Posts Tagged "Kids"

I’ve blogged and ranted on such things before but I’m still and regularly amazed at the things in society we see as hobbiest stuff, or only for the real connoisseur.  What am I talking about? Basic stuff, like fixing your car. How many know the basics of oil and spark plug changes? How many actually check their tire pressure and ensure their fluids are topped up (without the prompting of the idiot lights on the dash)? Or baking bread, it used to be something everyone did every day, that was how they got their bread. Or collecting eggs from their chickens. Even coffee roasting, the luxury with coffee isn’t in roasting it yourself, though it is a better tasting result, the luxury is in buying it already roasted in convenient ‘fresh...

 Some quick calculations, we throw out SO much compost all the time (with Arden not eating toast crusts and such…). I assume we will have even MORE compost as we have more kids too. So how much money to we basically throw away every year? We consume 4288 pounds of food per year.  We spend about $6480 on food per year. If we throw out 0.5 lbs a day, over the year that means we throw away about $300. So we buy $300 worth of food, and we throw it into the garbage. And that I think is a low estimation! I would think its even closer to $1000. Hard to say exactly. Now, as per last blog, a significant amount of that is food that we can’t or don’t want to eat, apple cores, seeds, left overs of all sorts. If you could compost it and get...

This is like one of those crazy ‘good living’ sermons. Here are my 3 keys to successful mornings.    The caveat being that really,… its all a joke but they are nice things and we enjoy them in our house.   Fire – its -4 or so out in Wheatley River, a good day for a roaring fire. Isn’t every day good you say? Well, our behemoth of a fire place (an Ardent F101 wood forced air furnace: http://ardentenergy.ca/index_files/f101.htm ) likes a colder day to really get used. Otherwise it sits there idling cause we don’t want to put in too much wood since the house will get warmer anyways during the day right. So ya, the colder the better for it as we can stoke it up – and it takes some good chunks of...

I am SO old that:- I remember having to walk up to the television to change the channel- I remember when we had one single rotary dial phone in the kitchen with no answering machine and we would all need to take turns to use it and ask specifically for someone on the other end (and it took forever to dial a 10 digit number that had lots of digits above 5)- I remember when we had to wash dishes by hand, ALL of them and it was our chore after each meal to wash them- I remember when windows in cars were rolled down by hand and to lock a car, you had to open each door and push the knob down manually- I remember when the internet was a 14.4 modem connected to the Beaverton BBS and talking to the SYSOP was the highlight of the ‘online’ adventure!- I...

That plate is fussy’s left over food. I think we need to figure out a more efficient way to feed her. One thing that could work is us getting chickens and being able to feed all this extra food to them! We sure do have a lot of compost type stuff that is otherwise totally fine food which would be great for that sort of thing. Really need to think about that and get into it. We do have friends and have met other acquaintances that have showed us their pens and how they do it. All in all its not that hard, just ‘chores’ to do daily really. Feeding, watering. Pic above is a random but this is something we could easily do. Each laying bird lays 1 egg a day. So depending on how many eggs you eat daily or in a week, that would dictate how many birds...