a sinus infection I've got this tremendous ear ache. I sent DH to the pharmacy to pick up some ear drops for me because it was hurting so bad. I think my eustation tube is blocked. I've tried to pop it to no avail.

Anyway DH got me Hylands homeopathic drops and they have eased the pain a great deal. I really like Hylands as a brand. We used their flavorless teething gel and teething tablets for our kids when they were little (and the gel I've used a couple of times myself when I bit my tongue, it's good stuff). I am able to eat now without it hurting so bad I want to give up food.

It's been a hard week to get through between that and homeschooling. I don't know what WAVA has done between now and when DD took 7nth grade through them, but the work seems a lot more advanced and to take a lot longer for DS to get through. Where DD would be done with her work in 3 to 4 hours, DS is taking more than the allotted 6 to get through it. The math is really difficult. I've been going through it with him. Well, it's not hard for him, it's just that there is so much of it and so much explanation. Last year at the middle school his homework was usually 5 or 6 problems and with WAVA there are 20 problems on top of the stuff he does online. I do not think this is the change from regular public school to online public homeschool.

The same thing is going on in literature. At the public school it's reading one chapter a day and answering a few questions. In the online school it's reading 4 chapters a day, answering several discussion questions, answering several multiple choice questions, and writing an essay question answer daily. I actually think he does more in the course of one day's assignment than he did for one week's worth of work before. This feels like high school level work to me and not middle school.

He's perfectly capable of it, don't get me wrong, but we haven't even gotten all of the books yet. We are only doing literature, math, science, art, and history. We haven't even gotten vocabulary or grammar yet. We're already clocking about 7 hours. Add in another 40 minutes of work...I just hope it eases up a bit. Otherwise I'm jumping ship and designing my own curriculum.

DH leaves on Monday, too, which means it will all fall on me. I really hope I will not go nuts. I really need to get well so I don't feel so overwhelmed by it all.

It was nice to hit the weekend and not have to do any school work. I had a chance to catch up on all the blogs I've missed this week. I had planned to go to the farmer's market to get tomatoes today and start more sauce going, but I'm not sure I have the energy. I might just send DH by himself. I don't think I should wait another week, because the weather has swung and there may not be tomatoes by then.

We have this really ancient apple tree in the backyard. It has Bramley apples on it, which are probably the sourest apples I've ever tasted. These are cooking apples, not eating apples. They do make a good applesauce, but you definitely have to adjust to taste. I thought I'd walk you through my process today, since making applesauce is one of the easiest things to make. You don't even have to can it if you think you can eat it up fast enough. But it's one of the simplest things to can, too.



Pick your apples (or pick them up if they are windfalls). For this batch I did as many as would fit in my eight quart crockpot, 14. Wash them well, particularly if you don't know where they came from. Peel them and cut them into pieces, cutting out the core. I end up with about six pieces. You can use one of those apple cutters that cores, but I've found that on oddly-shaped apples, or ones as large as Bramleys that it doesn't work well. It's faster just to cut them. Set aside your cores and peels. You should have a pretty large bowlful like this:



Fill the crock with your cut apples as you go. They'll discolor pretty fast but that doesn't matter as the cinnamon will make them brown anyway.



For sour apples start with a cup of sugar. You can adjust this later to taste if you need more. Sweet apples generally don't need sugar added at all.



Add the cinnamon. I use a TBSP.



I don't mix it around at this point, I just put the lid on and set it for four hours on low. After 2 hours I mix it up. The apples will be softening and it is easier to stir.

After 4 hours take a potato masher and mash the apples into sauce.



It'll be thick and goopy. Taste it and see if you need to add more sugar. We did to these super sour apples and ended up adding another 1 1/3 cups for a total of 2 and 2/3 cups. If there are still some hard apple pieces that can't get to mash you can let it go another hour or two until they do mash. If they all mash and you want it to be less chunky you can give it a quick spin in the blender. I just usually stir it after mashing it to get it to a better consistency.

