Snapshots: Split Peas and Chicks

Thanks to the regular boxes of excess commodities food our neighbors give us, I have seriously alarming quantities of split peas. The bags were flopping all over the upper cabinets in the kids' bathroom where I store overflow pantry things, so I decided to use some of those handy half-gallon mason jars A. gave me for Christmas to corral them.

I was not expecting to need so many jars, but here we are.

I need to start cooking split peas approximately once a week for the rest of the year to get through all of these. BUT THEN THERE WILL BE MORE.

That plastic container on the end has brown rice in it. Also an excess commodities item.

I ran out of big jars before I could consolidate the five bags of powdered milk also in those cabinets. And we shan't even speak of the twenty-five pounds of quick oats that are currently in my freezer.

Apparently, the commodities program is supplying preppers? I don't know.

Anyway. Other things . . .

I planted out my single, solitary surviving pepper plant. I did put some more seeds in wet paper towels to sprout and then I'll just plant the sprouts right outside. But those haven't sprouted yet, and if they never do, this is my only shot for bell peppers.

No pressure, pepper.

Since we actually got some rain, A. decided it would be safe to burn all the various bits of wood that littered  the property.

For additional safety, he contained the fire in this pit the kids helpfully dug many months ago.

I LOVE burning all the nasty, splintery bits of wood that accumulate all over the place. I spent quite some time happily gathering up disintegrating pieces of particle board and random sticks all over the place and chucking them into the fire.

Now if I could manage to collect all the rocks and bits of broken concrete I trip over all the time, I'll really feel like I'm getting somewhere.

And last but not least, we have chicks again.

Hi, chickies!

That one black one under the lamp was the one the boys brought home from school. They always put some eggs in an incubator (many of the eggs this year came from us) at school in the spring and then send the chicks home with the kids. There were only six surviving chicks this year, so we just got that one.

It was so sad listening to the solitary chick cheeping for its friends that we went the very next day to buy six more chicks to keep him company. We were planning on getting some more laying hens anyway.

We went to Tractor Supply to get the chicks--A. chose Buff Orpingtons--and the lady put the chicks in this carrier box that looked disturbingly like a large Happy Meal box.

Would it be in poor taste to make a joke about chicken nuggets here? (Get it? Poor taste?) (Okay, I'll stop.)

And there you have it! My life, snapshotted.