Michigan

[sarah92480]

I do like the internet Nova. However I could give it up easily if I could live like 100 yrs ago.

 

[Olive Hill]

I do like the internet Nova. However I could give it up easily if I could live like 100 yrs ago.

What's stopping you, then?

 

[sweetpea409]

what is a rain garden?

A rain garden is a garden made up of native plants and grasses that is designed in such a way that it uses rainfall and stormwater runoff to nourish the plants. In turn, the rain garden naturally filters the water, improving stormwater quality and reduce water run off. There are two different types of rain gardens; one type drains into a storm drain, and the other is self-contained and drains into the soil, but not into a storm drain or sewer system. Depending which drainage type is preffered, different plants would need to be planted, as a self contained rain garden will need to have plants that can sustain being more saturated in water than in one that drains into a storm drain or sewage system.

I've never used a rain garden personally, but I did a report on them earlier in the semester.

 

[chicken grandma]

I hope it will be a nice mix...just getting SUPER ANXIOUS for them to get here. I tried to schedule the delivery for Wed or Thurs...now it is looking like Thurs or Fri...(hopefully not longer). I have to go back to work on Saturday morn. Have had the brooder up and running since Wed. I still have lots of work to do on the coop. I will probably finish it well enough to put the chickens in the day after they needed to go in there!

A box with fresh water and medicated chick feed and some pine shavings and a heat lamp. Your wife and children will have a blast watching the chicks and changing food and water a couple times a day. That is all that happens for the first couple of weeks!

 

[chicken grandma]

All the stuff you were talking about was before my time, and I certainly can't imagine that happening today. But oh I SO wish that it would!! I'd love to go back to simpler times like that!

Sarah, we did that. Lived for 8 years in Hawaii on the side of a mountain. No heat, no air cond., no t.v., no paper or mail delivered, no garbage pick up. Bought our veggies at the local farms and ate local grass fed meat. Had our own chickens for eggs. It's not an easy way to live. But you can still do it today if you like. And it is very affordable. Our family budget in Hawaii was HALF what it is in Michigan.

 

[Living the Simple Life]

As I sat drinking coffee with Granny this morning we started taking a stroll down memory lane. Funny the things that come to mind. How many of you ever lived in a house with a milk chute? The summer I was twelve and worked for a Twin Pines Dairy milk truck driver. Obviously this was before child labor laws. I started work at 330am and ran from the truck to the house with the customers order. Take the empty bottles from the chute or on the porch, grab the new order, leave the milk, butter, and eggs, and run back to the truck. As went to the next house I would sit on the step of the open door. Can you imagine that happening today?

Another memory. How many remember when milk was sold in plastic bags? Or margarine that was white and came with a capsule of yellow food coloring that you had to mix in yourself because it was illegal for margarine, at the time of sale, to be the same color as butter?

How many remember before milk was homogenized and the cream would float to the top so you would have to shake it well before drinking?

I remember going to stay with my cousins and their milk was in plastic bags. They had a special pitcher that the bag fit into. I thought it was fascinating. We also would have to walk up-town to buy milk, bread, etc. because my aunt didn't drive. I am too young for the white margarine, but my mom has always said that they would get it but didn't mix the food coloring into it...the food coloring was saved for birthday cakes, etc.

There are child labor laws??? Who knew....I certainly didn't when I was growing up and my parents ran a restaurant. I would be up at 4:00am to spend my Saturdays and summer vacation doing dishes all day. And if it got busy and I had to help wait tables....the regular waitresses got my tips!!

 

[Chickmate]

We didn't have a milk chute but our neighbors did. I grew up in Frankenmuth, very small town back then and not the tourist trap it is now. The milkman used to just walk right in the house and put the milk in the refrigerator! "Hey Ed, how's it going?" He'd ring the bell and walk right in. No one locked their doors in those days. He did that for lots of people if they didn't have a milk chute and didn't want him to leave it on the porch. I remember the bottles had the little cardboad lids with the pull tab on it. Mom always got four quarts of whole milk and two pints of cream, plus a pound of butter. We got our eggs from a farmer we knew. The milkman came to our house three times a week. I don't remember milk in plastic bags though. That must have been after they stopped selling it in glass bottles?

We also had a guy everyone called "The Fruit Man" who drove his open-sided truck slowly down the road like an ice cream truck. It was full of chunks of ice and he sold all kinds of fruit and vegetables from it. If your Mom wanted to buy something she would send the kids out to wave him down. Funny, now that I think of it, his name was Ed, too. Anyway, the truck had little metal fold down steps we kids could stand on to reach in and pick what we wanted. He would pretend he didn't see all us kids steal pieces of ice to eat when it was really hot out. He brought the purchases up to the house and stood in the kitchen as Mom got his money.

Thanks for that walk down Memory Lane, Opa.

 

[sarah92480]

What's stopping you, then?

It's just not realistic for me at this point in my life. I would love to live off the land (and off the grid) but it's just not something I can do right now w/the bills I owe and my job and BF's job and such. I'd like to retire that way though.

Sarah, we did that. Lived for 8 years in Hawaii on the side of a mountain. No heat, no air cond., no t.v., no paper or mail delivered, no garbage pick up. Bought our veggies at the local farms and ate local grass fed meat. Had our own chickens for eggs. It's not an easy way to live. But you can still do it today if you like. And it is very affordable. Our family budget in Hawaii was HALF what it is in Michigan.

I'm trying to transition into living more independently like that, but I've only become interested in it in the last few years, so I'm slowly learning how to do it. I just started gardening 3 yrs ago and got my 1st chickens this spring. I want to learn how to use wild plants as well as what I can grow, and Ive been teaching myself how to do/make other things so I dont have to buy them also. It's just a long process of making sure I can do it all, and I'm not in any hurry. Like my reply to Olive, I'd like to maybe retire living that way, but for now it's just not feasible to turn over to it right away. And yes, its definitely affordable!

 

[1muttsfan]

My grandmother had a little metal milk box on her back porch, and the milkman would deliver glass bottles of milk with little paper caps on top. She would put the clean empties out for him to pick up.

 

[RaZ]

As I sat drinking coffee with Granny this morning we started taking a stroll down memory lane. Funny the things that come to mind. How many of you ever lived in a house with a milk chute?

The house my Mom lives in still has the milk chute. All the houses on that block had them when we moved here in 1963. There is also a laundry chute in the hallway to drop your dirty clothes to the basement.

I still have the scar on my foot where I stepped on a broken milk bottle.

I think I'll make a trip down to Caulder Dairy tomorrow and get a couple gallons of milk.

I read somewhere that Homo sapiens are the only mammals that continue to drink milk after they have been weaned.