Animal update...

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of selling!  We sold a few various items from around the house but our primary concern was to sell the animals.

The rabbits have all been bought and picked up...save for a couple of stragglers that managed to escape.  We had some terrible winds here the other day - it picked up the shelter we had the butcher rabbits in and turned it over...releasing all 12 of our pre-sold rabbits.  They ran free for a couple of days until the buyers (our wonderful neighbors) came down and helped us to catch them.  All were caught but 2 so we called it a day and figured we would catch the remaining two some other time.  The breeding rabbits were bought as a package so we were able to sell them, their cage, and all of their supplies.

The cow has been bought by our neighbors however we worked out a deal that she gets to stay on our farm until she calves!  I wanted to be there for the birth and since they aren't ready to take in a cow just yet - it works out for everyone.  How lonely for our baby girl though as she'll be the only animal here through the winter. :(

The roosters were all purchased before the Thanksgiving holiday and the last of the hens will be picked up in a couple of days.  Good timing too as the starlings have shown up again and are eating freely out of the chicken feeder.  (I'll try to get a picture of the hoard of birds that fly in and out of the coop all day long.)  The youngest hens have just started laying too!

We're now finding ourselves slightly bored in the evenings with the absence of chores .  Everyday I continue to purge things from our drawers, cabinets, and lives.  A definite feat for a pack-rat like myself!

Decisions, decisions.....

Over the last few weeks, we have made some difficult decisions involving our farm and our lives.  We have decided to sell the farm and hit the road.  We have realized that we work too hard to sustain our lifestyle and we are sacrificing our family time in order to do what we do.  We have always talked about traveling and figured why wait?  Why wait until we're 65+ years old when we can do it now?

We have already started selling some of our "stuff"... of which we have a LOT of.  We are constantly looking at our options and realizing that we have more available to us when we think outside the box....freeing ourselves from the societal "norms" that define what we're supposed to be doing.  Our dream has always been to return to Alaska and now this dream could become a reality... just with a slight road trip on our way there. :)

What does this mean for this blog?  I plan to keep writing (I have to maintain my sanity somehow - haha!), but the focus will be more on our travels and our family and of home-schooling.  Over the next few months, I'll try to keep it updated but cannot promise anything.  There's a lot going on here - selling of animals and belongings - so I'll do the best I can.

My first cow

I thought I would post a quick little something about our cow... she is the sweetest cow that you will ever meet.  A little shy at first but warms up with some edible encouragement.  Her name is Brandy and she is a purebred Jersey cow.  We bought her from some friends of ours and she came to us already bred... so in 9 months or so she will be giving us the most delicious milk!

She is only about 4 feet tall at the shoulders... honestly the most perfect family cow ever!

Busy, busy, busy....

This time of year is so very busy!  I had forgotten how busy we were last year, scrambling to get everything harvested, preserved and put up for winter.  Blackberries, apples, potatoes, summer squash, cucumbers....seems like everything wants to ripen at the same time!  I'll start first with the cheese.  In the last 10 days, I have made 2 batches of Fromage Blanc and 1 batch of Chevre.  Both are super easy and both follow the same method -

1) Heat milk to 86 degrees F (cow's milk for Fromage Blanc and goat's milk for Chevre)

2) Add culture and allow to rehydrate for 2 minutes, then stir to mix in.

3) keep milk at 72 degrees for 12 hours (I poured mine into a 1 gallon jar and put it in the sink full of 72 degree water.  It's much easier to control the temp of the water in the sink than the ambient air...The water temp is on the left of the thermometer.  I know the picture shows 75 degrees - it just hadn't cooled yet.)

4) Line a colander with dampened cheesecloth.  Ladle milk into cheesecloth.  You can collect the whey that drains and use it for various things (like making pasta or protein shakes) or you can give it to your chickens like I do.  :)  Allow milk to drain for 4-8 hours, until desired consistency is achieved.  Store in airtight container for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.  That's it!  Fromage Blanc tastes a lot like cream cheese and can be used in recipes that call for cream cheese.  The first batch came out with a weird consistency, almost grainy.  But then again, I started draining it at night and slept in a little late so it had dried a bit too much on the outer layer.  So I threw in some garlic, onion, and salt and made a dip.  (It's at this point that I pat myself on the back for not wasting a botched recipe AND for making something that my oldest really likes!)  I made the Chevre and froze it in 1-cup amounts, wrapped tightly in saran wrap and then vacuum sealed when frozen solid.  It freezes very well and my husband can enjoy fresh, homemade Chevre anytime he wants (I don't care for it).  Below is the batch of Chevre, which made 1 1/2 pounds of cheese from 1 gallon of milk.

