Growth

This is a 2 day old chick named Chipmunk.



A mere 4 weeks later she is nearly full grown and has lost her namesake strip.



Here for contrast is an infant of about 10 weeks who is at least 16 years from even remotely looking like an adult.

Soapy cakes

Before I forget, again...

Pancakes:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 corn flour
1/2 white flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar

1 egg
1 1/4 milk/soy milk
3 tablespoons butter/olive oil
1 pear diced or blueberries or both


I had to go digging for my soap recipe the other day too. While I'm in a documenting kind of mood,

12 oz olive oil (non-virgin)
10 oz vegetable oil
12 oz coconut oil
5.2 oz lye
2 cups water

Mix lye and water and let cool to 120F
Heat oils to 120F

Combine and stir until the mixture traces. If you haven't made soap before do some research, lye is dangerous and knowing what is happening makes the process more fun. I tried using a hand mixer for the first time and it went great. Well, other than having some not yet saponified soap slash up and hit my eyelid. It only took about 15 minutes to trace than the normal 75-90.



For some reason I only made a half batch. It is time to set up some more molds so that I can do a double batch and my procrastinating will have less effect.

ponics

A while ago a friend showed me the difference between his dirt plants and hydroponic plants, very impressive. The pile of trash next to it was less impressive. All of the nutrients came from bottles bought in a store and most fertilizer is made with a large input of natural gas. I was still surfing the web for hydroponics info and daydreaming about setting something up a little more earth frienly when I found this website.

http://www.trendgrinder.com/living-room-aeroponic-farming

The site very clearly makes a case for an aeroponic tomato business. Still with most of the drawbacks from hydroponics it leaves some to be desired. Even with grow lights they estimate you can make $750 a month as a part time/weekend business.

Not long after I started reading about a local thing called Feed Denver. They are using the techniques from the super cool Growing Power.

http://www.growingpower.org

Among the many things they do they grow fish and food in a system called aquaponics. The mixing of aquaculture and hydroponics. The beauty of this system is that the fish poo, effluence, fertilizes the plants and the plants filter the fish water. A good description can be found here,

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/information.html

I've seen sites that describe using fly larvae (you know, maggots) and extra worms from vermicomposting to feed the fish. Done right you can turn trash from local restaurants into fresh veggies and fish.

My yard is looking smaller and smaller.