Photo by Greg Bagley

Are you looking for a cheap, easy way to create several nesting boxes for your laying hens at once? I saw this fantastic setup over at McMurray Hatchery’s Homesteading Chores Ideas and Contraptions Contest that just ended a couple of weeks ago.

It’s basically a wooden rack that holds two stories of 5 gallon buckets that look to make excellent nesting boxes. The plus with Greg Bagley’s design is that the buckets are secured so they won’t move but are also easily removed for cleaning. Click the link above to see more photos and read Greg’s assembly instructions.

Our coop is way to small for this setup here at the Half-Acre Homestead but I hope to keep this idea in the noggin for future use. Do you have a unique nesting box setup? Leave a comment below and let us know!

The PooPooPaper card stock and envelope are crafted from a giant heap of steaming elephant poo, recycled without one whiff or clue to its origin and now resting between your fingers. Some co-workers were disgusted. I was delighted and now I’ll share the poopy greeting with you!

The envelope, giving only the slightest of hint as to the contents inside

The front...

The inside...

The reveal on the back...

A closeup of the logo

On the flip side, we just bought new print cartridges for our HP printer.  I’m impressed with the steps HP goes to make recycling printer cartridges an easy process.  I know our toner cartridges at work come with prepaid UPS labels to ship the empty cartridges right back to them for recycling.  Here at home, it’s super easy by going onto their website and requesting free, postage-paid envelopes to be sent to you so you can drop in your cartridges and send them back too.  I’ve also noticed most of the packaging for their products is recyclable.  They use cardboard boxes with none of those annoying, non-recyclable plastic bubbles.  Plus, the plastic they use to hold the cartridges securely in the box is a #1…making them totally recyclable in my area.

It’s funny how once you start recycling at home, you really begin to pay attention to the packaging of everyday products.  I’ve even formed some purchasing decisions around the packaging that the item comes in.  But, those purchasing decisions have led to our recycling bin overflowing every couple of days while we really only generate about one bag of trash per week.  That makes me feel great!

The piece of technology Zhang has been toiling away on is called an “anaerobic phased solids digester”.   This type of machine is already in use at wastewater treatment plants and livestock farms around the nation, breaking down the sewage into usable gas.  Zhang has apparently improved the technology to allow the use of more wastes like food scraps, yard clippings and animal manure.  It also apparently cuts the processing time in half and produces hydrogen and methane.  Other systems apparently only produce methane.  That would be a true energy revolution, just like bio-diesel.  Can you imagine the food scraps we don’t eat and animal manure being turned into a fuel for our car?  That would be truly amazing.

UC Davis estimates that about 5 million tons of food scraps go into California landfills every year.  If one ton can produce enough energy for the average day at 10 homes, that year’s worth of food could power 50 million houses for one day or 130,000 houses for the entire year.

If you’d like to read more about Zhang’s system, head over to the website of UC Davis.

It’s fantastic that Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs or CFL’s are becoming so mainstream. You can find the bulbs just about anywhere, helping consumers save 75% or more energy just by switching out their filament based bulbs. But it seems we’ve reached another “cart before the horse” situation with CFL’s: what to do with the bulbs when they burn out?

CFL’s contain a small amount of mercury. Of course, we’ve heard the dangers surrounding mercury for years. That’s why most thermometers gauge temperature using an alcohol solution instead of mercury. It’s toxic and can cause major environmental problems by building up in living organisms over time and eventually work its way up the food chain. So, throwing CFL’s out isn’t a really great option where they just end up in a landfill and release the toxic mercury into the ground. The technology already exists to recycle CFL’s easily and put those chemicals to use in more bulbs. However, there are only a few recycling centers set up at this point. Unless you live in the Pacific Northwest or Minnesota, you’re going to have to pay a premium to recycle those bulbs. In fact the three companies online that offer you a shipping container to mail those CFL’s back for recycling charge between $15 and $75 per container!

Wal-Mart is doing their part to get people into the CFL spirit by selling boat loads of them at stores nationwide. I think they should do their part just like they’ve done with the plastic bag recycling bins seen at most stores. They should setup bins so customers can deposit burned out CFL’s when they go shopping. Here in Flagstaff, our city’s hazardous waste disposal center will take the CFL’s and ship them out but that means driving all the way out to the dump. That’s hardly convenient either. It seems until more people start demanding easier CFL recycling, it’s going to continue to be an cost prohibitive chore.

For more information on properly disposing of CFL’s or what to do if one breaks in your house, head to the Energy Star website. If you’re interested in paying for one of those $15 shipping containers, you can head to Sylvania’s Recyclepak website. What do you do with your CFL’s when they burn out? Does your city or county make it easy to recycle them? Tell me about your experience.

We recently started buying whole fryer chickens at Sam’s Club to cook up for dinner. My girlfriend stumbled upon an amazing recipe called Salt Crust Roasted Chicken. It’s awesome and we’ve probably enjoyed the meal three times in the last few weeks. If you’re interested in the recipe head to her blog, Harvest of Daily Life. Once you pick the roasted chicken of the drumsticks, thighs and breasts many people would just consider throwing the rest out. But that chicken carcass still has at least two cups of perfectly good meat left on the bones! Think about all the possibilities for that meat: chicken soup, chicken stock, chicken quesadillas, enchiladas or chicken salad. Anything that would use shredded chicken is perfect.

