More Baby Duck Action!

Baby ducks are adorable!!!! (I am still really sick today, so my baby ducks have been a nice break and made me smile!)

Here is a video of when they arrived yesterday, and the neat-o fenced area my uncle built for them to stay safe in!




XoXXooX

My New Baby DUCKS! yay!

OMGawd OMG omg omg. My uncle brought me baby ducks today! And built a little fenced area for them to stay safe, and they have their own little rubber tub to swim in until they get big enough to hang out with the big boy duck!
holy crap, they are too cute to be true. Really, it makes my eyes water!
.... i wish everything in the universe could be seen with pure joy the way people see baby ducks. Maybe i will start practicing baby duck vision. That asshole (who did whatever assholes do to people), pretend he's a baby duck.
Cause baby ducks make everything in life much better.
XoxoXO

Really Like My Peaches....

can't wait to shake my tree!!!!
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My dwarf peach tree has a bunch of tiny peaches growing on it..... YAY, yippieee skippieee....
too cool for words, I love peaches (yum yum). It makes me wanna plant a whole row of these dwarf peach trees.
(The pear and cherry didn't make anything it looks like so far.)
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Xoxoxo

My Ducks! xoxo

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Ducks are fast becoming some of my favorite critters around the Luck Cabin. They are loyal, hilarious, self preserving, self sufficient, lay the best tasting eggs in the world, they take naps with me when i lay down in the sun, and they enjoy the company of chickens.
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This video is somewhat mundane, but it makes me so happy to watch them - they make me smile and laugh every single day!



PS.... wanna see something that is total hilarity and so wrong :::
GO HERE and watch baby ducks blowing in the wind!

XOXOxoox

TO DO LIST for the Luck Cabin

Sustainable living is kind of a strange thing... you try to live in the moment, and enjoy seasons as they are but at the same time you have to always be preparing for the seasons ahead. If you take a break, you basically won't be prepared- which means way more headache if you are living mostly off grid. You can be half assed in the city about alot of things and still live quite comfortable, turning up the thermostat whenver you want a lil' more warmth........ a DIY eco- lifestyle takes a certain amount of vigilance. Maybe even what seems incredible amounts when starting out.
The past few weeks I have been running a TO DO LIST in my head of things that have to be done here, before the next winter... or so I think the goal is ::::::::::

#1. Finish the drainage for the GREY WATER SYSTEM. ---- the pipes have to be put in the ground and the plants put in on top the spot where the sink and tub will drain to.

#2. Put up yet another gate to keep the donkey from running away, and keep the other animals safer. (Bobcat came and killed half my 'zoo' this week... bunnies and chickens.)

#3. Build a cordwood outhouse for summer & guest use because the composting toilet isn't party friendly and is not compsting all that great. (this doesnt go for all composting tiolets, just the one i have really.)

#4. Insulate the cabin, which basically means re-building the thing from the outside! lol ,TOO huge a project for me to think about.

#5. Make it so the plumbing stops freezing.... AKA, 6 inches of insulation on the pipes, possibly wall in under the house with cinder blocks & rocks?

#6. Fix outside shower which exploded during the winter cause it still had a small amount of PVC piping still on it. (none of the PEX piping broke or came apart.)

#7. Unclog the clothes hand washer drain, so i can wash clothes in it again.

#8. Fix the leak in the pond and have it dredged so that the water can fill up properly again. Also add fish!

THE END. . . . . . I'll start with the easiest first......

XOXOXO

Morel Mushrooms (again! in Video...)

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i could not resist going back for more. I ate them up in a stir fry... soooo good!
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xxoxox

My One Match Fire!

This morning I woke up to snow! wtf, right? Yesterday I was sweating my tits off in my crochet bikini, gardening, getting a tan...I went to bed to the sounds of a spring time thunder storm, it was so warm I let my fire go out. While sleeping, in came some freezing cold winds & snow, so a fire was needed as soon as I woke up.
I can finally do this with only ONE match!