Apparently, this year is a great year for cucumbers!  Last year, we were lucky to get the few that we got.  This year, I've already collected a few slicing cucumbers and over 15 pounds of pickling cucumbers!  I've been making pickles like crazy!  I've made two batches of bread & butter pickles (which turned out very good) and a batch of dill pickles (still waiting on the results of those).  This is a picture of the first set of pickling cucumbers that I got...

There were a couple of 1/2 pounds cucumbers in that bunch!!

And then there's the first harvest of both broccoli and summer squash.... This surprises me as broccoli is typically a cool weather crop and summer squash is a warm weather crop....guess we have the best of both worlds!  Our very late warm weather probably had a lot to do with it...

I just LOVE homegrown broccoli - it has such a wonderful flavor, almost nutty.  MMMMMM!  Our summer squash plants have gotten bigger than we thought they would.... much bigger than our zucchini did last year.

Our spaghetti squash is doing really well!  So far, at last count, we have 17 squash!  Here's a picture of the largest one...(sorry, I had to use my keys for comparison - they were the only thing I had with me)

The last couple of weeks, we also said goodbye to the first set of rabbits and hello to 2 more sets.  These ones are 2 1/2 weeks old - in the barn there's also some that are 1 week old and some that are 8 weeks old.

I love this age!  They're cute and look like miniature rabbits...these are 1/4 Champagne D'Argent and 3/4 Satin.  As they get older, their faces will get longer and they will actually look more like rodents...as bad as that sounds.  But this age...they're so cute and cuddly!  I just try not to think about what will happen in about 10 weeks.

The blackberries are starting to come in.  Last year, they took us by surprise as we didn't know they were there.  We picked every day for about 6 weeks...in the extreme heat (not that it's all that hot, but since I don't like to sweat - it was HOT).  Then there was blackberry syrup, blackberry jelly, and blackberry wine...not to mention the dozens of vacuum sealed packages of blackberries that we put into the freezer.  I was actually kind of dreading the blackberry's arrival this year...picking, sweating, cuts and scrapes, sweating, and cooking, oh, and sweating.  But one taste of my husband's blackberry jelly, mmmmm!  Yeah, I'd do it again!  And the size of the berries this year.... it's gonna be a great harvest!  Maybe we'll even be able to sell some....

We also harvested the last of the potatoes.... the russet variety.  Pretty cool - for our first time growing potatoes.  And since they were so easy, and we all love potatoes, we'll be doing them again next year.  For now, it's just a matter of storing them..... I dug them up all by myself while my husband was taking care of some much needed auto repairs.  I was careful and made a couple of observations about the garden....1)earthworms - excellent for the soil and the plants so I was careful to put them back into the dirt and gently cover them with soil so they wouldn't dry out in the heat (I resisted the urge to toss them to my chickens). 2)moles - the bad = they gnawed on a couple of my potatoes and one of my green tomatoes (grrr);  the good = they aerate the soil and allow for bigger potatoes.  So I figured a couple of lost potatoes was the cost for healthy soil and big taters.

There were a couple of odd ones in there....although perfectly good, they're just not something you'd see at the store. :)  And I kinda like that....

The early apples also ripened.  Unfortunately, the slight breeze that we had one day knocked the bulk of them down so we aren't gonna get as many as we would have liked... but there's still plenty on the tree.  And we still have a couple more trees yet to ripen.  We've offered the fallen apples to local farmers for their chickens and pigs...they love them!  And they don't care if there are bugs in them or if they have bruises....  But it's about this time that I'm wishing that we had our own pigs to feed them to... lesson learned - we're getting pigs again in April.

The picture below shows what we picked in about an hour - before the sun came out from behind the clouds and it warmed up too much.  It's not much, but it's more than enough to get me started on making some applesauce.

While picking apples, we stumbled upon this little guy....

