Emu Egg

I was given this empty emu egg from a couple down the road. They raise all sorts of fancy birds. I've never seen an emu egg. In fact, before this summer, I've never seen an emu up close and personal, let alone pet one.

I think the egg is pretty amazing. That's its natural color. You can't see in the picture, but on one end of the egg has an intricate swirling design on it. Apparently all the eggs have it and every pattern is unique, like a fingerprint. The emu egg is incredibly strong. The couple says an emu does not lie down to lay the egg, it just falls to the ground, from a height of about 2 feet at least. The eggs don't generally crack or break. They are edible, and one goes a long way, basically a one egg omelet. The egg beside it is your average large chicken egg found in any egg carton. I put it in for size comparison.

Summer Aromathery

With the warm summer weather I like to use aromatherapy to deal with the sun and bugs. I'm a little late getting my act together this year what with everything else demanding my attention but today was a rainy-stay-in-and-clean day. Thank goodness we get days like that, or else the dust bunnies would get so big I'd need to get them vaccinated. At is was, it took me 20 minutes to find kitchen table surface.

I'm not big on using commercial bug spray but I do give in now and then. The mosquitoes are really bad this year, especially where we're building the chicken coop, probably because we are trying to have it in the tree shade somewhat. Sometimes I'll just take a few leaves of catnip, crush them and rub them on my skin. What I like doing is steeping lemon balm leaves, adding a little lavender,cedarwood and other bug-repelling essential oils. I put that in a large spray bottle and thus armed am ready to do battle. It works well but it doesn't last long. So I bring my bottle with me when I am outside. It is quite refreshing to spray this fragrant potion while in the sun gardening or whatever. Not only does it keep the bugs away it cools me off and smells nice. Not to mention the lack of poisonous, toxic chemicals all over me. I have discovered it works well as a body splash, too.

As far as the sun goes, I'm pretty lucky in that department. I rarely burn. I do try to stay out of the sun when it's at its peak when I can. I'm not crazy about sunblock, basically for the same reasons as bug spray. I found a couple of recipes that work well for me, something to wear while in the sun and something to use afterwards. For the sun oil, I like to use calendula infused olive oil. Apparently, olive oil has a natural sunblock factor of anywhere between 4 and 8, not real high but does give some protection against burning. I add a lighter oil as well and some aloe vera gel along with the essential oils. One of the added benefits to this that lavender essential oil is a great skin oil and mosquitoes don't like the smell. If they land on me, they just get oily and miserable, which is fine by me. The after sun recipe has beeswax in it and it absorbs nicely. It has light, skin nourishing base and essential oils. I managed to get some lovely unrefined, organic shea butter. I tried adding a little of that to the base oils. Seemed add a creaminess to the lotion.

I always try to use organic, cold press oils when I can. I can usually find them in the organic section of the grocery store. It makes no sense to me to spend money on good quality essential oils and then dump them into sub-standard base oils, especially considering the base oils make up 95 - 99 per cent of the recipe. The beeswax comes from a friend of mine who raises bees so it's pretty unprocessed as well. Happily, I have found a wonderful Canadian mail-order company that sells fair trade, organic essential oils, so that has helped quite a bit. I really like the fair trade idea and try to buy it as much as possible.

So now I'm pretty much ready for the sun and bugs. Next rainy day, I'm hoping to make creams and lotions - after I chase the dust bunnies around for a while.

disclaimer: This is what I do to protect myself from sun and bugs, I am not recommending you do the same.

Building the Chicken Coop, Part Two, Rafters and Walls

I have come to the conclusion that straight, level and square are boring. Really. Crooked, leaning and sideways are quaint and charming, bringing a certain personality to a building. As long as the building doesn't fall down on my chickens and rabbits, I'm going to be a happy camper.

The building of the coop is slow going because I really don't have a clue of what things should look like when they are done. It took us two days to make the rafters because we had to redo them twice. The problem is Don tells me what to do then I do it while he's at work. He comes home, realizes the way he thought it would work, doesn't. So things come apart and we try again. That was the case with the rafters. When I was building them the second time, I naturally assumed if the two side pieces joined properly, the bottom piece would exactly fit in perfectly, it never occurred to me that it could fit in slanted so I never measured to make sure the sides were even. What I said about crooked and leaning notwithstanding; having the roof peaks pointing in all different directions is going to making roofing very difficult, no matter how 'quaint', not to mention interesting, the end result may look.

I've got to say the wall frames went along smoothly and now we are working on the walls. It probably went easier because I actually know what a wall should look like and I'm getting the hang of using the square & level. Mind you, when I use them, I tend to say, "Good enough" instead of "Perfect!" We're hoping with help to get the roof up this weekend. The kids and I work on the coop during the day and Don does a couple of hours after work, usually. Sometimes we stay out until it's too dark to see. We have come up with a new catch phrase as well when things aren't exactly fitting in perfectly "It's a chicken coop, not the Taj Mahal."

My attitude about this whole project has swung back and forth wildly, just like my hammer. At first, I thought it would be a great adventure and somewhat an accomplishment. By the time I finished the rafters I made a solemn oath never to build anything again. Now I'm thinking I better build something again. I put in a lot of effort and actually learned something, it'd be a shame not to use it...sometime...way in the future, when I have recovered.