Yay compost!

So the back neighbor got the front loader out today.. Asked me if I still wanted horse poo on my compost pile, and I said yeppers.

I mowed the front yard, and while doing so, they brought over a few loads. Cool. After putting the mower away I took a shovel to the pile and started spreading it around the whole compost area. At least till my foot was screaming at me to stop for the day.

Grabbed some lunch, and went out to pick the next bunch of green beans that needed picking- I might need to do up a couple cans of them, I got quite a bunch now. Then I was tinkering around with a few things in the house. Sewed up the torn nyjer seed bag and filled it up again- the finches are pleased about that.
While doing this, more loads kept coming over... I just went to go see just how much horse poo there was and gulp! The pile is almost as tall as me and as big around as I am tall. That's a lot of horse crap! Wonderful horse crap, lol. Now I need to start busting ass again and start layering in green matter to go with all that poo.

It is rather nice- they needed to clean out the corral before spreading fresh sand, and instead of having to haul it out to their back 40, they were willing to haul it to me instead. And now I got a nice heap of brown gold to work with in future gardening efforts! It's a total win-win situation.

So now it's the next day, heh. The rest of the horse poo got dropped off, and wow it's a major heap of poo! Little happy dance for me! Even if I don't touch it, I now have more than enough for planting next year!
Got the back half of the yard mowed, and the sanctuary keyhole. I noticed when mowing the edges of the easement drive a couple of large posts dropped off- I think perhaps they are the beginning of the fence that will eventually go up between us and the neighbors. A very good thing!
Picked a half pint of raspberries and a half pint of mullberries- those are now in the freezer. They will get used the next time I make up a batch of berry preserves, yum!
The green beans needed picking again- and we had way more than a dinners worth sitting there- so I decided to make some dilly beans. I used pint and a half jars and filled four of them up. Now they are cooling on the counter, yay!
We have already cracked open a jar each of the pickled asparagus and lemony cauliflower, yum. Cashed out the jar of cauliflower already too. My love does not really like pickled veggies, but he is developing a taste for the ones I make. Maybe because I don't really make him eat them plain, but I like to include them in dishes, and he likes them that way. 

And it's that time of year for pasta salads. I like to make them from scratch, but a while back Hardings had the kits on sale for super cheap so I picked up a couple of them. The other day I made up a box of the bacon ranch- and of course I added in more bacon, along with a can of peas and a can of chick peas. Today I'm trying the creamy Italian, I'm adding in a poached chicken breast, fresh onion and tomato, some pickled asparagus, and a can each of peas and cannellini beans.

Hardings had frozen veggies on super sale a wee bit back, now the dehydrator is loaded up with corn and mixed veggies. I'm dead out of dried mixed veggies, and almost out of the corn, so I'm happy to restock those. I can hardly wait till I see sweet potatoes on sale, I'm out of that too.

So pretty much big fat zippo got done around here today. I filled the birdfeeders and jelly feeders, ran out to the store for a few things.. The biggest chore was fixing the front closet- we apparently had too many coats on it and the whole rack collapsed, oops. So I sorted out the coats, a huge heap of them are going upstairs for occasional use storage. Fixed the rack and hung the regular coats back up. That can take up a surprising amount of time when one is shooing very curious kitties away every two seconds, lol. Read a lot of news and gossip. Got some laundry done.
Had a hankering for tacos. Normally I wouldn't give in to the craving when it's just the two of us, but today I'm doing so. After all, even if we end up with a heap of leftovers, I can make up a batch of taco soup for the freezer. My biggest trick with taco meat is pre-seasoning. A goodly coating of garlic and a handful of oregano right when you start browning.. Then after browning add your seasoning mix and water and simmer to au sec. The extra hit of garlic and oregano is a wonderful taste difference! And I always get the vegetarian refried beans and add my own bacon grease to it to give it yum factor- ya don't always know what's in other refried beans, and this is a good way to make sure I put in what I want for flavor.
The dilly beans set up right fine, so I wiped them down, wrote the contents and dates on the lids, took the rings back off and set them aside.. And now the jars are sitting pretty in my pantry. 
On the frugal front... 
My foaming dish soap dispenser was empty, so I refilled it. I don't buy the watered down soap, I use regular dish soap and add water to it- the watered down stuff is expensive! I pour about an inch of soap into the dispenser, about 2 oz- I marked off a line with a sharpie to make it easy- and then fill about halfway with water. Give it a goodly stir with a chopstick, then fill it up to the fill line marked on the bottle with water and stir again. I can refill that dispenser 19 times with one 38 oz bottle of soap. And I picked up that bottle of soap on sale. Hey, instant foamer soap that didn't cost an arm and a leg! And I can keep reusing the foamer bottle instead of throwing one away every time it's empty. This same tactic works perfectly well for foamer hand soap bottles too.
I also made a fresh bottle of febreeze- again the frugal way. One small cap of fabric softener which I think is around an 1/8 of a cup in a 28 oz bottle, and fill with water. Instant refill on fabreeze that's way super cheaper than buying a new bottle every time, and again, one less bottle to go to the landfill. From one bottle of fabric softener, I can make 40 bottles of fabreeze. And this time it's free- the bottle of softener was free with the purchase of a bottle of laundry soap, which was on sale and I had a coupon for :)

Guess it's time to post.. been a couple days and this entry is probably beyond long enough to boredom, lol.