We've also decided to make some changes around here.... but more on that later.  For now, I've got my hands full with fruits and veggies - with more coming in every day.  Later this week, I hope to be posting about a new addition to the farm... :D

Superwoman I am not

I have come to the realization that I am not superwoman.  No matter how hard I try or how many tasks I try to take on - I cannot do it all.

We have lived on our farm for almost 2 years now and we are starting to learn the groove of the seasons.  We now know that late summer/early fall is our BUSIEST time of year.  Mostly because of the garden and the orchard as the animals turn is in the spring.  Our apples are getting ready to "literally" fall off the trees -

This means that we'll be pressing apples and making applesauce and apple pie filling soon.  And since we have two varieties of apples - one early and one late - this means that we'll be doing all of that twice.  Everything that we can is coming into season - peaches, pears, tomatoes.  The blackberries (which there seem to be more of this year) will be ripe within the next couple of weeks - a task that I'm not really looking forward to as we picked blackberries everyday for a month last year, even when the temps were in the 90's!  But I'm willing to sacrifice a few beads of sweat to gather a few pounds of those delicious little berries!  Those berries eventually become blackberry jelly, blackberry syrup, and blackberry wine - all made by my husband.  YUM!

This was all made by one 25 pound box of tomatoes... that I bought from the local farmer's market.  I think I'll be in trouble once our tomatoes start ripening but I just couldn't help myself.  I plan on making lots of salsa - we found out that Tyler loves salsa.  He normally hates tomatoes but if he'll eat them in salsa, who am I to say no?

Here are the last of our red potatoes.  We pulled them all up a few days ago and were surprised at how many there were, especially since we've been pulling them up early and eating "new" potatoes.  Our guess, there's probably 50-75 pounds of potatoes there.  Not bad for a $5-10 investment in seed potatoes.  The "russet" variety should be ready to pull up in a couple of weeks.

I'm sure that all of this doesn't sound like very much, but it is time consuming.  Canning is an all day process that precludes me from doing the rest of my housework - laundry, cleaning, meals.  Normally, I would love an opportunity to avoid those chores but it all just seems to pile up around me.

Our field was cut, raked, and baled last week.  I just love the look of our pasture during this phase.  Something so peaceful about it.  But that also meant hauling bales of hay from the field into the barn.  This is when we learned that we are not as youthful as we were last year.  This time last year, we just tossed the bales from the back of the truck up into the loft.  Steve threw them up to me and I picked them up and put them into an organized stack.  There are not light - each bale is about 60 pounds which you pick up by squeezing the baling twine together to make a handle of sorts.  Quite the workout!  However this year, we have a different truck that is a little lower to the ground making the distance that he has to throw them up to the loft a little greater.  We resorted to just stacking them in the lower level of the barn until we get our hands on a bale elevator.

I just wanted to include this picture of some late season strawberries that I picked.  It always amazes me how we all love strawberries yet when there is a bowl just sitting on the counter full of them - they all end up in the compost pile.  These late season ones don't last long at all, one night in the refrigerator and the mold had already set in. Dang!  Didn't even have a chance to give them to the chickens....

Back to the topic...

In saying this, I'm trying to justify our decision to stop homeschooling, at least justify it to myself.  While ahead of other kids their age in some areas, such as biology, they are probably behind in other areas.  However, I am not enrolling them in the local elementary school - over my dead body!  I am fortunate enough to have a distance learning teacher that lives a few houses down.  And the boys LOVE going to their farm.  And they'll be able to interact with other kids ... hopefully their age.  And it will be small group interactions.  It's a lot like homeschool, as the bulk of their work will be done at home.  But the curriculum is set by the school district and guided by a teacher - a "certificated" teacher.  And, she has a LOT of experience working with special needs children.  I truly am - dare I say the word - blessed.

Wonderful days

After a wonderful visit yesterday with family that I haven't seen in years, I was on cloud nine.  Our boys don't have friends and there aren't any boys around us that are their ages so you can imagine how happy I was to have my aunt and cousin and her family come to visit.  Two of her children are roughly my boys' age and they played so well together!  It wasn't like going to the playground and watching my kids get pushed around by the other kids for being different - it was pure fun... the way kids are supposed to play.  I was able to show my family our farm and do one of my favorite things - cook for them.  I'm sorry, I must pat myself on the back a little here, but I am a pretty good cook.  And I love to do it.  Sure sometimes, usually when I'm cooking for other people, things don't turn out just the way I wanted but every time is a learning experience and I get better with each mistake.  We had roasted chicken (that we raised and butchered ourselves), potato salad (using potatoes, chives, and parsley from our garden and my homemade mayo), a salad (sadly I had to buy the ingredients as we didn't have any in the garden yet - but I bought them at the local farmer's market), homemade apple pie (using apple pie filling that I made from our apples and canned myself.  The crust was made using lard from our pigs.) and homemade ice cream (using raw cow's milk and eggs - from our hens of course).  Everything tasted fabulous!

