A Few Photos AND Something We’ve Been Working On – Feb 2016

8 March, 2016 ~ Grace ~ 1 Comment

February just flew by! Here’s a few pics of our month then I’ll explain why I haven’t been posting much and what I’ve been working on instead!

Jess built the bantam hens some nesting boxes to try to entice them to lay in their little coop instead of hiding them in the barn. So far two out of three have decided they like the new boxes. 🙂

Look who found the eggs that were hiding in the barn!

The hens have been laying like crazy! French toast has become a favorite way to use those eggs.

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Been experimenting and trying to come up with the perfect biscuit recipe……

Is anybody else just done, done, done with mud, mud, mud?….

Sooooo…..what have we been up to lately? Jess and I decided to start another blog. I’ve been working on getting it up and going and am now ready to invite y’all to come on over and take a look! Instead of being MY blog it is now OUR blog and we will be sharing more of a variety of things, but all centered around our journey to a more sustainable, frugal and intentional lifestyle.

I will be committing a lot more time to this blog and posting at least twice a week. Real food recipes, raising chickens (and soon ducks), homeschooling, chemical free cleaning, gardening, woodworking and repurposing old furniture are all on the list to share. Eventually “Queen Of The Red Double Wide” will go away, but not until we get lots of the information transferred to the new blog. Another thing that will go away is my the Facebook page. I have to admit that I’m not a fan of Facebook and did not do a good job of posting on my page! You can, however follow my Instagram account (I post there daily), my Pinterest account and you can sign up for the weekly newsletter on our new blog. We chose to do a weekly newsletter instead of sending out an email every time we publish a post. This way you will receive one email that will have links to all the posts from that week plus a little note from us letting you know what’s going on around here and probably a few pictures from our week. Our whole goal is to post useful information that will encourage and motivate you to “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”!(Theodore Roosevelt) So hop over to Sufficient Acres.com and say Hi! I’m so excited about this and am looking forward to this new adventure!

A Couple Months Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – Dec 2015 & Jan 2016

30 January, 2016 ~ Grace ~ 3 Comments

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year and are surviving the winter weather. Here are a few pics from the last couple of months.

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Jess turned this oak stump into…..

this bowl and gave it to my mom for Christmas. He claims he broke every tool he has on it. (I think it was worth it) 😉

My ladies did not think much of all the snow and ice.

But……

they finally started earning their keep!! I’m getting 8 or 9 eggs a day now.

We’ve had snow and ice and slush and rain and now mud….more moisture than we know what to do with!

We got to go sledding….

Guess who had the most fun!?

Rebel LOVES the snow and the excitement of sledding turned him into a little terror!!

With all the snow and ice the chickens weren’t able to get out and munch on any greens so I started sprouting wheat for them. They LOVED it and it’s much easier for them to digest than whole wheat kernels.

We also fed them dried sun flower heads that we had saved from the garden.

Just a few random pics from January.

Can’t believe February is already here!! Have a good one everybody!

A Month Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – Nov. 2015

1 December, 20151 December, 2015 ~ Grace ~ 4 Comments

Wow, November is over……Christmas here we come!! Lots happened in November, as I look back through the month of pictures it seems like these things happened 6 months ago not 3 weeks ago!! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun. 🙂

We started off the month with a trip to the Oregon Coast.

The aquarium was tons of fun!

I finally finished harvesting the rest of the dried beans. I only got 4 pounds this year so I think I need to plant more than 3/4 of a row of drying beans next year.

I shared a photo Jo took last month of the barn owl and this month she got an even better shot of him (or her?)! Anyway, he (or she) has been hanging around a lot so we decided to name him (or her) Ollie…..can Ollie be a boy or a girl name???

Still waiting for these ladies to start laying eggs. We are down to one month!!

Earlier in the month we had frosty mornings and….

rainy afternoons with lots and lots of rainbows!

Our neighbors horses kept escaping from their pen and headed strait for our green lawn every time. The girls had a blast petting them while they grazed.

A couple days after the horses came visiting I woke up to this guy in our garden. For some reason the girls didn’t go pet him. 😉

The last week or so the weather has been cold, cold, cold!

And frosty, frosty, frosty…..

Hope you all had a grand Thanksgiving and are looking forward to Christmas. The girls got the tree up and decorated over the weekend. I LOVE that they are old enough to do this (by themselves) and still young enough to want to!! 😀

A Month Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – October 2015

31 October, 201528 November, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

Happy Halloween!

Here are a few pictures of our month.

We harvested 4 wheelbarrow loads of squash and pumpkins out of the garden! We gave away A LOT and still have plenty to eat through the winter.

I’m so happy with our onion harvest this year.