Make sure your jars are hot and your lids and rings have been boiled for 10 minutes. Put sauce into jars making sure to run a knife through each jar to get rid of air bubbles. You want to have an inch of headspace from the top of the jar. Wipe the rim well to make sure there is no residue on it. Place on lids and tighten rings. Place in your boiling water bath canner and lower the rack down. Put on lid. Process for 15 minutes for half-pints or pints. Remove from the canner and place onto a towel on your counter and leave them alone for 24 hours. They will seal (usually in the first 30 minutes but it can take a big longer), sometimes even when you're taking them out.

I got 9 half-pint jars out of 14 apples. Your outcome will vary based on the size of your apples and the number. I've got 16 half-pints on the shelves now and 4 in the fridge. My shelves are looking nice.



I'll be making pear sauce later this week using the same method.

Now there are things you can do with that bowl of peels and cores. Making apple jelly comes to mind:

In my quest to find foods locally or produce them myself, I've been wondering about things like spices. Most spices are fairly easy to grow, some a bit harder, and a few you really wonder about. The one that I've been thinking about the most is salt. I know you can evaporate and re-evaporate salt water, but my access to salt water is around the port. Not exactly the cleanest place in the world to get salt. So I looked around to see if we didn't have naturally occurring salt flats around here. We don't.

So then I started wondering about other sources off and on, but it wasn't really percolating in my mind too much. However, yesterday while DS and I were doing literature, we're reading My Side of the Mountain, the boy in it talked about using hickory limbs to make salt. So I did some research and it seems there are two methods of using hickory to make salt. In one you burn the limbs and use the ashes for salt and in the other you boil the roots and the salt crystalizes on the side of your bowl. I think I'd definitely prefer the second method.

It's not like I'm going to stop buying salt, but I do want to see if I can make it. Of course we don't have a hickory tree, but I am going to start looking around for one and see if I can't get a bit of root or branches to try it with. It seems like a nice exercise in frugality.

I have broccoli! I know that is a silly thing to be excited about, but I really did not think it was ever going to produce heads and what do you know, it did. Or at least two of them have and I think the others can’t be too far behind them. They have been taunting me for ages with big, lush leaves and were well past the 90 days it should have taken. Maybe the weird weather in July messed with it or something, but at least it looks like I am going to have a harvest.

I need to make some space in the freezer for some of it just in case each plant does actually produce. I planted an awful lot of it and I’d like to have some in the freezer for December to June when it’s expensive. It’s super cheap right now, even the organic, because it’s in season summer to late fall, but once the price jacks up it will be nice to have some frozen the day it was picked broccoli for meals.

When I was out watering tonight, I spied 3 cucumbers growing, 2 slicers and 1 pickling. The 4th plant is a pickling cucumber that has never even flowered. It was nice to see some cukes because I adore them and there is nothing like them freshly picked. I’ve only gotten 1 cuke so far this summer so I was really happy to see them.

I’ve got some red tomatoes that need a couple more days on the vine and I picked another kohlrabi
today. I also filled the harvest basket with Italian prunes and picked a few more handfuls of green beans. This green bean teepee has the little plants that could, I tell you. It will be ready to pick again in two days.

I’ve had enough produce picked this week that I haven’t had to buy anything from the grocery store except milk and pure maple syrup. And my mom gave us some lovely sweet corn that was delicious.

I am gearing up to do another major tomato sauce canning session this weekend. I am hoping to buy enough to finish our sauce needs for the year, but that may take another weekend as well.

I’ve nearly filled two big shelves with home canned food this summer and I hope to still do green beans, of which I’d like to have 52 quarts, total. That might not be possible, but it sure would be nice not to have to worry about our major low carb vegetable for a whole year. Canned green beans have gotten quite expensive in the store, to the point where it’s much cheaper to buy them fresh in season and do it myself. And it would sure make my future grocery budgets that much lower.

I’d also like to do corn, but I can still get corn for .79 a can from Trader Joe’s and it’s a BPA free can liners so it’s pretty low on the agenda. Plus, I haven’t been able to source organic corn. Not that corn is on my list of things that should be organic. I just prefer them to be not GMO, and that can be pretty hard outside of places like TJ’s or food co-ops. One of these years I’ll start growing some heirloom Bantam corn, but that’s also pretty low on my list of priorities. I have potatoes for the starch gap so as much as we like corn, it’s such a space hog and needy feeder that so far it’s not been worth it to grow much of it.