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HERE IS HOW I DO IT ::::*
1. I put paper at the bottom (sometimes with a toilet roll), down the middle, front to back
2. I layer tiny tree branches, by size up to larger branches on top
3. I put wood slivers on top the branches
4. I add small logs at the top of the pile...
5. and light the match to the paper at the bottom
6. then BLOW and blow and blow some more, till ya have a big flame!
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Watch the process here::::


XOXO

FAIL! Seasoning My Iron Waffle Skillet

Um. I dont know what went wrong with seasoning this thing, but here is what happened : My mom sent me this awesome cast iron waffle skillet, that you can use on any hot surface! No electricity required - you can cook on top your gas stove, wood stove, probably an open fire. So... it came unseasoned, ya know... without the blackened oiled non stick natural surface it acquires after use. So i pulled out the pamphlet and read that i had to oil it and then put it in the oven to start the seasoning. Ok. Not too hard, I hoped. So i put olive oil all over it and stuck it in my toaster oven. It wasn't long before I turned around to see what the fucked up smell was, that the whole cabin was filling up with a heavy thick white smoke!!! The waffle skillet had some kind of waxy shit on it ( i thought i felt on it but wasn't sure), that had to melt off and so I assumed the smoke was the wax burning... i had no idea it would pollute my house so bad! ...... so i tried something else..... At this point I figured most the mystery wax must have been gone (mostly now in my lungs and cabin ceiling)... so i let the oil sit in the skillet for a few days, thinking maybe it would absorb. But it didn't. Then i stuck it on my wood stove since i had a fire going and it was majorly hot. It still made really bad weird smells - but no smoke so I was cool with the mildly donut shop/mildly metallic/mildly 'what is that melting' stench. BUT then THIS HAPPENED!!!!! Look at these pictures! (above and below!) .... OMgawd, this is not was it is supposed to look like. One side of the skillet turned all orange red and looks not at all seasoned. The other side, WTF is that gelatinous substance? It's got a red black tint, and it's not even flowing while warm - it's like a goo. Like hot stable iron & wax flavored jello... or maybe chapstick? What did i do wrong? This is a total 100% fail! xoxxoxo

Are Duck Eggs Yum Yum?

I decided to try my duck eggs, and OHhh MY GAWD! I am forever ruined. I will never really like a chicken egg the way I LOvEd the duck eggs, ever again.
The shells were harder to crack open, and when they did the biggest darkest yellow came gooping out into the pan. Perfectly firm, perfectly shaped. In fact, when i was cooking it, it held it's shape impressively better then chicken eggs - so i got to make two flawless "fried eggs" with the wet dippy middle! My favorite kind, that never seems to work out... until now.
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The duck eggs taste soooo good, I could not believe how much richer, healthier, more dense, flavorful, and delicious they were ... it was like tasting what I always wished a chicken egg could be but had always fell a little short of being what i wanted.
Ok...
so basically, i fucking love duck eggs!!! mmm! If you have not tried them before, do it.
XOxoxox

7 Eggs!! I Am Rich!

OH myyyy GAWD! My chickens are actually laying eggs! Last summer they were dry as a bone, hardly a chicken could do a thing it seemed. I had almost lost hope in the flock, i thought maybe they were too old, too inbred, too many bought at auction.
But alas! Warm weather and alot of free range fun = seven eggs this morning.
What is even cooler, two of the hens appeared to be setting (both the Rhode Island Reds)... i let myself get pecked as i pulled all the eggs from the nest to put in my basket.
I will let them have the next batch --- if they make babies too, I am going to explode with excitement!
xoxoox

I Liked When Ms. Buttersworth Lived With Me

I had put Ms. Buttersworth the chicken back out with the other chickens........
but not really. She's been staying in the feed section of my mini-barn where the rooster and most the other chickens never go. Anytime I tried putting her back with the others they immediately picked on her, pulling out her feathers, the rooster mounting her so violently I could tell that this was why i had found her in a corner shivering in the first place. After bringing her in the cabin for a week, we got to know each other. We spent many long hours sitting with my cat Toots by the warm fire.
I never imagined a chicken would love me, but Ms. Buttersworth now loves me in a chicken love kinda way. She wants me to hold her, she coo's when she's warm in my arms, she perches on my arm, and nests in my lap. I miss her being in the Luck Cabin with me.
I don't know if chickens are really smart creatures, but they are definitely sensitive with a range of feelings - even if those feelings never form into thoughts as we humans know it.
( Side Note: i am not meaning to make any statements on whether we should eat them or not, I eat what I can eat AKA what I am not allergic to... these observations are just how i see nature.)
Of course... JuJu the donkey wishes she could live with me too. Why can't all my babies be potty trained? Or maybe I should move into my barn instead! ;)

