Mangos

One day years ago I was in a creperia in Coyocoacan and they served me a crepe with mango jelly. It was delicious. I was surprised when it occurred to me that I had never seen or heard of mango jelly before. It just seemed like a given that it would be available. I mean mango jelly, just think about it. Then I started seeking mango jelly out. Telling anyone who would listen. All the while craving it. After looking in several dozen grocery stores and a few specialty stores I finally found some. It was good but halfway across the state and not cheap. Then the epiphany. I can make it.

Mango Jam

1 lbs ripe mango
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Put water and sugar in a sauce pan and boil until it thickens. Mash mango and puree into the thickened boiling sugar water. Boil for five or so more minutes. Pour into a jar.

I didn't let enough water boil off on mine but next time I'll know.

Coop

The chicken coop is finally done. I still need to figure out a nesting box but I've a couple of months to work that out. They have a double pane window and insulation and it might be more sturdy than my house. Over engineered is the term that comes to mind. Moving it from the garage to the chicken run and up on the concrete blocks was an exercise in pyrmid technology. Levers and rollers and rope and such. The cement blocks are ugly and I've got a half baked idea on how to make em look better. One thing that was of concern was how to connect the chicken wire so that no animals could get in for a snack. The hardware cloth happened to be wrapped in wire and I was able to use the wire to sew the chicken wire together. It seemed pretty slick at the time, maybe I was out in the sun to long.

This site is a calculator for overhangs. Put in your latitude plus the hieght and width of the over hang and it will tell you what percent of the sun the overhang will block broken down by month.

http://susdesign.com/overhang_annual/index.php


With the chickens taken care of some attention can be paid to the house again. My dad was over earlier in the week and we spent half a day in the crawl space fixing wiring and getting plumbing ready for the half bath. About 4 more hours of crawl space fun and we should be done down there for good.

Spring also brings chores for the garden. Planted a bunch of tomato and peas and the seedlings are doing good. Everything else is going to get to grow in situ this year. Next year they will have a sun room and I'll be able to set out more than two trays.

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.

Peep chirp peep!

They are only two days old. Very cute.




There are 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks and an Araucana. The Araucana isn't a pure breed so there is no guarantee of blue eggs.

When I first became a vegetarian 12 years ago I told myself that I could eat chicken when I raised, butchered and cooked one. It has been so long that I don't want to eat chicken anymore. I'm pretty excited about the eggs and fertilizer though.

Yes, I should have painted it before putting the hardware cloth on.

Conclusions

A piece of cedar fence post that was a bit curved on one end and so rejected from a fence project finished off the compost turner. With a proper crossbeam the frame is a lot more stable when over turning it for replacing the drum.


After compressing out the cracked that formed there was 18mm of space. That comes out to 9% so the mud in my yard will work for earthen plaster. Yay! There is quite a few items on the list in front of that though.


There are 4 drawer fronts ready for staining too. Nice weather makes a difference.