Shameless Self Promotion

Hello friends! It's shameless self promotion time! 

(Comforter available on RedBubble)

When Holiday shopping this year, please consider supporting small businesses and independent artists. When you shop at stores like Walmart, you are just helping some fat cat billionaire get even richer! When you shop local, shop small business, shop independent artists and writers, you are helping put food on the table, helping to keep electricity on, helping to pay rent!  

I work on numerous P.O.D sites - print on demand. I put my designs on the products and every time a product sells with my design, I get 20% of the sale. 

Here's some pics of shirts with my designs on them! I have over 400 designs.

(All the above shirt pics came from Teepublic)

You can find my designs on products on Zazzle, RedBubble, Teepublic, Cafe Press, Spreadshirt, Displate, Society6 and even on Amazon! My designs on on cards, shirts, shower curtains, mugs, towels, blankets and so much more! If you are looking for Xmas cards, please check out my Greeting Card Universe store! I have lots of great Xmas cards!

Here's links to some of my stores!

TeePublic store

Imphavok Impressions Zazzle store

Pugwiggles Zazzle Store

Happy hippie Haven Zazzle store

Redbubble Store

Society6 Store

Greeting Card Universe Store

(The shoes are available on Zazzle)

I also have two Etsy stores

The Happy Hippie Haven Etsy store

Leviathans Trove Etsy store

I also have three books!

Animal ABCs

                                                Mead Made Easy

Memoirs of an Exotic Dancer

(Hit on the book name to open the link to the page)

Every sale makes me smile and do a happy dance! Every sale helps to feed my family and pay my bills! 

(Bag is available on Zazzle)

Please feel free to share this post! sharing is a great way to help me without spending any money :)

Guests

I have some big guests staying at my place right now - two horses and 8 Highland cows!

Some friends sadly had housing problems and are between farms. They have a bid on two farms so hopefully they get something soon! Until they find a place, the cows and horses are staying here. Happy to help out. :) I've never taken care of horses and cows before, so it's a great learning experience. 

How to Make Marijuana Edibles

A dear fried asked me how to make marijuana edibles, so I thought I'd do a blog post with directions encase anyone else wanted to learn how to do it. Edibles are great for both pain and recreational use. They are also great for helping with sleeping and can help some mental health issues. Please talk to your Dr before using marijuana to treat symptoms and never stop taking a prescription without talking to your Dr first! Safety first!

There is numerous different ways to make edibles, this is just one of many.

To make marijuana edibles, we first must make cannabutter (cannabis infused butter) or canna-oil (cannabis infused oil)

I usually use olive oil or coconut oil. sometimes I use butter and if I'm in a pinch I'll even use margarine. You want something with lots of fat as the THC bonds to the fat.

You need:

1. 1/2 -1 quarter ounce of marijuana bud/flower or about an ounce of shake/leaf
2. One cup of olive or coconut oil or one cup of butter
3. Two cups of water
4. One teaspoon of Lecithin (Type doesn't matter)
(Lecithin helps the THC bond with the butter)

Step One: Prepare to Decarb

Cannabis must be decarbed to activate the THC. To prepare to decarb, you need to grind or break up you weed. Don't make it super fine, as it will be harder to strain if it super fine and a little larger surface is easier for the THC to bond to. Using a hand grinder works well.

This pic shows a quarter of bud/flower 

Using the hand grinder to break up the weed and prepare it for decarbing

Step Two: Decarb the weed

Once the weed is broken up, it should be spread out on a cookie sheet or something similar. Oven should be pre-heated to 225F. Once the oven is pre-heated, the cannabis should be put in the oven for 45-60 minutes. Give the cookie sheet a light shake every 15-20 minutes. You can use parchment paper (also called wax paper) on the cookie sheet too help make it easier to remove once decarbed. Decarbing STINKS, Prepare for your kitchen to have a strong marijuana smell during the process.

Step Three; Make Butter/Oil

Once decarbed, the weed will be light brown in colour. Add the two cups of water to a pot on the stove. heat up the water, then add your oil/butter. Once your oil/butter is melted and merged with the water, turn down the heat to as low as it goes and add your decarbed weed. Add 1 teaspoon of lecithin. Simmer for 2-6 hours. NEVER let it boil! If it boils you will burn off all the THC. stir every 20-30 minutes.

Weed in the pot of water and olive oil on the stove. 

The stove element is turned down to as low as possible. never let it boil!

Step Four: Strain and Separate the butter

Once the cannabutter/cannaoil is done it will be green in colour.  Take the oil off the heat and strain through a cheesecloth or strainer. the cannabis in the mixture can be thrown out. the THC and CBD from the marijuana is now in the butter/oil. Take the butter/oil and put it in a container and in the fridge or freezer for a couple of hours to separate off the water from the butter/oil. 