Xoxoxox

Testing For Hydro Electric Power Possibilities

Remember how last week I was curious about how I could get off grid power without cutting down my trees? Well, here goes my first attempt to find a way to get sustainable power, in the semi dark! Hydro-power! One of my readers here at The Oko Box pointed out that I have many water sources on my property and there may be a possiblity of harnessing the energy from that...so I was really excited when Mr. Tebbe contacted me from the Sundance Power Systems company in Weaverville,NC to discuss possible hydro power options.
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The first step I had to do was to test how many seconds it would take my creek to fill up a bucket. I searched along the creek for a spot to shove a bucket under, but then remembered the creek is already piped into my pond on a decline...
I kept dropping the bucket when it would start to fill, so Bort handed me his Nalgene bottle which has little measuring dealies along the side (32 ounces). It took 2 seconds to fill & overflow a 32 ounce space.
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WATER RATE: 8 seconds to fill 1 Gallon of water
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I also measured the height of the full water drop at that spot, which is approx 3.5 to 4 feet high.
I started some Hydro Electric research as suggested by Mr. Tebbe... and found that this kind of project hits right at the heart of every learning disability I was ever diagnosed with! ha ha.
...
First I found a "simple formula" for figuring out if you can house a lil' hydro power :
"A simple formula for approximating electric power production at a hydroelectric plant is: P = ρhrgk, where
P is Power in watts,
ρ is the density of water (~1000 kg/m3),
h is height in meters,
r is flow rate in cubic meters per second,
g is acceleration due to gravity of 9.8 m/s2,
k is a coefficient of efficiency ranging from 0 to 1. Efficiency is often higher (that is, closer to 1) with larger and more modern turbines. "
...
The only result/solution for the Luck Cabin's Hydro-ness I mathmatically came up with after examining that formula was this:
LESLIE x ABOVECRAZYTALK = WTF
...
This is engineer stuff. (Is reader Lou Cheese out there? I bet you make something of this jibber jabber!!)
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What I wanna know is hydro-electric a possibility for the Luck Cabin (where i use about 30-40$ of electric a month/ or approx. 250KWH per month)
...how much power could my lil' pipe of creek water produce?
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Xoxoxox

Hand Washin', Hang Dryin'

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There are several alternatives to using an electric powered washing machine... all of them have their specific design benefits, but one thing they all have in common is you no longer depend on the grid (aka electric energy) in order to get your laundry squeeky clean...
I happen to have the Lehman's Hand Washer (which is almost the same exact design as the well known James Washer!) Whenever anyone comes over to visit at the Luck Cabin they love to see how the Hand Washer really works - children are especially into it (i know, shocking!), they'll beg me for more laundry to wash. I bet you parents out there don't hear that often (ever?)!
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Here is a quick vid to show how the hand washer works in the real. I included some deleted scenes at the end. ;)
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PS --- I could not get this video to ever edit captions and sounds in sync, so I had to leave out the captions... the last four scenes after "the end" are the deleted scenes. :))) Eventually I will figure out this technology shit.
Xoxoxox

Mystery Squash!

It totally looks like a watermelon, but since I had collected the seeds to this winter squash last year myself and watched it grow on a distinctly winter squash vine I knew what it had to be. I just didn't know what kind of squash it would be on the inside. It appeared that a buttercup & a spagetti squash mixed genetics...
but ya can't judge a squash by the color of it's skin.
I finally opened one up this morning to find that the inside looked just like a spagetti squash, but smelled a bit sweeter. (If ya think I look proud in the picture, it's cause I am super proud of my mixed up squash! Should I call it buttergetti or spagetticup?)

I get really into saving seeds from just about any food that holds them, winter squash are not only delicious but they are also way too expensive in the store (sometimes costing $16 for one organic butternut!)...and if you buy the seeds in packets to plant they are even a bit pricey considering how many actually come in one squash.

The real test though was to cook it and see if the taste of the mystery squash was altered...

it has the shape, texture (forking out the spagetti shaped strands) and inside color of a spagetti squash, but the outside green stripes and the taste are sweet like a buttercup! How rad is that!?!

This is something I am gonna dork out over for a while. :)

Xoxoxo

Splitting Logs, ft. JuJu the Donkey

I know. I am almost obsessed with splitting wood, luckily it's a healthy 'hobby' that will build muscle, get my heart working, make my lungs take deeper breaths, give me strong fingers and arms... and then heat my house without causing a huge heating bill this winter. Saving money is sweet, and so will be cooking on my wood stove.