Jo’s puppy, Rebel.

The cutest nephew came to visit!

Jo made shrimp egg rolls for a school project. They were honestly the best I’ve ever tasted….she got an A, I LOVE homeschooling. 🙂

We also finished harvesting the sunflowers. The chickens will love these this winter.

The barn owl came back for a visit.

Warning, scary chicken ahead…..

Poor, poor, poor Tiny….molting season is not being good to her! Last month she won a grand champion ribbon and this month she would definitely win the ugliest chicken award. 🙂

These little ladies out grew the small coop so we moved them to the big one. I keep pointing to the nesting boxes and telling them to get with it! Unfortunately, I still have two months to wait.

Love all the fall colors!

These two have been giggling for days because we are headed to the Oregon Coast on Monday. Their bags have been packed for about a week now. 🙂

I just got an Instagram account and I’m a little obsessed! (it’s so fun!) So come follow along! (the icon is above my picture at the top of this screen) I’ll be sharing photos of our beach trip next week, and any other pics I snap with my phone.

Hope you all have a blessed November!

A Month of Photos From The Red Double Wide – Sept. 2015

30 September, 201528 November, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

Other than a sinus infection (yuck yuck yuck!) that lasted a couple of weeks, I had a really good September. We’ve been enjoying the lovely fall weather and the garden is STILL giving lots of good stuff!

The cantaloupe is delicious! We’ve eaten seven of them so far and more are coming. I keep praying that the frost doesn’t come for a few more weeks so I can finish harvesting as everything continues to ripen.

The girls are going to have some nice big pumpkins to carve. 🙂

After raising meat chickens over the summer it feels like these little layers are growing slowly, but they ARE growing and will need to be moved to the bigger coop before long.

I think at this point the Golden Laced Wyandottes are my favorites.

We started to harvest the sunflowers that the wind blew over. Most of them aren’t quite ready yet though.

Jo’s puppy grew lots this last month!

Jo got her hair cut and her ears pierced. My little tom boy is starting to care about hair, nails, clothes and jewelry! WHAT happened!?

At least she still wrestles with the dogs.

Have a super duper October!

A Few Weeks Of Photos From the Red Double Wide – 8/31/15

5 September, 20155 September, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

August was a blur!! Birthdays, dogs, 4-H books, fires, harvesting, dogs, the fair, starting school, butchering chickens, and did I mention dogs? I thought about writing a post called “How to say no to more dogs”….wait, we don’t know how to say no to more dogs. I guess the post should be called “How to spend $2,436.70 on dog food every month”.

(OK, I exaggerated a little, or a lot, but SHEEEESH!)

Anyway, here are a few pics of our crazy August.

The chicks I ordered at the beginning of August are all doing very well. Four more months and we should have fresh eggs again, at least more than two a day!

I love grocery shopping in the garden!!

We got a new food processor!! Just in time to help with harvest. Thanks Aunt Stella!!!! We LOVE it! (Can you tell by the look on Mary’s face?)

This is Mary’s bantam hen “Tiny” and that is a small snake she has. She stole it from one of the other hens and slurped it down like a noodle! I had a little trouble keeping my breakfast down after watching that.

In my last post I mentioned that we told Jo that she could have a puppy for her 11th birthday. It took a little while to find one, but she did.

I really don’t think he could be any cuter and she is IN LOVE! Meet Rebel:

Two days after she brought Rebel home, Jade came home and brought his dog. He had to leave him with us because he couldn’t find a house or apartment where he could keep a pit bull.

Seriously!? Who could not love that face!!

We missed Gunner and are glad to have him back! The other dogs missed him too and Rebel thinks Gunner is his best buddy. They spend hours wrestling around the house…..highly entertaining for us!

We had some interesting sunsets in August because of some horrible fires in the area.

The girls did AWESOME at the fair with their chickens!

Mary got Grand Champion Market Chicken and Jo got Reserve Champion Market Chicken! They both got blue ribbons in showmanship and Mary’s chicken “Tiny” (the one eating the snake above) was the Grand Champion of her breed! They also did VERY well with their 4-H books. All that hard work paid off……literally. They both sold their chickens at the market livestock sale and got $250.00 and $375.00…..for CHICKENS that only cost them 10 dollars to raise!!!! We live in a great community with great people that support our kids! Of course their Papa and Grandma also helped in this area 😉

The last day of the fair the girls and I enjoyed watching the rodeo and Jo took a bunch of pictures.

And then there is the cutest nephew EVER!

The garden is still over flowing!

My sunflowers grew 13 feet tall!

This is the first time I’ve ever been successful growing cabbage!

After the fair we started off our home school year with a field trip to OMSI. (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.)