Once done your butter should look similar to this!

Use the butter to make cookies, a cake, on toast etc etc!

Edibles aren't hard to make, big thing, don't ever let it boil/burn! 

Meat Birds - Take Two

First round of meat birds was pretty awful. they were aggressive, drew blood on me several time, stunk so badly they made my stomach ill, were hard work caring for, and were just overall dirty and disgusting.  They were also expensive! It would of cost less per pound to simply buy chicken at the grocery store. Not a good experience at all.

Second round of meat birds happening now. They go to get processed in three weeks. Can't wait! I was very tempted to not do the second batch of meat birds as the first batch was such a bad experience, but as they were already paid for and I like to give everything a fair try, I figured I'd try one more time. 

We did a few things different this time and things are going better. The first time we penned them for almost their entire time here. this time we freeranged them with the other birds. So much easier and better! The birds are healthier, not as aggressive and way easier to care for. They also don't stink as bad.

Unfortunately due to freeranging, we've lost ten of them to predators :( They are super easy prey; big, fat, slow moving, and white. However, one of the reasons they have been easier and more enjoyable is because there is less of them. 20 meat birds is much nicer to raise than 30! That's a good lesson, if I had raised less the first time it probably wouldn't of been such a bad experience. 30 was too many birds at once.

Round 2 with meat birds is still expensive, but a little less expensive this time for us as we did better sharing expenses with our friend who owns half of the meat birds. First round we paid 100% of the cost for their bedding and corn. That added over $80 to our meat bird expense on the first round. This time, we are only purchasing about 60% of the corn, which helps to cut costs for us. :) The meat birds will be a bit less per pound for us this time, but still more than what we would of paid at the grocery store.

The timing for the second batch was much better. First batch had to go through extreme heat while they were big. this time we had extreme heat while they were chicks, but nice cool temps while they are adults. so much better! However, way more predators in fall than in summer, so we've lost more meat birds than we would of in the summer time. 

Overall this time around with the meat birds has been a better experience. Freeranging them makes life way easier, and raising them from August-November is easier than raising them from May to August. If we ever try them again, we'll be sure to keep numbers down. Raising around 15-20- meat birds at a time is a much better idea! 30 is too many, especially when you already have 60-70 other birds and chicks/duckling etc to deal with. 

Everything is a learning lesson! I'll post with final costs once they get processed .

Hugs and love!

Rough Summer

Hi! sorry I haven't blogged in so long. It's been a really rough summer and a real struggle. Losing two beloved dogs in less than a month just crushed my heart, and it was a hard summer on the farm. so much death and bad luck. It's really been discouraging.

We raised meat/broiler chickens for the first time ever this summer. It turned out to be a very bad decision. The meat birds were stinky and disgusting, all they do is eat and poop. They took a lot of work cleaning them out all the darn time, and they really made us struggle financially. When it was all said and done, we could of gotten more chicken from sobey's for less money (and a hell of a lot less work!). We lost money raising them, and wasted hours of our time caring for them. Unfortunately we stupidly ordered two groups of them, so have another group of 30 here right now. Can't wait till they are out of here, I really hate them. Never again!

The whole summer was such hard work. Trying so hard to make a farm profit and take care of all the birds, put us so far behind on writing, art and our etsy stores. It was so stupid! We lost money on our online work taking care of the farm.

Due to all the birds (we normally have around 50-60 birds, but with the nasty meat birds and all the babies we had over 100 for most of the summer) we didn't have time to go out and do anything. no bike trips to the beach, almost no wildcrafting, nothing. We were stuck at home all the time caring for all the critters.

I also had a bad health summer. Lots of breathing problems, sarcoidosis pain and depression. I didn't have a lot of energy and the bit I had went to caring for the critters.

We had a lot of predator problems this summer. I believe all the extra birds and the smell from the meat birds attracted more than normal. Lost several birds to foxes and birds of prey. And we had our first ever chicken disease hit the birds this summer; we lost a bunch of Polish chicken chicks to it. Very upsetting.

The whole summer was one problem after another!

The summer sucked. We never had a bonfire. We never had a BBQ. nothing. By the time night hit every night, I was too tired and in too much pain to do anything.

Obviously we need to make much better decisions next year! Definitely will not be raising meat birds and will be downsizing the flock a bit. Gotta go back to putting the online work and businesses first! They are what pays the bills.

Everything is a learning experience

The whole summer was made worse by the hole in my heart from losing Taco and Skully. I miss them so much. I still cry every single day over them. I'm super thankful that we got Bosco, without him I think I would of ended up with such bad depression I would of needed some medical help. The loss was too much for me. Bosco was the only bright light of the summer. He was the reason I got out of bed each day. He was the light in the dark.

