Orange=Delicious

Yellow=meh

Can you see the color difference? It's kind of hard to see in the picture. On the right we have store-bought eggs, fed vegetarian flaxseed-enhanced feed, with no antibiotics or hormones. The two on the left are from our own chickens, fed whatever we have lying around (today they might get the last slice of generally bland sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan chocolate cake). It's always amazing to me how different even the most natural and organic and free range of store eggs look, when compared to the real thing.

I think two of our four hens are laying now, as I found two eggs in one day this week. Four is more hens than we've ever had. In the past we kept the fresh eggs for eating, and bought eggs for baking. I'm excited to not have to do that this year. Once the eggs start rolling, they'll really be rolling.

Chickens are the best!

Speaking of which, we're about to split a quarter of a grass-fed steer with our friends Becky and Kevin and Aki and Rich. As Erin and Corbin and I are right in the thick of the CAFO section of The Omnivore's Dilemma, we've decided to cease our consumption of CAFO beef. But we like beef, so it's time we found a better, tastier, healthier option. I'd like to do this with chicken, too, especially since it's a meat we eat much more often. They're all sold out for this year, though. Maybe next year.

Happy eating!

Gratuitous Corbin Shots

Corbin has been working those abs!

Pickle Party

I checked less things off my list than I was hoping this weekend. Ah well. At least I got to check off pickles. Plus, good friends Sabe and Tom are here to visit. So I've got excuses.

I don't even like pickles. But I like making them. We've had a late glut of cukes, and something had to be done. We'd never made pickles before, but we had made dill beans, and they're basically the same.

Fourteen pints of garlic-dill pickles

Three quarts of dill beans, too

And we dug up our potatoes. This is about half of them.

And we picked our eight plums.

Nice horns on that guy! Thanks Sabe!

Oh yes

Cider anyone?

We went down to Bainbridge this past weekend to partake in a long standing Shaffer and Henshaw tradition, Cider Pressing! They have been pressing cider each fall for 28 years! When Susan and Kris started Adam and Dana (the two oldest boys) were on their backs. Now Corbin is on mine (or in the front in his case :-). This year we brought down 16 bags of apples from 2 of our apple trees. We contributed this to the other bags of apples, totalling 63 bags of apples and some coolers! Wow, was it a lot of apples. We also invited our future farming friends Jill and Paul to come down and see how it was done. There were a total of 17 of us helping out in the pressing! It was a beautiful fall day and everyone had a great time. We ended up with 45 gallons of Cider! Adam and I took home 10 gallons for our freezer. Enough cider to last us through the year.

One tired little guy!

My camrea ran out of batteries so you can see more of our weekend fun here. Meghan did a great job of explaining the whole process and had some great shots!

Friends

Friends. Right now Corbin and Brody don't have a choice but we have great hopes that this will be lasting friendship! I have images of them tromping through the woods with their dogs in tow going to make a fort behind Kevin and Becky's house. Or riding their bikes from one house to the other, but there is that HUGE hill. I am not necessarily friends with my baby friends but I am still good friends with many of my elementary school friends. Some of them for 23 years! Who knows where this friendship will go. But for right now it's just too cute and I love getting these kind of photos.

Play time!

Play, eat, poop, nap. All in a good day!

Personal and parental decisions

I didn't take many pictures last week. Don't worry I still have a huge amount of pictures! If you want to see some that were taken last weekend during our Shaffer family visits check here.

Like I mentioned before in my last post. My week of being a SAM has gone by fast! My days kind of blur together. Although we did some fun and new things last week, it's hard to remember which day we did what. We went on some walks with friends, went to a baby and mom class, and I did some toy research during Corbin's morning nap. His morning nap has been developing pretty regularly. They say that is the one that starts first. Almost like clockwork, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours after he wakes up in the morning he is ready for a nap. It gives me time to do the dishes, check my email, look on the computer, and sometimes write a blog!

This past week I was reading some blogs on non-toxic toys and teethers, as Corbin has started to put lots of things into his mouth. Adam and I make some very conscious decisions about what we put in our bodies and use in our home. We try to buy organic, non-processed, whole grain, non-hydrogenated, and in-season food. Although we are not perfect, we try. We buy eco-friendly paper towels, toilet paper, non-toxic cleaning products, all of which tend to be more expensive, but we feel that it's important to do these things for ourselves and our world. And so now that we have this new little guy in our lives, we have more choices about what to do for him. It brings in a whole new set of questions about what choices we make in toys and things for him. This past spring we both changed to stainless steel water bottles that did not contain BPA. We chose to get Corbin glass bottles or BPA free bottles. And yet, this is just one thing I know about, so I made a choice to try to avoid it. Then a friend form high school sent me some blogs and sites that she looks at for info on choices for toys and other things for babies (thanks Jessie). I got sucked in. In a good way, I think. I found some teethers that don't contain BPA. But then I got thinking... how many other things are out there that I don't know about that I should be avoiding? Or is it one of those things that you can constantly be finding more and more till it's almost overwhelming? I went from looking at teethers, to realizing that the pacifiers that we bought, although the nipple didn't contain BPA, the plastic part that holds the nipple does. So then I got new pacifiers. Then I realized this new soft cozy bear lovey blanket that Corbin has been using at bed time and sucking on isn't organic. And he's putting it into his mouth. Should I get an oraganic one? Does everything he puts in his mouth be organic? Is he sucking in chemicals in the fabric, ect...and it just goes on and on... and I realize am I being crazy? How much is too much? How much should I worry about? Or can I just do what I can? and that is where I come back to. We are not perfect. And organic isn't alway perfect. We can only make so many decisions. We just hope we are making the right ones. And it's not worth worrying about. If did, I might get crazy! It's so easy to get sucked into these type of decisions. The safest toys and gear, the all organic, non-toxic, the no China toys, the organic food, the local food, and it goes on and on...we do what we can. We try to make good decisions and weigh things like cost, what's most important, and what we can do. Without going crazy. My rant. My thoughts, although jumbled. I think these things are all good things to think about, no matter what decicion I choose. Here are the sites Jessie sent me if you are interested:
http://zrecs.blogspot.com/
http://thesoftlanding.wordpress.com/
http://healthychild.org/main/

And alas... this week is EAT LOCAL WEEK! Check out what might be going on in your area. We will be venturing out to a local restaurant this week sometime to take in some local food other than our own! We still have been enjoying yummy food from our garden this past week. Here is a pizza we made last weekend with the Shaffer grandparents with all our own veggies. Yum!

Where did the week go?

Where has the first week of being a SAM (stay at home mom) gone? Adam's first week of school has gone by and it's already Sunday. We had a full weekend of fun filled dinners with soccer friends, co-workers, and good friends. It's sunny and fall like outside. And Corbin is happy! Pretty good I'd say.