We built a new duck den today. Mom and I recycled the box springs that broke (right after the warranty was up) from the new mattress set DH and I bought in January. We were able to expand their habitat quite a bit and they seem happier having more space. There were Bungie cords and zip ties involved, because we are women and don’t believe in “man tools” like drills and screws unless we have to use them, but so far it seems very serviceable. And I’ve never met a raccoon that can undo a zip tie, while I have seen the results of one that managed to unscrew a screw. Part of the fence still needs repair, but hopefully that will come soon.

Mom managed to do a face plant at the end of the day, tripping over a windfall apple. She seems to be doing okay, though, but I imagine she’s going to be one big bruise in the morning. This is one of the reasons I am going to worry about her when we move out. She takes a lot of tumbles. She seems no worse for wear afterwards, but one of these days she’s going to break something. Well, once we’re going all I can do is make sure I check up on her every day so that I know she’s not laying out there helpless. And eldest sister might just move back in when we move out. She’s 11 years older than me, on her own, and she gets lonely. I would feel better if she did come stay with Mom. Mom’s 73 now and she needs someone around, but I have two other sisters and I can’t do it all myself forever.

DS has finished all of his placement testing and he's been able to do all the introductory lessons that teach you how to get around the WAVA system and the live interface that he needs to use for an hour a week with the actual teacher. Mostly it was like before, but they have changed a few things since the last time he was homeschooled. He has also been able to start on history and math since those textbooks are available online. And the first art lesson was as well as the first science lesson, so we are at least able to get his hours in and do some work.

His books should arrive on Monday. They were shipped yesterday and it says 4-5 business days. Whether or not it actually will show up on time remains to be seen, but we are hopeful. I still think it would have been less work to make my own curriculum, and more fun, too, but he wanted to do this and it is free so we'll try it for at least the semester.

I still kind of feel like homeschooling him is going to be the death of me. He can just be so difficult to get to do anything when he decides he's not capable, even if he really is capable. He is brilliantly intelligent, with a genius level IQ, and probably the smartest person in our family, but he has always learned differently than the standard methods teach things, so he gets it in his head he is stupid because he can't always learn from that method of teaching. And he's impatient so doesn't always want to wait for me to find the method he needs. But once I do and once he gets it, there is no stopping him. There is just so much frustration in getting over that hump.

It is more stress than I really want to deal with, but I don't really have a choice. It's either homeschool or put him back into the middle school where he was assaulted, given a brain injury, and they didn't do a darn thing to help him, or put him into the middle school with a major drug problem, or put him into the midle school with a power-tripping principal that by all accounts is worse than the one we had to deal with, or put him into the one that would be 40 minutes of driving every day, which my leg still cannot handle. No thank you.

Remember that itty bitty spider plant start my chiropractor gave me a few months ago?



Well, now it looks like this:



Not bad for free. Not bad at all. I am going to have to transplant it into a bigger pot soon. I am trying to find a ceramic one amongst all of my mother's old pots. I don't like cheap plastic in the house or terra cotta inside, either. If she doesn't have one I will look at Goodwill. I don't want to buy a new one if I don't have to. I think my free plant should have a free or second hand pot to grow up in.

Here is today's harvest basket:



There are about 30 Italian prunes, enough green beans for a meal, 2 tomatoes that were on dead vines so I went ahead and picked them to finish ripening inside, the last bell pepper because it looked like something was trying to eat it, and a kohlrabi. Still no sign of broccoli on the big, lush broccoli plants. I'm still hoping.

It was cold this morning, 45 degrees, but we had a high of 82 at 4 p.m. There are more tomatoes ripening. I am hopeful tonight won't fall below 50 as it is 8:30 and only at 60. If it gets too far below 50 too many nights the tomatoes will be done. The squashes are doing well, the zucchini is slowly producing and I've still only gotten one cucumber from four plants.