Here is a short video I made yesterday morning while starting to split logs... the big wood pile to my left is what I had split the morning before. The big donkey who appears is JuJu. :)



xoxoxo

Love/Hate: My Composting Toilet

I get alot of questions from readers, friends, and facebookers about my composting toilet system... which is really not an advanced system, but a fancy humanure toilet. Maybe you could even call it an indoor outhouse! There are lots of kinds of composting toilets, AKA bigger families might need a different system. This particular one is the right size for a boat, cabin, and RV that doesn't house alot of peeps (pun intended). If you still want this exact potty and have a full family be ready to dish out the toilet emptying chore schedule right away!
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Here is a lil' educational video (i even tried to use my education voice) I made this morning about what it's like to have one of these compoopster toilets, in reality. Not in a magazine or online looking all beautiful and clean- but with stains, skank and dank right out in the open.



Xoxoxoox

Quack, Quack!

My ducks! These are the two duckies my uncle gave me for my birthday...
brown and beautiful. He said he at first thought he brought me two females, but by the time he left my cabin he thought he may have brought me a male and a female. And ya'll know what that'll mean...
DUCK BABIES. Which will make me totally cry cause baby ducks always make me cry with the powers of their cuteness.
This breed of ducks (which i have no idea what they are called cause my memory is about as good as one of those peeps in a nursing home with dementia), they lay alot of eggs. Like over 300 a year! The only catch is ducks don't really lay a nest of eggs in a regular place, so when you want to find the eggs it's like a easter egg hunt everytime. :)

JuJu the donkey seems to be uneffected by the ducks for the most part... especially since they are not in the gated area with her and the chickens. Beyond the gate she understands it's a free world, where she doesn't have to stomp ya. Plus, ducks can swim.

Xoxoxox

What Keeps You From Living A Sustainable Life?

I try piece by piece to make my life more in line with nature. But that sounds so cliche', and defining a sustainable lifestyle is not totally cut and dry. There are variations, nuances, and debates as to what a truly natural lifestyle is...

but by your own definition (which I'd love if you'd share too) what is the thing that most keeps you from being able to fully partake, live, and love a sustainable, earth aligned life?

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For me there are many more things I would like to do to be light footed on this planet. Not because I think the earth won't ever recover from our mistakes but because it feels right, it is something I can pass on to the people who will be born long after I die. Less pollution for their bodies, less disease for all living things. I can pass on cleaner water and fresher air.

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Here is my list::::

• I would like to be off electricity, off grid (aka i want solar panels or a complete non electric set up).
• I would like to have classes on identifying all native plants in my area.
• I would like to learn to hunt for protein foods (aka, less grocery dependence).

Here is what keeps me from having accomplished these goals::::

• MONEY .... solar panels cost big bucks
• money.... no seems to teach this shit for free
• Money..... ditto from above

Tell me your lists and thoughts, what is your biggest obstacle? If it's money, tell me your second biggest too!

One Small Split For Womankind (and tiny people)

I wanna show ya'll all the logs I've been splitting this month (see pic above and below)! This does not count the ones I have already burned on the cold nights...
I have always considered myself a feminist, not a preachy one but a quiet one who doesn't talk about it. I rather live it. Am i saying it's easy for a tiny woman to split her own logs for winter heat... NO, I am saying you CAN do it, I CAN do it, and it's vastly rewarding to be able to take care of yourself without relying too much on the system. Or the man.
No offense guys. I wouldnt mind if a dude was taking turns choppin' these bitches with me... but the point is I am doing it myself and am capable.
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Historical note:::
historically speaking men did these type of chores and women were home preparing & cooking food, taking care tons of kids, ect... I would like to say that I can now see from a back in history man's perspective why he'd be wanting a hot meal when he came home from busting his ass - splitting all these logs makes me want to come home to a warm meal too. One I dont' have to cook...
But presently speaking, I do all of it. YAY! This is one for the ladies AND small people!
xoxoxo

A Day (or two) In The Life

On October 5th I turned 33. Not a big deal really except that it marked a ten year anniversary of something that would change my life forever. This of course led me to think in slightly different terms then usual - basically that silly deep contemplative junk that comes up while I am doing something like shoveling donkey poop, i think: WOW Whoooo woulda thought I'd be doing what I am doing right now back when I was 23...!
This is why instead of doing a ten year soul review (cause it's not like I'm having a near death experience just a birthday), i thought I'd do a day in the life! This is actually a day and 1/2....
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Pictured at the top is what happens every morning. I sleep with my cat toots every night and in the morning I wake up with her either snuggled under the covers by my belly, or on top the covers by my belly. Always keeping me warm. I tell her that she is a "fish in the ocean of love" while petting her head, she lays back and looks like she's swimming through an invisible ocean and smashes her face against my hands.
Now that it's cold, before doing ANYTHING I get my fire started... I get dressed, eat a lara bar and prepare to greet outside and feed all my animals!

