Here I am putting insulation on the chicken coop roof. (The long gimcrack in the foreground is the feeder.)With my ravishing good looks in coveralls and high-fashion cap, I’m ready for the cover of Vogue. I heard once that ducks are cold-tolerant because they’re descended from wild ducks that live in cold wildlands; and chickens …

From left: Katie, Natalie (sorry about your head, Nat), Becca, and Abby string popcorn for the tree Well as you might have guessed, I took a few days off of work last week for the Thanksgiving holiday (as you might have done too). My parents were visiting for the last time before they leave for …

Well, the glass is finally on the greenhouse. Yahoo! All I have to do now is finish wrapping it with plastic sheeting to keep the snow out of it. You can see that we’ve put our bikes and various other summer paraphernalia in there to keep them out of the snow; but later on this …

Remember the flying deer? Let’s see, that was in May, and this being November it was high time to get Dexter The Battered Red Honda in for some surgery. I got a new fender and hood from a wrecking yard a month ago, and they’ve just been leaning on the wood pile awaiting my pleasure; …

Yes, it’s true; you can freeze milk. We do it every time we buy it, since we go through so much (about four gallons a week) and we’re so far from the grocery store. Local cow’s milk is prohibitively expensive ($4 a gallon!), and we’re not willing to spring for a goat we’d have to …

Jessica met me on the stairs last night carrying a fresh load of laundry up. She held out Jacob’s freshly-washed baby blanket and said, “Feel this!” With my keen sense of the obvious, I said that it felt soft and fuzzy. She said, “It’s way soft and fuzzy! And clean! It seems like since we …

Here is Sarah examining the first batch of laundry washed with our homemade laundry soap. It was just coming out of the dryer (no clothesline; autumn is pretty rainy around here) when Sarah, age 2, came galloping in to help. She put her head into the dryer and –which is cuter, a dumb old batch …

We were running out of our previous batch of window/surface cleaner last night so I whipped up some more. Last time I refilled this commercial Windex bottle was the first time I had ever made my own concoction, and it worked so well I don’t think anybody noticed (except the color was a little different). …

I like changing oil; it’s a good dirty job that needs to be done and doesn’t take long, and I can save a bundle doing it myself. Besides, it’s a good time to check other fluid levels in the vehicle, look at the air filter, and generally ensure I know what’s going on under the …

Well, I’m back in the office. And on Monday, I actually got the GLASS onto the GREENHOUSE! It was the second hardest job I’ve ever done (besides being a parent) since the pieces were over 7’ x 4’, had no edges to grab, weighed about 200 lb. eeach, and had to be lifted at least …