It was a great day and a wonderful way to start off the school year!! We are easing our way into a full school week. The rest of their books will be here next week so we will be in full swing after that!

Hope you all had a wonderful August too and are getting used to the cooler weather!

A Week Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – 8/8/15

9 August, 201518 November, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

What an crazy week! 4-H stuff, birthday celebrations, new chicks, and trying to freeze the insane amount of zucchini and green beans coming from the garden are the things that took up most of my time. We ordered homeschool curriculum for the girls as well, and that got me very excited to start school in a few weeks!

We ended the week with Jo’s 11th birthday party, and she is over the top excited about her present. We told her she could find and adopt a puppy. She has been wanting one of her own for YEARS, and being the responsible young lady that she is we figure it’s a good time for a potentially life changing new addition. Now, the task of finding the RIGHT puppy!

Here is our week in photos….

Jo made a poster for the Cornish Cross chicken she is taking to the fair. She took it to the 4-H meeting and did a demonstration about these chickens. This was all her idea!

Mary did her 4-H demonstration on chocolate covered fruit. The strawberries were the most popular!

More beautiful sunsets this week!

4 Golden Buff, 4 White Leghorn, and 4 Golden Laced Wyandotte arrived on Wednesday morning. All healthy and happy and cute, cute, cute! I always forget how ever so tiny they are.

I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of baking all our bread again.

I’m going to start grating zucchini in my sleep….

I became very impatient and HAD to pick one of my watermelon. It has got to be ripe by now, right?

NOPE……darn it! (the chickens enjoyed it very much though)

So excited to see hundreds of busy honey bees in my corn rows!

Have a great week everyone!

A Week Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – 8/1/15

1 August, 201518 November, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

Happy August!

We had a WONDERFUL last week of July. 🙂 The summer is just flying by!! The wind stopped blowing and the temps went up again. My husband and I are LOVING the warm summer nights and we’ve had some gorgeous sunsets! We’ve also been enjoying lots of garden produce.

Hope you enjoy some photos from our week.

My biggest pumpkin so far.

Odie turned 11 this month (77 dog years!)

Just about ready to harvest a couple watermelons with several more on the way!!

Meat chickens.

Lots of butterflies around this week.

Wishes

We went huckleberry picking.

Near Mt. Adams.

Made fluffy, whole wheat, huckleberry pancakes by adding a cup of berries to this recipe.

Went swimming to cool off a bit and spent lots of time working on 4-H books, posters and demonstrations to get ready for the fair coming up later this month.

Have a great first week of August and stay cool!!

A Week Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – 7/25/15

26 July, 201529 July, 2015 ~ Grace ~ 4 Comments

We had a pretty quiet week and very pleasant weather. Mary had a WODERFUL time at church camp and didn’t want to come home. 🙂 I missed her and am glad she’s back!

Jo had to amuse herself while her sister was gone, so with her dads help she took apart my old banana seat bike that I rode and rode and rode as a kid. She sanded it and is planning on painting it yellow. She’s calling it the Minion bike. 😉

We got lots of wonderful tasting apricots (thanks Tom and Cathy) and I spent quite a bit of time drying and freezing them before they went bad. yum!

The meat chickens are now being let out everyday, they are hilarious to watch waddle around.

We had a porcupine visit the tree in the front yard.

We also had a rattle snake on the road in front of our house and a blue racer in the garden. YUCK! Those were the unwanted guests, but we ended up the week with some wanted guests and had a bbq with the families from our bible study group!

I’m now getting green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, and parsley out of my garden. I’m oh so happy with my garden this year!!

Have a blessed week!

A Week Of Photos From The Red Double Wide – 7/18/2015

18 July, 2015 ~ Grace ~ Leave a comment

Here are a few photos of what we’ve been up to. The week started off with much cooler temps (finally!) and it even rained just enough to make sweet smells and a little rainbow!

The temps quickly climbed back up into the 80’s

What better to do on a hot day than take a cool bath……he LOVES his baths.

I’m so excited about all the baby watermelon in my garden!

We got a big box of fresh peaches from a local orchard. We made peach cobbler, froze some, and ate the rest. Oh so good!

How gross is this! Unfortunately I’ve seen way more wasps this year than honey bees.

The meat chickens are now big enough to let free range for a few hours everyday.

We finally cut down the dead birch tree in our lawn….ok, not WE. Digger cut it down and the girls hauled off the pieces. I took pictures and supervised.

This is Grandpa Clyde, and HIS favorite thing is mowing lawns. He still comes out every Saturday (at the age of 96!) to help us with ours.

Mary left today for church camp so we should have a pretty quiet week around here! Hope you’re all enjoying your summer.