So, I have to be honest and say that both Sue and I have the crud. It has taken hold and settled in for a spell.  I’m a few days behind Sue, but she’s having a hard time knocking it. Suffice it to say that not a whole lot of special is going on here. We’re doing good keeping up with day to day stuff. I have zero brain, which is interfering with my writing – more than normally. I just re-read Monday’s post and had to go back in and make corrections, I swear I already did that, but that brain was not working even then. So, today we’ll just do a quick midweek update and then hope for more fun on Friday.IMG_2458Today, Sue’s birthday present finally arrived!!! 10 days late, but better late than never. Because the solar oven we made when I first arrived didn’t survive the winds this past winter, I wanted to get her one to replace it. One that we knew would work. So – Solavore was having a February special on their “sport” model. It came with two cooking pots and a heart-shaped baking tin and dessert recipes, AND it was $80 off! What a deal. There were lots of instructions on how to cook what, what’s the best time of day to start, when to use the metal panels for IMG_2459concentrated heat, and when not. If you can see your shadow, you can use the solar cooker, even if it is a cloudy day. The pots it came with are big enough to cook a whole chicken in, cut up – which they recommend. The question is, what to try first? We think we’ll try a corned beef and cabbage dinner for St. Pat’s Day on Saturday. It’ll be different because the directions say to heat the meat, vegetables, and IMG_2460water separately, then add them together. We looked for a couple other recipes for Solar Ovens and came up with a couple websites that might be helpful:  solarcooker-at-cantinawest.com  and sunshineonmyshoulder.com. Sunshineonmyshoulders uses something called a “wonder oven” and we don’t have one of those, so we’ll just have to see what we end up with.  You know we’ll document it if we remember and share our experiment with you! Here is the oven all put together; it is small but mighty.

The other package we’ve been waiting on is the one from James Most with the chestnut trees. They were supposed to be here on Monday, so we are a bit worried. I sent him a note this morning and asked about a tracking number. He said the folks in California just had theirs arrive yesterday (Tuesday), so ours may come tonight.  I’m just concerned that they’ll be a bit dried out by the time they get here. He said to let him know how they arrived, so we’ll share that with you as well! Always an adventure. We’re just trying to rest from here on out and get rid of this crude. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: Interesting. It’s really quite overcast, but currently, at 1:56 p.m., it is 75° outside. Low tonight may be around 48° with a high tomorrow of 78°.

IMG_1428Egg Report: Yesterday we had 23 eggs, plus one that got stepped on accidentally – wasn’t me this time! And today – we haven’t gone out yet. I’ll update once we do. So far, we’ve had 1 Duck and 4 chicken eggs from this morning. So the additions this afternoon are 22 chicken eggs, plus one little dove egg that fell out of the nest. Very small.  Sue took a photo of our largest goose egg, with the smallest egg we’ve ever had and a quarter for scale. Kinda fun.   ANOTHER UPDATE: We just went out to put the chickens in and we picked up 4 more eggs! So that’s a total of 30 chicken eggs today.