Here’s the process:

1) Take your chicken carcass and place in a stock pot. Fill the pot with water so most of your chicken carcass is covered and start boiling away. Throughout the process add a couple cut carrots, stalks of celery, onion and some garlic. Just let the mixture boil away on your stove while you do other things. The longer you let it boil, the more rich and intense your chicken stock is going to get. Once it’s boiled for a couple hours, you’re done with the first step.

2) Next, pour your stock out of the pot and into a bowl fitted with a strainer. It will catch all the loose meat and bones. Put your strained stock off to the side. Now take a couple minutes to work your way through the bones, picking off the bits of meat. Discard all the bones, skin and pieces of gristly fat leaving you with a nice helping of chicken meat. At this point, you could recombine your fresh stock and chicken meat to make soup (chicken & rice or chicken noodle) or chicken & dumplings. You can also freeze the chicken stock in small containers for use in other recipes and freeze the chicken meat in small Ziplock baggies for use later too.

Last night, we boiled down the leftover chicken carcass and turned it into fresh chicken noodle soup. It made a huge pot of soup though, more than the two of us could eat in a couple nights! But, that’s ok. Yesterday we spent the day canning our leftover soup so it can be stored in the cupboard just fine. If you don’t want to go through the process of canning, you could also freeze the soup in containers and reheat them in the microwave. While we were at it, we also processed some butternut squash soup that we had stored in the freezer. In the end we came out with 4 quart jars of chicken noodle soup and 2 quarts of butternut squash soup! That will make a lot of meals and save us a lot of money. Plus, the feeling I have from keeping that food from going to waste is so good.

If you’re looking for a great recipe book with complete instructions on home preserving, I recommend the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I’ve been using this book for more than a year now and I have discovered several recipes to use up extra fruit or other food items before they spoil. One of my favorites is the strawberry lemonade concentrate mix that you make from frozen or fresh berries and bottled lemon juice. Simple and refreshing. I’ll post the recipe below.  I had to buy mine piece by piece at the local hardware store. That kit would have saved me a lot of time!

Do you have a favorite way to make the most out of the food you buy and cook? Tell us about it and share your recipes!

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate

Courtesy: Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

You will need 6 cups hulled strawberries (I use the cheap bags of frozen berries), 4 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice and 6 cups of granulated sugar.

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids for water bath canning.

2. In a blender or food processsor fitted with a metal blade, working in batches, puree strawberries until smooth. Transfer to a large stainless steel saucepan as completed. Add lemon juice and sugar and stir to combine. Heat to 190 degrees F (88 C) over medium high heat, stirring occasionally. Do not boil. Remove from heat and skim off foam.

3. Ladle hot concentrate into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch (0.5 cm) headspace. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 15 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

5. To reconstitute, mix one part concentrate with one part water, tonic water or ginger ale. Adjust concentrate to taste.

Everly, much like the rest of us, has been getting an extreme case of cabin fever as of late.  There is only so much indoor activity to keep toddlers occupied and for our resident garden faerie, it’s just too much time cooped up inside the house.  She had a blast throwing bags of leaf mulch around the yard to help stymie the springtime mud pie that our grass turns into this time of year.  We also took the opportunity to move our rabbit hutches from their temporary home in the garage to their more permanent spot outback.  This gave Everly the opportunity to chase the lop-eared rabbit throughout the flower beds as he explored and munched under the February rays.

Today marked another stupendous day outside and so we relished it.  Darling Daughter and I poked around in the kitchen garden to take a look at everything coming to life this week.  Long lost garlic and onion bulbs have started shooting up all over the place.  Rhubarb crowns are beginning to break the soil’s surface and reach for the light.  Lemon balm, chives and sage are beginning to leaf out in their hotboxes as well as the rosemary bushes which are still triumphantly marching through the winter fully clothed.  Strawberry plants began peeking out from underneath their leaf mulch this week as well, heralding the bright red berries that will soon grace them much to Everly’s daily picking delight.

Strawberry plants are beginning to peek out of their leaf mulch this week as if trying to shake winter off for good

Homestead Hottie briefly joined us in the garden before tossing her cookies down one of the walkway aisles (her story here).  The pregnancy was getting to her today, well the whole week for that matter.  Everly and I looked on in worried support until the spewing stopped and then quickly ushered our poor Homestead Hottie back in to flop on the couch.

Later as the thermometer climbed to the 70-degree mark and there was no rain in sight, I set out to finish Talina’s Valentine’s Day present.  Built from recycled wooden pallets, I’ve been making a potting bench for my Homestead Hottie’s gardening fun.  Everly loves to be involved in any project, especially building and she has great fun helping to wrangle loose screws and sit on boards while Daddy screws them down.

Our Darling Daughter loves project time around the Half-Acre Homestead. Notice some of our cloth diapers getting some welcomed solar bleaching out on the line today too.

Just as the sun set tonight, I finished building the upper shelves.  It took little time to complete and looks great in a eco-chic sort of way.  I was thinking about painting it several different bright colors to match our outdoor cushions but Talina likes the look of the wood.  Rough cuts, nicks, old nails and discoloring will all show through a couple of nice coats of sealer.  It’s what makes the potting bench unique.  I’ll take orders if anyone else wants one.  I can guarantee no two will look alike!

The middle shelf on the hutch still has bark attached to the edges, helping to make it truly unique

Have you been out in your garden lately?  What is beginning to come back to life?  If you recycle wooden pallets for projects, let me know what you’ve turned them into.