Got an idea

My neighbor raises satin angora rabbits - they're the cutest things and SO soft.


She used to have a chicken coop when she lived in Virginia and had been kicking the idea around to start up another one here.


I've always wanted to try to raise some type of farm animal. Don't know why, just have. Still do.


So, the other day I had C & R come over to look over an old shed that's sitting unused to see if it'd be viable. They looked over at the unused greenhouse and said with some modifications, it'd be better.


We have a lot of work to do to get the greenhouse ready, but I'm shooting for getting a shipment of 25 chicks from McMurray Hatchery by fall.

I've also been experimenting with making homemade bread. Still haven't found a good recipe on making that really great store bought type of fluffy bread, but I'm making premium breads for about a $1.50 a loaf (compared to $6 to $10 at a bakery). A great recipe can be found at Welcome To My Brain blog - Whole wheat bread for complete morons.

I also broke out my old pasta machine and made some fettuccine wheat noodles. I got the noodles ready to the point where all M had to do was crank the handle and out came the noodles. That was about enough noodle making a six year old could handle. The noodles were FAB by the way. I'll try to post the recipe later.

Why the interest in doing stuff from scratch and cheaper than you can buy at the grocery? Well, my inner chicken little is just squawking away. I know things aren't terrible right this minute, but I just feel like the economy's long term outlook isn't good. We're trying to save money as much as we can now. Just this week I've talked to three former co-workers who have recently been laid off. They have great experience and can't get a job.

[rant on]

Which brings me to McCain's stupid idea of repealing the gas tax over the summer. On the face of it, I initially thought, what a great idea! Yeah, that would work! BUT hold on, the whole reason why we have a gas tax is to pay for infrastructure. You know, that stuff we need to keep in repair if we want to keep on using it? I remember in the recent past hearing of a bridge falling down and the elected officials jumped up and down and said we need to fix our infrastructure. Well, the gas tax is how we finance it.

But then again, we could just stop the war and use the money that we're spending in a week to fix our infrastructure problem, but you know, we gotta make Bush's cronies richer and kill more Iraqi's and American soldiers for - insert this week's reason why we're in Iraq here.

[rant off]

Seriously. I'm worried.