Then today, Tyler volunteered to get the mail.  He ran back into the house, practically jumping with joy, and exclaimed, "It says 'Tyler Dickson'!"  Sure enough he had received a package.  (My children have inherited my love of the postal service - we all love to get mail/packages.)  To backtrack: I  recently reconnected with an acquaintance from high school on Facebook (it's been 17 years).  After previewing my profile and subsequently seeing my blog, she sent me a message saying how excited her husband was to find someone else who shares a passion for electric poles. (giggle)  She mentioned that her husband was probably somewhere on the spectrum and after reading about Tyler's obsession, he wanted to send him a book.  That was what arrived today.  Upon opening it, he did not react like most children would at the sight of a book, he was intrigued and curious.  I tried to explain it and show him a few pages but after seeing a couple of the pictures, he took the book and set about to reading.  I gave him a couple of minutes before I went looking for  him and I found him like this:

He was actually reading!  He has never shown so much interest in a book!  And here it was, a book about something that he is fascinated with, and he was sounding out words and reading on his own.  This lasted maybe 20-30 minutes but that is infinitely more than he's done before.  I was almost in tears!  Who knew that clicking a simple "Add Friend" button would lead to that?

Celebrating Memorial Day on a Farm

This past Memorial Day weekend, our celebration was a little .... unorthodox.  

Now, mind you, I am formerly a suburbanite.  I was raised in the 'burbs of a big city and went on to live in various cities and suburbs in my young adult life.  Now that we have settled down and decided to start this farm, I am surprising myself (and anyone who knows me) by doing things that I never thought I could do..... like butcher a chicken.  

Growing up, I knew where our meat came from (and no, I didn't think it was the local grocery store).  I knew it was raised on a farm somewhere, then it was killed and cut up and packaged into the nice little packages that we bought at the store.  I was fine with not knowing the gruesome details.  Until I married a hunter.....

Lots of pictures!

I went a little crazy and took a bunch of pictures of our farm.  The weather was beautiful - how could I not??

Here are the ducks - I just can't help but sing that song from Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the other..."  It's really too bad that their time on our farm is up, at least for 9 of the 10.  I kinda liked seeing all that white in the tall grass...

Spring has Sprung!!

Well, it's definitely Spring 'round here!!  Seems as though we're up to our knees in babies....

Besides the ducks we got at the end of March -

and the cornish cross chicks we got at the beginning of April -

Farm food

This past week has been amazing!  We added 30 new critters to the farm.  Okay, okay, it started out as 33 but we had a few casualties.  But all are doing fine now!  And in about 10 weeks, they'll be even better.....yummy!

Last Friday I received the yogurt maker that I had ordered.  I wanted to try a couple of different methods, but I couldn't bring myself to risk losing that much milk to "test" out their methods.  Our precious raw milk is too valuable to waste... I'll explain the two other methods just in case someone has "extra" milk they want to experiment with.  Maybe once we get our cow, and have LOTS of milk to use, I'll try their methods.

A time for change.......

Things are always changing around here.  I know my last post was almost a year ago *embarrassed* - I can't believe it's been that long.  When I left off, the workload was picking up and I simply didn't have the energy at the end of the day.  I can't make any promises for the future, but I'll try to do better.

So much has happened in the last year, I'm not really sure where to start.  Let's see:

It's only been 5 days and it feels like forever....

     I guess I'll start off with one of my observations about my son.  A little background - my oldest son has been "diagnosed" with autism.  I put the quotes there because no one can actually give me a diagnosis of where on the spectrum that he falls, but I'm thinking it must be somewhere around Aspergers (if it were drawn on a line).  Since he was first diagnosed, his favorite meal is chicken and fries.  And not any ol' chicken will do - it MUST be Tyson Chicken strips (used to be nuggets but they changed the way they make them).  He's okay if I change the style of fries, crinkled, crunchy, or shoestring, but the chicken MUST be the same.  I know some of you may be thinking that it sounds normal, children are normally picky eaters or all children love chicken and fries.  This is beyond normal - he'd eat it every night if I let him.  And if it's not the same chicken, the plate and food end up on the walls.  Yes, my 9-year-old son throws his dinner plates. 