Unfortunately life is hard sometimes and we struggle through the best we can. Things always get better if we just keep trying. 2019 was a really bad year for me, I'm already excited for 2020. I'm sure it will be much much better!

Hugs and love!

Skully

Today is our last day with our big sweet old guy Skulliwags McLovin. Skully is starting to suffer so it's sadly time to say good-bye. He's 13 years old; he made it 1-2 years longer than we expected. We are gonna miss the big old guy so much. It's a hard blow to lose two dogs in a 4 week period. Skully was an amazing friend and we were blessed to have him as part of our family. He has a vet appointment tomorrow morning.

It's hard to believe that all we have left of our old boys is Buddha. We pray he is with us many more years. I'm really glad we got the new puppy Bosco, he doesn't take the pain away and doesn't make us miss our lost boys any less, but he is a light during a dark time, and helps us smile when we are sad. I don't know how I would of made it through the last month without him. 

Here's some fav pics of Skully. He was the sweetest gentlest dog around.

Mamas and their Babes

We've been having a great baby summer this year! So many babies hatching! I sell 95% of the babes born here as I can't keep them all (and we are trying to make money!), but as the moms work so hard hatching the babes, I always let each mom keep a couple of babies to raise. 

This is Turkey (she was hatched last summer by my turkey Mindy) and one of her chicks. 

This is Mindy and her baby guinea keet. The keet is small, you have to look carefully to see it in the grass!

My gees. Olive, Poppy and Mr. Peabody have one gosling. they are amazing parents!

This is Dolly down at the pond with her ducklings. I would of preferred that she didn't go to the pond with them, but she snuck by me! 

And this is Ebony with her duckling. She shared a nest with Dolly; Dolly the duck got four ducklings and ebony the chicken got one. she's a happy mama.

I love all the mamas! It's wonderful that they don't care if their babe is the same as them or not, they just care for them :)

Healing

A week ago today I buried my best little buddy. It still hurts a lot. I miss him so much. When I walk into the livingroom, I start to smile and lift my hand to wave,  expecting to see him sitting in his spot on the couch, and then I see he's not there, and my heart sinks like a stone. I'm really lonely without him.

I'm so glad we brought his body home from the vet's and we buried it here. I visit his grave every morning when I wake up and every night before bed. We buried him in the forest, beside the biggest tree on the property.

I will be getting a new puppy/dog asap. Taco was a very tenacious dog and helped kill rats here on the farm. so in addition to me needing a new best friend, we need a new ratter  If left unchecked, we will end up with a serious rat problem here. Last year, rats killed several of our baby birds. It was very upsetting. The cats can only do so much. Rats are more of a dog's domain.

I have found an excellent pup in New Brunswick that I'd like to get. It's a standard shorthaired Dachshund/Mini Australian shepherd cross. Dachshunds are excellent vermin killers; they have been used to kill rats, badgers and even foxes. The mini Aussie shepherd is a solid all purpose farm dog and herder. It should be an excellent cross. The pup should end up being about 25 pounds. Both Dachshunds and Aussie Shepherds are extremely loyal, so hopefully he will be as good as friend as Taco was. 

This is one of the pup from the litter.

The vet bills left me pretty broke and I'm pinching pennies right now trying to save enough to get the puppy. Dogs here on the East Coast are outrageously expensive! :( If anyone would like to help out and donate a little to my puppy fund, my email for both Paypal and Etransfer is:

roguewolf-imphavok@hotmail.com

Thank you for caring!

Hugs and love!

Taco

My sweet Chihuahua Taco passed away on Monday. Sadly he had a brain tumor.  I am devastated. I loved him more than I can ever express. He was my best friend. He was only 11.5 years old. 

Here's a bunch of my favorite photos of my little man. there is a lot! I'm sure I have hundreds of pics of him. 

This is Taco when he was a puppy. he was soooooo cute!

Taco with his big brothers Buddha and Skully. Buddha and Skully are a year and a half older than him.

Taco and I at the Pugalug fundraiser event

                 Taco and Toffee were playing! It just looks mean, it wasn't :)

Taco was the very best little dog ever. He was my very best friend. I'm lost without him. :( I was really blessed to have him in my life. Really lucky to have him in my family. 

Muscovy Mama and ducklings

Mead

Yesterday, I bottled all the mead that was made at the mead making workshop I held last June. It turned out wonderfully! Nice smooth taste with a hint of cinnamon and citrus.

I have another mead making workshop coming up this coming Saturday. I still have one spot left, so if anyone is interested in attending let me know!

If you can't attend, but would like to learn how to make mead, chcek out my book!

http://www.lulu.com/shop/patricia-cartwright-stephanie-mitchener/mead-made-easy/paperback/product-23720847.html