March Book

Two years ago Andy and I went to a marriage retreat.  When they split the men and woman, my speaker quoted text from this book, and I though "man that sounds like a good book." Two years later, I finally read the book I bought that weekend.  

Food Shelf

Little Man's birthday is in March and we decided that rather than have guests bring gifts; we would have people bring food for the food shelf.  Little Man was OK with this because it meant less Thank You notes, Mommy was OK with this because it meant less clutter and hopefully guests were OK with not having to go purchase a gift.  It was a win-win all the way around. (We also went back to Salvation Army in March to serve dinner.)

Critters

A friend of mine recently commented on all my animal posts on Facebook recently, and I realized that we really have had a whole lot of extra creatures living in the house over the past month and a half.  

For starters, we had 13 ducklings living in the kitchen during the month of March.  Seven of them we kept and are now living in the coop outside with the four adults.  Six we sold to the young man who babysits all of our critters when we go away.  He lost his duck last summer.  While I knew we could not keep all of the ducks, selling ducklings that were only a few days old was really hard.  They were cute and had imprinted on us, and I fell in love with all of them.  

Next my husband decided to save a male rabbit from a college student (don't ask).  While Finn is soft and incredibly social, we already had a female rabbit who lives in the house(rabbits of the opposite sex together, bad idea).  Thankfully she is quite content staying in her cage and as far away from him as possible. He, on the other hand, is trying to desperately chew down the door to the mud room. He also does not like to be contained and goes crazy when he is locked up in his cage at night. Needless to say, I have done some research around local vets and will be setting up an appointment for him on Monday to insure we don't double the rabbit population in our house.  

Then we had a a temporary visitor for a little over a week.  We babysat a friend's puppy (the rabbits were not happy) while she was away visiting family.  It was like having a toddler in the house all over again. While she was really cute and increased my fitness level, I have to admit I am not ready for a puppy. I would be happy to babysit again, but it is nice to have the house back to normal (I say this as there is a rabbit frantically running circles around my chair trying to get my attention).  

For now, I think all the critters and in their places and life can hopefully get back to normal, at least until the chicks arrive.  OK.. there really is not 'normal' at our house. 

Milk Soap

Given that I never actually learned how to make milk soap last year, I decided I would make it my "learn a new sustainable skill for the month of March" and enrolled in a class.  Yep, when all else fails, take a class. I have to admit, given all the tools you need, I am glad that the first time I did it, I did it as part of a class where they had all the tools for me.   

With the exception of the lye being caustic, the process itself actually was not that hard.  Special care was taken to ensure no one touched or breathed in the lye, but other than that: fairly simple.  In addition to the caustic part, I realized it is most certainly a two man process.  While one person is dealing with the lye, the other is trying to get the fats to the same temperature.  Then there is a quick, frantic process where everything is added together, mixed and then.......you wait.  You wait for over 24 hours to take it out of the mold (as you can see in the picture below, I did not execute that process well).  Then you wait four weeks for the soap to dry out enough that it won't disintegrate when it gets into the water.  

I have no idea how it turned out yet, but my guest room sure does smell good.

Gumbo-Task 12

Years ago I went to a graduation party for someone whose mother was from New Orleans.  At the graduation party, I ate the best gumbo ever!  Since that point I have wanted to try making my own.  I have to admit while it came out OK, it was not nearly as good as what I ate that day.  Oh well, the price of not being born in the south.  

February Book-Second Person Rural

My February book was not from the pile of books I need to finish.  In fact, it was not on my need to read list at all.  It was one of those books that was sitting on the table as I was checking out books for Little Man at the Library.  The book was published when I was only one, but looked interesting enough that I just had to pick it up.  

"Second Person Rural" was written by a Dartmouth College professor who dabbles with farming in Vermont.  The stories are short and entertaining. I would highly recommend it.  It was a fun read for a cold month.