We figured out where the ducks were getting out and patched the hole in the fence. Thankfully it is not them flying out or the gate, though the gate still needs to be replaced with something more substantial. We got 11 chicken eggs and 2 duck eggs today. They are really trucking along well.

DD has a severe enough sinus infection that the doctor put her on antibiotics for three weeks. Now if I can just get her P.E. teacher to quite defying me on the orders to keep her inside and not make her go outside during 1st period this week when it's 45. They are supposed to be doing basketball and volleyball only, inside the gym only, but this guy got it in his head to go off syllabus and make them play softball. She has too many health problems for outdoor P.E. I am so tired of school employees not listening to us. It was bad enough when their errors caused my son to be badly injured last June, but if they give my daughter pneumonia on top of it I am done with them and she can homeschool, too.

Oh, and Snafu asked for an update the other day on DS. Although he has healed from the majority of the symptoms from his brain injury, he still has balance problems and some minor focus problems. He cannot yet balance on a bicycle. And he's still jumpy as heck if someone comes up behind him unexpectedly like the boy who attacked him did. But homeschool is going on pretty well now that WAVA finally got its act together and we could actually start it. He's really enjoying it so far.

Since I can't sleep, I figured I might as post the week's meal planning.

Monday--
Pizza (this was supposed to be Sunday, but we ended up having homemade bacon burgers with thick slices of onion instead, so good) with pepperoni, ham, red bell peppers, and yellow onions.
Cole slaw

Tuesday--
Roast chicken
Baked potatoes
Green beans
Watermelon

Wednesday--
Tacos
Italian prunes

Thursday--
Loaded baked potato soup
Fresh baked bread with butter and homemade jam
Green beans

Friday--
Bacon cheeseburgers
Homemade French fries
Salad
watermelon

Saturday--
Braided chili loaf
Galia Melon
Coleslaw

Sunday--
Pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Whatever leftover fruit there is

The ducks have finally figured out how to get out of the enclosure. I think they have been taking lessons from Pipsqueak (who thinks she is a duck). They are learning to fly a bit. They aren't very good at it yet, and they may be a bit too heavy to get much height anyway.



I have had to chase them back where they belong a couple of times. If they just stay in the yard it is okay, but if they wander much further they might run up against some dogs. I'm not sure how they are getting out. If they are squeezing through the gate or if they are flying. No one has actually seen them do their Houidini act.

The chickens get out all the time, but they don't wander far. The older ones have trained the younger ones where to stay and also they keep a wary eye out for the neighbor dogs. And they can get back in on their own, but the ducks can't seem to figure out how to get back in, only out. It means keeping the windows open and my ears open, too. Hopefully I can convince Mom to raise the chicken wire higher on the fence and to fix the gate before the weather turns cold.

I have several tomatoes ripening right now and the raspberries are still plugging along. One blueberry bush is finally done. The other has a paltry amount still on it. I should have several kohlrabi ready in a couple more days. Today I picked enough green beans for dinner and there are more sizing up. I also picked enough Italian prunes for dinner. The are ripening a little slower with this 68 to 72 degree weather than they were with the higher temps so I may not be able to can any for a week yet. Of course we are fresh eating a few every day.

Tomorrow I am going to pick apples and make some more apple sauce and can it. I have enough jars to do ten 8 ouncers, so I will do 12 apples. I am doing a different variety this time that is not so tart. DH will be around when it's time to adjust the sugar content to what he likes, but he was really happy with the last batch. He could definitely tell it was made with different apples, but he has liked both so far.

All of my diced tomato pints sealed. I have still not had a canning lid fail to seal, so I guess all tha attention to making sure the rims are clean has paid off. I have them all up on my shelves now. I love looking at my canning stash. All the pretty colors make me happy.

Next Saturday I want to buy more tomatoes for making sauce and maybe some pears, too. DS still wants me to make pear sauce. We are going to go out this week and check on the progress on the house and I will check our tree out there and see if the pears are any good. The tree has not been watered all summer so they may just be wooden. But it does rain more up there so it's possible they got enough water that way. I will also check on the apple tree, though if I remember right it is usually ripe at the first of October.