Weekly roundup 11/23/19

Hey guys! How are you? It’s been cray cray around here. Seriously crazy. Between working at the school, teaching classes, and working on things behind the scenes, I have been on the go. But things are settling back down now to a reasonable pace. I’ll tell you all about it below. This is going to be another long post. I have so much to share! So go grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let’s chat.

First up, let’s roundup the classes and events that have been happening the past few weeks. Two Fridays ago, if you recall, I was heading to an after school program where we made apple crisp as part of their STEM program. We always have fun with these programs. And I think the kids really enjoy it. They do a little math (measuring out ingredients) and then science (taste these ingredients, what do they taste like, now put it all together. Add some heat. Now what does it taste like). I had younger kids this time so the math was a little harder to do…teaching fractions to kids in second grade and below took some brain power. But we just equated it to quarters, as in dollars and cents. How many quarters are in a dollar? 4. So if we need a quarter cup of something, how many quarters is that? 1. And so on. It was good. And the funny thing is is that they didn’t really like the apple crisp all put together! They thought it was too tart! They were doing the actual cooking part at home so I hope they liked it once they got home. One kid told me he didn’t like apples at all! Oh goodness. It was fun. And cute.

I help out at my local library, once per month, and teach baking with their STEAM after school program. We’ve done apple crisp, chocolate chip pumpkin cookies, and last week we made cranberry bread! That was a lot of fun. We tasted whole cranberries (that wasn’t a big hit!), dried cranberries, cranberry sauce, and cranberry bread. It was mixed results. Some loved it, others thought it was okay. Some used the dried cranberries in their bread rather than the whole cranberries. It was good that they tried it and were thinking about ways to improve their bread with substitutions.

My other classes the past few weeks were salves and then beeswax food covers. Both classes were fun. I’ve had some really enthusiastic participants. I’m back one more time at both locations for classes in December. I’m working on scheduling classes for the Spring. I’ll take January and February off for the most part. I will, of course, book classes if someone wants too but I’ll be looking to start back up full time in March. One of the things I’ve been working on behind the scenes is an updated list of classes I offer. I’m excited to finally have that all written down in one place. You can see that list here. I have it ready to send out to anyone who inquires about classes. Or when I do a ‘cold call’ I can send it out via email.

There’s been a lot of organizing going on around the homestead, mostly with the business. Last night the Mister and I went to an early bird dinner (literally. We ate dinner before 5PM last night. This girl was tired and wanted to go home and put her jammies on and relax). Anyway, we were discussing a lot of things since this was the first time we have been together for any length of time, without distractions, for about 2 weeks. As we’re talking, the Mister says ‘I’ll be your bookkeeper for the winter’. I about fell out of my chair. Of course that could have been because the table and floor slanted but hey, I like dramatics. Needless to say, that is a HUGE item taken off my list. All I need to do is print out some receipts and he’s good to go!

In other news, I’ve been trying to figure out what events to set up at, especially for the holidays. I did one locally and that was a big bust. I was really disappointed about it. I keep hoping that my local community will start to come around to the more natural products but so far they’re not. So I’ve decided to start looking beyond my community. There is a new co-op opening up in town so maybe that will be a good place locally. But I’ve been traveling around the county knocking on doors, so-to-speak. I think I visited about 10-12 shops over the past few weeks. My friend Elizabeth and I meet up in Delhi and travel around. She knows a lot of people in the area so it’s nice to have someone local and familiar to go with me. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I do have some social anxiety/awkwardness. Sometimes it’s hard for me to initiate a conversation with strangers, get up the courage. So I find it easier when you have someone with you that you are comfortable with and they are comfortable striking up a conversation. It helps relax me and I just let the conversation flow. If it feels like a good opportunity, I bring up who I am and what I do. If it doesn’t feel like the right time or place, no harm. We’ve seen a local store, had a good conversation, and then we leave. Sometimes we purchase something, sometimes not. But we always have a good time. And you never know where a conversation will lead.

And in case you are not familiar with my area, I live right across the river from the very southwestern point in the county. Elizabeth lives just about midway. Delhi is the county seat and is a good 45-50 minute drive from where I live. Then we traveled up to the most eastern border, then back down to kind-of the southern border. Then back across to Delhi. I drop her off and then I travel home. We’ve done this twice. The last time we met in Delhi, had breakfast and a good cup of coffee, and then traveled to Andes. We made a few stops, all were good. I hope to get some classes out of it or a place to sell my kits and other sundries. I’ve put a map below. You can see our route in the maroon below. It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled that far north-east in the county. It’s a really beautiful area.

I also set up at a couple of other places or have plans to. One was the Cornell Cooperative of Delaware County‘s Annual Harvest dinner. I made some great connections that night and sold a few things too! I actually ended up selling out of my beeswax food cover kits. I’ve restocked them and plan on stocking the salve kits and lip balm kits as well. Just as soon as I have an extra minute. They’re a little more complicated because you get a choice in carrier oil and essential oils. So there’s more behind the scenes work to do on the actual listing. Anyway, they’ll be listed soon.

