zeromilecommute

Well my new baby chicks catalog just came in the mail over the weekend.  I love to look through the catalog and think about what exotic chicks we’ll be getting this spring. 

 Sigh!  We always get the same kind. LOL!  But I still like to think about different ones anyway.

Our breed of choice is Barred Rock, or Plymouth Rocks.  They are a hearty breed, good layers, that lay nice brown eggs, but can also be meat birds too.

We also have Shadow, an Aracauna hen, or as they are sometimes called, Easter Egg chickens, because they lay colored eggs.  Shadow lays green eggs, and got her name because she and a Barred Rock named Emily, follow my 3 year old granddaughter all around the yard.

We won’t be getting new baby peeps until April or May, but it’s still fun to look at the pictures of new life when it is cold and snowy outside.

With the current economy the way that it is, have you been thinking about becoming more self-suffient?  Maybe having a garden, getting some chickens for the fresh eggs?  I know my family has.

Pretty much ever since we’ve been married, except for the 4 years we lived in the city, we’ve had a garden.  We always canned and or froze our produce because they just plain taste better.

This year though our garden will be slightly bigger with a few more varieties of vegetables.  And what we don’t grow ourselves we will be purchasing at the Amish Farm down the road.

With all the worry about salmonella and E-coli, we try to buy local.  We have our own chickens, so fresh eggs are always at hand.  We buy our potatoes from the farmer that plows the snow in our driveway in the winter. 

So that’s what we are doing little by little to become more self-suffient.  What if anything are you doing?

When you live in Western Pennsylvania, February 2nd is a big day.  Just like in the movie Ground Hog Day with Bill Murray, a huge group of ground hog Punxatawny Phil’s followers trek on up to Gobbler’s Knob in Punxatawny, Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

They grab poor Phil out of his burrow to tell the groundhog whisperer’s whether there will be six more weeks of winter or if spring is just around the corner. 

It’s a big deal around here, and this year was no different.  Except that this year, Phil didn’t see his shadow.  So sprin will be coming early this year.  WooHoo!  I hope old Phil is right.

While I was outside playing in the snow with Charlie, I heard a cat meowing.  Now all my cats are pretty much indoor cats and especially when there is 12 inches of snow on the ground, there’s no way they are going outside.

So I threw Charlie’s Kong to get rid of him and started looking around. 

Out from under the shed came a cat that was so skinny, she had to be starving.  She came right over to me until she saw Charlie racing back to me, then she ran back under the shed.

So I put Charlie in the house and went back out to the shed and called her.  She came right back out from under the shed and came right over to me.

Well being the softy that I am, (I can’t even watch the ASPCA commercials without crying), I went in the house and got her some cat food.  The poor thing ate and ate.

My dear hubby, Jim, is not too happy to have cat number 4.  I named her Henrietta because she meows so much.  Like Meow Meow Henrietta pussycat from Mr Rogers.

Well this is what it looks like outside my window this morning.  Pittsburgh just got more snow.  And although it didn’t all fall at once, it came as an inch here, 2 or 3 there, we now have a grand total of 12 inches of snow on the ground.     

 It’s one of those wet snows, that just clings to the trees because it started as rain and then ran the gamut of freezing rain, then finally snow. 

I had to go outside and get pictures, because although I complain about the weather, I love when we have big snow.  This is a picture of our bird feeder.  There are no birds in it because Charlie, my black lab, has just gone charging down through there scaring the poor little chickadees away.

It’s hard to believe that on New Years Day it was 52 degrees and we’ve been up and down ever since.  Tuesday it was 41 and today we had snow and a high of only 20.

Well I guess we’ll see what the ground hog has to say in 2 weeks.

My husband Jim, and I decided to start this blog because of the way the economy is right now.  More and more people are being laid off and others are barely getting by.  Food is becoming more expensive and to be perfectly honest, how do you know where it came from and how it was grown?

I got to thinking back to conversations I had with my grandma and what it was like when she was growing up and throughout her life. 

Sarah Anna Good was born on May 4th 1900.  She saw a lot in her 92 years, everything from horse and buggy travel to space travel.  She grew up a farmer’s daughter and knew what hard work was. 

She told me of working in the fields with her dad and then working in the kitchen beside her mother.  She knew a lot about gardening, cooking, and living a frugal lifestyle before it became chic. 

She tried to teach me many things when I was young, like making homemade bread, and canning food, but it wasn’t until I was a young mother that I wanted to learn those things. 

I didn’t have nearly enough time with her as an adult myself, but I spent as much time as I could, with her teaching me anything I wanted to know.

My husband Jim, on the other hand, learned how to grow a productive garden from his dad, who grew up a farmer’s son.  My father-in-law had a huge garden for as long as Jim can remember.  The garden helped feed the family all year round, because Jim’s mother would can and freeze the extra produce.  

Jim went to college for 4 years for Forestry Management.  Even though he never got a job in forestry, his love for the outdoors is still strong, and he taught me to love them also.

Eleven years ago, Jim and I realized our dream of moving to the country.  We have 10 acres to “play” on. 

Jim and I want to share the things we’ve learned from our parents and grandparents and also take you along with us as we learn more about living a country life.