JuJu the donkey and all the chickens get fed a little corn (the chickens also get food scraps), and JuJu gets her 'flakes' of hay (mixed grass hay, never gluten grain hay)...

While all my babies are eating and happy, I take the time to shovel all the donkey shit. Unlike many other areas of my life, I am quite maticulous about keeping the animals fenced area clean. She usually poops in the same place over and over as if she's potty trained but my daily shoveling sometimes throws her off (i think JuJu thinks i am saying it wasn't a good spot to poop in.)

Each day I take the bucket of donkey poop and dump it in the organic gardens I am building. If I have really good energy I keep going with mushy rained on & trampled top soil from the fenced in area too. I usually max out at ten buckets in a day, cause dat' shit is heavy!

On this particular day, while building up the garden JuJu the donkey also went into HEAT again! When donkeys go into heat they make this attractive face (pictured below), while making smacking, chewing and breathing sounds. Some drool can happen from time to time. Chewed food falling out. Tail up. Alot of pee'ing.

After I've taken care of everyone I sit down at the computer to check on emails, stalk ya'll on facebook, check on my store, and watch music videos. ;) I spend time at the computer throughout the day, especially while resting and cooking (i cook all three meals a day).

A RARE thing that happened on this day was I cleaned my house...

only cause after the cob project it was a dangerous (broken plate pieces) and scary (donkey poop cob dirt smeared all over) place.

The tempature also dropped so drastically at the high elevations inthe mountains here, I had to carry all my plants in one by one... gawd I love my plants. So much. Most of them are herbs i use for cooking everyday. I set them up on little round logs so they could reach the light of the window.

Since basil is seasonal and had already died, i took the old peaches I had collected from a neighbor's tree to plant in that pot in hope's that next year at least one of those seeds will sprout a new tree. :)

A daily thing now too is splitting all the logs I have here. This is the stack I did in one day...

Lately, my gravity fed water has been getting clogged with silt. Since the spring water has now been boxed in I can't see exactly why this is happening but there's a good chance some North Carolina crawfish are playing around in there...

I have to blow the pipe.

A neat trick I learned, instead of shoving a long wire up there to unclog it, if i put my hand over the pipe and blow air up into the pipe hard enough the clog come out and tons of water rushed out. Sometimes so fast it hits my face before I can pull back.

I try to walk in the woods everyday. Which isn't hard to do cause I am surrounded. I think it is when I feel most relaxed, most energetic, most healthy and happy.

For my birthday me and Bort took a small trip to Waynesville, NC to go to my favorite thrift store ever! We thrift scored big time, I even found a winter coat that's washable and almost matches my donkey. :)

Next door to the Second Blessings thrift store this little town actually feeds their homeless and poverty stricken everyday. It's pretty awesome. I always wanted to help there but my stupid auto-immune disease won't let me touch the food.

Me and Bort also stopped at the lake there, called Lake Junaluska. All the times I lived near that lake and I had never sat by it. It had quacking & laughing ducks and sparkles reflecting off the surface.

As pretty as it was, I could not wait to get back home to my own lil' pond, and the quiet of my cabin.

I read. Alot. Usually before I go to bed, or by the fire, when evening comes, or when I am sick of the internet during the day. I get used books online, from friends, or borrow from my local Spring Creek Volunteer Library.

Was my average day as exciting as you thought?
Is it as exciting as I thought it would be when I was 23?
*I imagine 23 year old Leslie sitting outside the All Natural store on Magazine St. in New Orleans. Her eyelids shimmer with pink glitter, her lipstick is red, and her head is shaved on the sides. She's eating the daily special which happens to be a vegan Jambalaya (her favorite), she has no idea what is going to happen in a week or two. She is a successful artist, she's young, educated, what could go wrong. Her Italian artist boyfriend gets up to go use the bathroom...
and 33 year old Leslie comes to the table and sits in his place.

She says "In ten years you will be a recluse living in the woods in the mountains near Asheville, NC. You will never have returned to New Olreans, even this deli will no longer exsist. In the Mountains you will be surrounded by animals you love and love you, in a cabin, in a place so remote it will shock people. You will buy only hypoallergenic toilet paper, cook all your meals, and use a toilet that composts poo. You will know how to identify trees by their bark and plants you can eat in the forest. You will never eat this Jambalaya again."

23 year old Leslie will frown hard about the Jambalaya, but smile a big grin about all the rest. She will say "That sounds really fucking cool."*