Where the hell is Crunchy?

Several of you have emailed or otherwise messaged me wondering what was going on and whether or not everything was okay. Well, to make a long story short, yes, everything is okay. Just the usual assortment of stuff that tends to crop up in a house filled with autism, cancer and animals.

Speaking of animals, we adopted a dog. He's a wonderful stray Chihuahua mix. He was 24 hours away from being euthanized in an L.A. Animal Shelter when a rescue shelter swooped in and brought him up to WA (picture to the right is from the shelter). He's still quite skinny and full of all sorts of infections, worms and parasites but he's the sweetest little guy every.

Paco is about 10 months old and is housebroken and crate trained and is just a big lovebug. I'm assuming he was someone's pet and just lost his way, but I'm happy that we've been able to take care of him since he brings so much joy to us. And, he makes for a good therapy dog :)

I'll be posting rather sporadically while things settle down here. Expect there to be a ton of posts on dog related stuff, both non-toxic, natural care and regarding homemade food.

My back is better, but I still haven't been able to do much in the garden which is growing out of control. The chickens are definitely benefiting from all my overplanting earlier in the spring. It's a freaking jungle back there!

Sarah, our White Orpington chicken, has decided to brood it up in everyone's favorite nesting box. This started a few days ago. The first night, I implemented operation egg rescue and reached under her and stole the eggs. The second night, she was a little less inviting.

Yesterday, with the help of my co-chicken wrangler, we removed her from the box, pulled up the ramp and put her in the bottom run to get a chance to eat and drink, poof herself up 10x her natural size and make weird clucking noises. As soon as I put the ramp back down last night, she went right back to the box. Oh well, at least I got the chance to clean out the coop which hasn't happened in far longer than I care to admit.

Since our weather has been downright COLD, I've given up on a number of things, namely tomatoes. This year is worse than usual and even the cucumbers and zucchinis just aren't having any of it. The swiss chard, bok choi and other greens are doing well in the cool weather, though.

How's your garden growing?

Related post: The pets in your pet food

Around the homestead

Sorry for the lack of postings, but with my back out of whack I can neither work out in the yard (my therapy) or do anything I need to do. Henceforth, I'm a little down in the dumps.

In any case, I took some pictures the other day and thought I'd share them.

First up, Backyard Breakfast, thanks to the ton of salad greens we have growing in the backyard as well as the girls.


Here are some flowers that I have no idea where they came from or what they are. In any case, they are in the planter box next to our front door and are blooming like crazy.


Here's the reason why my back is out of whack. Note to self - do not dig up and install patio by yourself.


It's alive! My tiny fig tree survived the winter.


Finally, I got my hair cut about 6 weeks ago. I should probably change my banner since I no longer look like a giant hairball.


Yesterday, while the rest of the country appeared to be having a heat wave, we hit highs of about 54. And pouring rain. One of these days we'll get some summer weather. Hell, I'll settle for some spring weather.

Between the weather and my back, I still haven't planted my tomatoes. I'm pretty sure they are giving me the finger every time I walk by.

Beekeeping 101 - Part 2

The following is a guest post from Kate Ferry who writes the blog, The Sacred Bee's Blog. Since early 2010, she and her family began focusing on eating organic, supporting local businesses, removing toxic chemicals from their home and bodies and reducing their waste. She has been chronicling her adventures on her blog. This post is Part 2 of 2 and is geared to those who may not want to keep bees but want to help them out. You can read Part 1 here.

Helping without keeping
The past five years have seen an enormous decline in honeybee colonies. The honeybee population is vanishing at an apocalyptic rate and keepers are opening the hives in spring to find them empty. The fate of the honeybee is particularly worrisome when considering that over one-third of the food on our table is the direct result of honeybee pollination.

So, even if you aren’t interested or can’t keep honeybees, you would doing a world of good to educate yourself on how to help keep them relatively safe and enjoy the benefits of their industrious work ethic.

Keep that garden natural – a bonus for the honeybee, your home, your health and your environment! Avoid pesticides at all costs and work with natural, environmentally friendly products. Or, embrace the weeds.

Try to have a variety of flowers and plants in your yard that are in bloom all year round. Think early spring to harvest time – work with the dandelions in April and finish with some sedum in late fall.

Get those wasps. Wasps are carnivores that feed on honeybees. A hive can be severely incapacitated by a wasp attack and the only evidence for the keeper is the body remnants after wasps have dissected the abdomens of the bees. Wasp queens are all that live over winter and are responsible for starting the entire hive on their own come spring.

So, each wasp you kill in late winter or early spring (you know those sneaky slow movers that come out of the wood pile?) is one wasp hive down. An affordable and effective organic bait for wasps is half orange juice/half water in any sort of trap. If you use a sugar bait – you are going to be killing honeybees, too (a big no-no).

Host a hive. Contact your local beekeeping association and let them know you are interested in hosting a hive. You provide the land and an experienced beekeeper provides and cares for the bees and gives you a portion of the honey harvest for your support and participation. Can you say win-win?!

Keeping bees is a wonderful hobby, but is understandably not for everyone. Even if honeybees are not an integral part of your life, they can find nectar and pollen from organic sources in your yard.

Cheap clothes and consumerism

I ran across this blog post, The History of a Cheap Dress, which (obviously) goes into the history of how clothing became so cheap and how we've become a throwaway society when it comes to our clothes, in addition to pretty much every consumer product.

In the course of discussing it on Facebook, I was turned on to The Brown Dress Project and from there I found about The Uniform Project. Essentially, both projects involved different women who wore the same dress for a year. In the first one (the brown dress) the woman wore the same dress every day and, in the case of the second one (the uniform), the writer wore the same black dress - except she had 7 copies of it made.

The point for both projects really had to do with how we, as a society, are always in search of the new and.... look, shiny! We get rid of things long before they are worn out and, when it comes to clothes and the never-ending quest for the latest fashions, it's even more of a problem.

As stated by Alex, the brown dress woman:

I challenged myself to reject the economic system that pushes over-consumption, and the bill of goods that has been sold, especially to women, about what makes a person good, attractive and interesting. Clothes are a big part of this image, and the expectation in time, effort, and financial investment is immense.

The Uniform Project had more to do with sustainable fashion and Sheena (the founder of the project) used a lot of different accessories to spice up the dress. The other items she wore were vintage, handmade, reused, or donated pieces. She's got a pattern up on her site for making the dress and a longer-term project (you can buy a couple different styles with proceeds donated to charity) to encourage others to try it out.

I suspect that most of the readers of this blog aren't exactly clotheshorses and are less apt to follow the latest fashions than the next person. But, that said, would you be willing to wear the exact same dress every day for a month or wear a little black dress (or outfit) as a uniform for a month? And, yes, you may be smelling a challenge coming on...

Illustration by Lena Corwin