Seven Quick Takes-- Candles, Stinky Chickens, and Green Tomatoes

1.) I'm actually ok with how Advent has been going so far.

We light our Advent wreath while we eat supper, there's a felt Advent wreath banner someone gifted us that we put a felt 'flame' on every Sunday, there's a plastic toy Nativity set sans baby Jesus, and the kids watch a little devotion video thing every morning.

That's about it. No Jessie tree, no prayers around the actual wreath, but I feel like it's pretty good for where my kids are now. They know Jesus's birthday is coming up (I think my two year old is convinced the Advent wreath is Jesus's birthday candles), and that Baby Jesus comes at Christmas, so I think we're doing ok.

2.) Speaking of Advent wreaths, I did something kind of cool for the candles this year.

I took a few candles left over from our wedding reception centerpieces (yes, this means we've held onto these candles for more than five years. I'm no Marie Kondo) and dipped them in melted crayons to color the tops.

I melted the crayons by breaking them up and melting them in a homemade double boiler made of a small glass bowl and a saucepan of water on low heat. Then I (gulp) helped the kids dip the top of the candles in, so that each one now has a colored 'cap'.

They're not tapers, they're the type that's thick enough that it burns down into the middle, so I think they'll look nice for a year or two to come too (again y'all, I'm no Marie Kondo).

Our new meat chickens in the homemade brooder Chris made. 

3.) We got meat birds, and they're honestly kind of gross.

Every year, some friends of ours raise meat chickens for the junior livestock show. How this works is that you buy about 150 chicks, then, about a week in, you narrow it down to about the 50 biggest, best looking ones (you then cull it down again after a couple more weeks, then enter the best looking birds into the competition). You then get rid of the rest, either by killing them or finding someone who wants them.

We've ended up on the call list for surplus chickens. In the past, we've gotten about a dozen.

This year, we ended up with two dozen.

Chris had to build a whole new brooder/starter co-op for them. There's just so many. And they poop a LOT...sounds crazy, but I'm convinced they poop WAY more than our egg chickens did at that age.

They're pretty decent eating, and I like knowing what our meat is being fed, so it's worth the hassle. It's definitely an adventure though.

(For those of you wondering, the difference between our egg chickens and meat chickens is that egg chickens are smaller, bonier, and much more mobile than the meat birds. They're bred for egg production. Meat birds, Cornish cross birds, grow incredibly quickly, to the point that they'll develop heart and leg problems if you don't strictly limit access to feed, and they're far less mobile and curious-- they pretty much just sit and eat. You can get breeds that are decent for both (a couple of our egg birds are actually a duel purpose breed), but a neighbor down the road isn't giving those away for free, so for now we keep two separate flocks).

Recipe called for three cups of green tomatoes. We've got at least twice that still. 

4.) Our first freeze led to a strange culinary adventure.

We got our first real freeze a couple days ago, and it pretty much killed most of what was left in the garden, including our up-until-now very prolific tomato plants.

Hence, we now have an embarrassment of green grapes tomatoes that (being the tightwad that I am) I really don't want to see go to waste.

So last night, I tried a green tomato pie using this recipe.

And it...wasn't bad. It was sort of like an apple pie, but the fruit tasted a little more tart, like berries.

 It called for a TON of sugar though, so I'm thinking I'll try frying or something for the rest (how does one fry grape tomatoes? In little slices like okra? It seems like frying the whole thing would lead to a juice scald situation when you bite into it).

5.) My husband bought a hunting camera, and we have a LOT of mice and rabbits living in our yard.

We're trying to figure out if some paths worn into a back corner of our property are rats coming over from the neighbors', or the dogs', so he purchased the camera for that. He also wanted to make sure there weren't any rabbits living under the shed, we've had some trouble with them in the past.


6.) I've discovered I can access Blogger on my phone to write, and it's been a complete game changer.

I used to have the app, but it was either really glitchy or didn't work well with my phone. It wouldn't save half the time, and it took up a TON of memory space too.

But this...actually works pretty well. It's a pain having to 'zoom in' to access the editing buttons at the top, but I can still get a lot done one handed while nursing a baby, which is HUGE, because a lot of days that's the only time I can sit down with minimal disruption. And I can always sit down with the laptop and make some quick format changes later. It's the writing that takes the most time.

Rest in peace, old friend. May a choir of Hoovers greet you at your journey's end. 

7.) Our 30 year old vacuum cleaner died.

We purchased it from my in-laws, who had had it since the time my husband was a small child. It gave us a good three years of service working just fine.

Then a couple days ago, I plugged it in to clean the kids' room and it made a weird noise and started putting off smoke like a broken appliance in a family sitcom, so we're pretty certain it's the motor and that it's really, most sincerely dead.

So we're buying a new one that isn't older than I am this time around, and hopefully it'll last us at least as long as the old one did.

I'd be very surprised if it ends up serving over two generations like the old one did, but you never know.


See the rest of this week's quick takes here.