I also am selling my stuff at the Christmas on the Farm event at Maple Shade farm. It’s a drop off situation…what I call ‘passive’ selling. You drop your stuff off, they take care of it, collect the money, make a small commission, and you just pick your stuff up. It’s a great location and a really popular market. They’re the same farm that does the Taste of the Catskills festival every October.

Okay. Enough on the class and event front. You get the point. All the hustling is paying off. In other news, a few weeks ago I did a video tour of the house part of the homestead. I promised a link to it. I think I only put it on my instastories, so if you missed it there, you can find the full tour below. It did get cut off in my stories because insta only allows you a certain amount of video before it cuts it off. Anyway, check it out if you’re so inclined.

I’ve also been promising you a round up of the NYS Sheep and Wool festival, otherwise known as just ‘Rhinebeck’. It’s always a good time, but this year the weather was kind of cooler and wet. And that meant it kept the crowd down to a manageable size.

I wasn’t necessarily in the market for yarn. I have enough in my stash, I am in between major projects, and I’ve put the search for local yarn for dyeing on hold. But it’s Rhinebeck! And I haven’t been for 2 years. So I had to go. And I’m glad I did. As I said, the weather wasn’t the best so I think it kept a lot of people away. I went with my friend and we stopped for breakfast at a great little spot. We scoped out some other places to stop in the future. We got to the fairgrounds about an hour after it opened and the timing was great. A lot of people had filtered through due to the predicted rain. My friend had her agenda of places to stop. I wanted to see the sheep dog trials and the parade of sheep. We did all that and met some really great people. One being Elisha Cooper, author of the book above, River but I’ve known about Elisha since my days with his book, Farm, as a children’s librarian. We also met some really nice shepherds, owners of those gorgeous gray lambs above. It was a good day.

If you follow me over on instagram, then you’ll know I just did a giveaway in celebration of my homesteaders book group, lovingly called “Chicken Librarian Reads” (for now. still waiting for any other input on the name). I love giving stuff away. I wish I could afford to do it more often. The winner, Kayla of idreamofhomestead, was such a gracious winner. I love it when you hear back from someone and they are enthusiastic about what you’re doing. Go check her out if you get a minute! PS I love that sign–keep your soul clean and your boots dirty!

As I mentioned above, classes have been updated. I redesigned the classes and events page to include more info on the actual class offerings, but also made separate pages for 2019 classes and events and 2020 classes and events. I did it all on my own!! No computer nerd friend had to help me out. I’m very happy with it all. I also switched my ‘subscribe’ sign up to newsletter format. So now when you subscribe, you will be subscribing to my newly formed newsletter! You can find that link on the right-hand side of the page, near the top. Just look right…over….there—->. See it? No? Scroll up a little bit. Now do you see it? Great! Put yo email addy in there and then sit back and wait for the goodness to be dropped into your inbox. The first one will go out this weekend. Oh! And I am hosting a maple syrup class here on the homestead. Stay tuned for more info, but if you’d like to join us, there’s a link in my shop. I’ll do a whole separate post about what to expect.

Now for the rest of the story. Very quickly, let’s run down everything else. I skyped with my brother and nephews over the weekend and my oldest nephew (the one that just turned 13) asked me for a cake recipe! I promised him I would put it on the blog and he promised he would make it. He just started following my blog and comments on occasion, but mostly when there is a picture of good deer hunting territory! The pie turned out delicious! I’m sorry to say, that yet once again, we ate it before I could get another picture. I highly recommend the pie. I’ll be back on the second Monday in December with the next pie.

I’m not doing a friday favs this week. This post is long enough. I’ll be back to my normal schedule starting now. I’m excited to be spending more time focusing on Chicken Librarian and less time working outside of the home on things that don’t contribute directly to the homestead or business. We’ve been really, really good this year about saving money so I feel comfortable scaling back my part time jobs to the bare minimum until the spring.

Our spending still isn’t on track but I really think there are a couple of factors that contribute to it. First, I’m not grocery shopping like I should. As in make my list and then go to Aldi’s. Or the farm market and then fill in at Aldi’s. With me being so busy I just don’t have time. So we hit the really expensive, and not really good, grocery store in town. The second thing is that since I’ve been traveling so much lately, I’ve been eating fast food. And that’s no good. I don’t normally eat fast food. Maybe an iced coffee every now and again, but never like I have these past few months. So that’s got to stop. It’s that cycle of being so busy that I don’t have time to plan so I stop by the fast food joint to grab something. What I need are good ideas on things I can eat for dinner while on the road. Most of my classes and events are at least an hour away (one way) and the timing usually coincides with dinner. So what can I eat that travels well. I need to eat in the car most times so it can’t be anything like soup. It can be a sandwich. Or I guess I need to plan to heat something up in the microwave when I get there. There’s usually a microwave. All the places I teach classes at will have no issues with me heating something up and eating before, or after, my class. I know them all well enough to know that. So what are your suggestions?

Every other creature on the homestead is doing good. I’ve missed the animals and the Mister but we’ve got time together now. Okay. Let’s end it here. I’m sorry for this dump and run style again. It’s been really busy and I feel good about everything. I’ll be back soon to update you on all the other things too. I have lots still to share with you! Happy Saturday friends!