Christmas Cookie

Being the generous type, Jeff decided to give the girls one of the Christmas cookies we made. They, of course, gobbled it right up! Luckily they didn't fight too much over it and they were rather adorable with bits of green icing on their beaks. The only downside was, as I have mentioned many times on this blog, chickens are like children and the same rules about sugar highs apply. They were "buzzed" and the squawking  and running around could be heard for hours. Perhaps next time we will just give them worms for the holidays.

The Electric Bill

Today our electric bill arrived in the mail, and running an indoor farm does mean a higher than usual bill. (The chickens do have their very own compact fluorescent bulb though, and I plan on switching it to an LED light due to the mercury in cfls. Can you tell I am feeling very guilty writing this post?) Anyways, enough of me trying to squirm out of the subject....I did promise we would write about our energy bill so below is the low down.

This December we, used an average of 13 kWh a day. Last December, we used an average of 8.3 kWh a day. So what accounts for the differences? Well last December we did not have:

• The chickens' light, which goes on at 7 am and off at  5 pm
• The perchs' bubbler and the light for the greens growing above the fish
• The grow light over the lemon tree, carrots, peppers, and other assorted plants in the living room
• The AreoGarden which is currently helping sprout the purple potatoes

So our average cost per kWh was $.16 which means we spend an extra $.77 a day and $23.1 a month running the "farm." According to the US Energy Information Administration, each kWh emits an average of 1.27 pounds of carbon. So therefore we are adding 5.97 pounds of carbon to our footprint a day! (Can you feel my "greenie" heart sinking in shame???)  The interesting debate comes in when you factor "food miles." It is estimated that food transport is 83% of the carbon footprint for food consumption (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es702969f). So is our meager two eggs a day offsetting our additional 5.97 pounds of carbon emissions? I doubt it. I have no way to calculate it though. However, I imagine that we come out way ahead when you factor in the summer time garden and all the food we canned for winter. So while the winter farm is a total energy hog, at least we have fun. (Yes, I am trying to justify this!)

For entertainment, I decided to see just how much electricity the average American family uses. According to the Department of Energy, the average is 920 kWh per month. (http://www.oe.energy.gov/information_center/faq.htm#sys4) Yikes!! Even with the farm, we used 442 kWh a month which is 478 kWh less than the typical family. Phew, am I glad I switch all our light bulbs to cfls! : )

Bad Chickens!!!

The girls ate another one of their eggs today! I just don't get it- as soon as we think we have them broken of the habit they do it again. What makes it extra frustrating is after the bloody egg incident, I tried to feed them scrambled eggs to increase their protein and fats. Did they take so much as a bite of those eggs? Nope...but the raw "just came out of my butt" variety was a hit! Silly birds.

In other news, I switched the tube air pump in the fish tank to an air stone. I got tired of having to clean the algae off of it every few days to keep it working. Let's hope the stone works better.

Birds in the Dark

So a few days ago I came home before Jeff and went downstairs to collect eggs. When I got there, the light above the girls' pen was off. This, of course, made egg collection rather difficult. We have the light on a timer so we don't forget to turn it on or off for the girls. We used to set it to go off later in the evening so I couldn't figure why Jeff would change it. The funny thing about chickens is they do or don't lay eggs based on sun exposure so less light would equal less eggs. When I asked him about it, he said that he changed the light to simulate the winter hours. Finding that confusing, I pointed out, "Isn't the whole point of indoor chickens that they are like those birds that go south in the winter but without the 1,000 + mile flight?" I should've know better than to say something smart like that to Jeff because his retort was about how not allowing the birds to go through the "seasons" is tough on their endocrine systems. Of course, their endocrine systems...what was I thinking? : )

Inspiration

In the about us section, you will see several paragraphs explaining why we are writing this blog. Today a very kind fellow blogger reminded me in a few words why we are putting this site together. Here is her post. (Be sure to check out the rest of her blog- I really enjoyed it.)
http://betweenleafandsky.wordpress.com/category/urban-hens-2/
Thank you Between Leaf and Sky...we appreciate your kind words and hope that your "chicken mission" inspires even more folks to give clandestine chickens a chance.

Cleaning Around the "Farm"

While my dad and I did make a ton of progress on the sewing machine, we got to the point where we needed someone who knows more about the art of the 1970's sewing machine. Tomorrow Bella (yes we named her!) will be going to the repair shop. However, I did have a chance to take a picture to show you. (Based on some internet sleuthing, I think this is a Dressmaker 2402 made in 1977. If anyone out there is a sewing machine expert and knows if it is or has a manual I would really appreciate the help-Thanks!)

When I got back home, Jeff was working on getting last week's pressed cider ready to pasteurize. So I helped him with that. We also re-racked the very first batch of cider. Wow, it still is DRY! We then got into the cider that has only been fermenting since Halloween and it was perfect! I think both Jeff and I were shocked that we managed to make something taste so good on our second batch. It was semi-dry but you could still distinctly taste a subtle flavor of the apples. A lot of time, we have noticed with commercial hard cider, it is sweet but you can no longer taste the apple flavor. This was the best of both worlds. We toasted each other and enjoyed the "fruits of our labor."

Our first meal with our very own hard cider!

Being Sunday it seemed like a good day to tidy up around the "farm" so I cleaned some of the algae off the air bubbler in the fish tank, turned the kitchen scraps and dirt over in the worm bin, watered the potatoes under the grow light, while Jeff decided to spend some "quality time" with the chickens. Well if you recall from my Friday post, the girls had a dramatic start to their weekend. They did NOT take to kindly to Jeff wanted to hold them. There was a flurry of feathers but eventually they calmed down. I think they decided to sneak attach Jeff since as he put the last chicken down, he looked at his shirt and noticed he has been "bombed."

Basic to Basics- Sewing

As much of my life revolves around doing things the "old fashioned way," it only seemed fitting that I learn how to sew and today was my first lesson. I found a quiant sewing school in the basement of a local church- does it get any more cute? There was two of us in the class, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the other girl looked to be about my age. It turned out she is a lawyer who wanted to sew her own dresses for work. It's meeting people like her that make me think that perhaps Jeff and I's lifestyle isn't just for fringe weirdos but might be on the edge of something about to become much more popular than we can ever imagine. Although I might be getting a head of myself, after all there were only two of us in the class : )

After the class, I took the instructor's suggestion to try to find a sewing machine in a thrift shop. Never missing an excuse to go thrift shopping, mom and I went on what turned out to be a marathon day across town at all the local second hand stores. We ended up with the most beautiful, yet not exactly functioning, 1970's teal blue machine. (The motor works but the needle doesn't go up and down (kind of an issue.) However since it didn't work, they only charged me two bucks! We lugged the solid cast iron beast home and down to the basement where my dad and I spent the evening attempting to revive what I am now calling, "Big Blue." We had to give up after a few hours but the mission shall carry on tomorrow.