Elizabeth Basden

Funny post to me! I grew up meat poor and was thrilled when Mother would fry up a whole Sunday chicken. Flavored with bacon grease, of course. The organ meats always were mine because I was so skinny. I loved chicken heart, liver, and gizzard.

If you are not frying chicken, then I would use livers for pâtés and dirty rice. Freeze the organs in portions for giblet gravy at a later date.

Don’t spurn such tasty treats.

My mother, born in 1918, used to tell me stories of visiting country cousins here in Texas. Sorghum syrup was made on the farm with a mule walking in circles. She thought the end product was delicious.

I have some experience putting together wooden dollhouse kits. My mother and I were on a kick years ago where we both made several. I loved them, my girls couldn’t have cared less.

Due to my being a perfectionist, I painted each piece of trim separately prior to gluing, so it was tedious work. But they turned out beautifully, based on lovely Victorians.

Left over from those years, I have a half dozen large, unopened, expensive kits, bought on sale. My plan now is to make them into birdhouses which will be mounted on poles. There are many examples on Pinterest.

My builder has constructed a lovely dovecote that is a model of our farmhouse. I’m in the process of putting a veneer of small stones to replicate.

Good luck! Dollhouses are a fun hobby.

This may not be much help. But, here goes...we are lucky enough to be able to build what looks like an English garden at our ranch. My grandson calls it The Castle because of the pipe gates and light fixtures. The short walls are brick, and it has a deep footing so hopefully we won't get mice and critters, and deer shouldn't be able to jump in.

The topsoil was pretty well scraped off in order to build, so now we and Mother Nature are making soil. We sheet mulched with cardboard then topped with a deep layer of oak leaves. The neighbors are trained to save their clean grass clippings now. We have lots of big lizards, bountious birds, and ants. The leaves are becoming lovely humus. We have to pull weeds for about 30 minutes every 2 weeks. Seeds in the leaves or seeds that blow in quickly take hold from the top.

We will do this one more year, then let chickens scratch and eat it clean. Then we figure we will be ready to plant.

I once worked with a woman who had a bounty of oranges from a 10 year old tree. One family picnic, grandpa ate his store-bought orange, scooped some dirt into a styrofoam cup, put the seed in. Ten years later the tree was higher than the garage and produced more oranges than the family could ever eat. She brought baskets of oranges for quite a while. They tasted great. In my experience, it works.

I inherited the small under 100 acre family ranch, but I do have an opinion for you. Buy now. We have no idea what the future holds. Get a small starter property that you can pay cash for now. This doesn't need to be the place of your dreams, but if the bottom falls out, you will have a place to call your own to go to and garden, maybe raise some small farm animals. Buy something that is fairly easy to drive to from where you are currently living and working, no more than about 3 hours. You can place a mobile home to live in if there is no house. Our place is over 100 years old and there were no livable buildings. They had all been trashed. We started with one building about 200 sq ft to get livable that was 3 walls, no doors, no windows, no roof. It was just a shell, but now it's charming accommodation that we stay in. Start small, you can always move up if the economy cooperates. Drive country roads to find seemingly abandoned properties where the grown kids moved away with no intention of living in the country. Try to buy a couple of acres around a house. I see such places all the time. Watch the TV rehab shows to believe that any place can be restored to a livable state. I would buy a property that is income producing such as grazing, agriculture, hunting, fishing, where other people pay you. Good luck! You won't regret making a decision to go ahead now and buy land. Start small, practice permaculture, don't fall in love with the property, then move on if you want to.