     In my 7 years of dealing with an Autistic child, I have come across quite a few articles and other moms who have reported to me that their autistic children are also BIG FANS of chicken and fries for dinner.  I AM NOT A SCIENTIST OR A RESEARCHER but I have to wonder if there is some sort of link between Autism and chicken.  Maybe it provides a protein that they are deficient in.  Or maybe it's just that they prefer really bland food.  I don't know but it's curious to say the least.

     I write this only because my DH came home from work the other night saying that he was talking with a co-worker who he found out has an Autistic son.  By some weird coincidence, his son is also 9 years old and their prenatal care was at the same hospital that we went to.  And YES, his son's favorite meal is chicken and fries - TYSON chicken.   Hmmmm?

     The last few days have been somewhat productive.  My DH and I cut out another garden bed out of our yard and he's currently working on a third (I've got other chores to do).  Our gardens are coming together and he's already talking about being a part of our local farmer's market within the next 2 years.  Not bad - if we can do it.  The plants are ready to move; they are starting to look pretty pathetic in their containers under the grow lights.  If only plants could talk.....

     I've personally been working on moving my chicks to another containment area - in other words, they're getting too big for the cardboard box that they've been kept in up until this point.  Since we moved the chickens to the barn, the old coop was available.  After cleaning it out and putting in new pine shavings, 7 of my chicks moved to their new home.  (I had the same nervous feelings that I had when we moved each of our boys from the crib to a toddler bed.)  It's bigger and easier to clean - not to mention it's outside so it doesn't stink up the shop anymore!  I only moved 7 because they were a week older than the others when I bought them.  The other 5 are still in the cardboard box in the shop, but I gave them new pine shavings too and it smells a LOT better in there.  It's still hard for me to believe that we'll be culling the Cornish X's in 2-4 weeks....  Hopefully it won't be on Mother's Day.

     I am really bad about staying in contact with people.  I made some really wonderful friends while we were in Japan and I feel so bad at the end of the day because I don't keep in touch with them like I should - will they forgive me??  I get reports from them that the cherry blossoms were beautiful this year, but that their season was short lived and that they've been getting some freakishly weird weather there - snowing in April!!  I'd take the snow in exchange for the rain....and the chance to be in Japan again.  Odd that we were only there 2 years and yet it feels like home.  Kate, whose blog you can read here, talks about being homesick for her family and home town.  I completely understand the feeling as I miss Japan that much!

Today was a great day!  I made a Chinese Chicken Pasta Salad for lunch and my oldest son LOVED it!  He ate two bowls of it!  He also is voluntarily doing his schoolwork.  I had errands to run yesterday so I missed our normal learning time (that's what he calls it).  When I got home I found that he had gotten out his worksheets and did his schoolwork on his own - not even my DH knew that he did his schoolwork.  Maybe this homeschooling thing WAS the best thing for him.....

A day in the life.....

I think that it would be nice to live the life of a chicken. Think about it - you wake up, stretch, get something to eat from the feeder that the nice humans put out for you, get something to drink from the waterer that they also left out for you, scratch the ground looking for seeds and bugs to eat, be let out of the coop to walk around ALL DAY scratching the ground some more for bugs and seeds, make a pit stop in the coop to lay an egg, take a dust bath, then make your way back to the coop in the evening to go to sleep. How easy it must be to be a chicken. No kids to take care of, no bills to pay, no laundry to do, no house to clean. I envy my chickens.

We plotted out the garden and tilled it. My poor husband is working 12-hour shifts, driving 2+ hours back and forth to work, and still manages to work on the garden during the week. I sure do love that man. The chickens love him too - he has dug up this HUGE rectangle of heaven for them! So many worms and beetles and seeds for them! And of course, we just have to take a break and enjoy watching them forage for food.

To say the least, we have now sequestered them to the back pasture where they can hunt for their own bugs. (As a treat today, I tossed the compost pile and found what seemed to be 100+ worms.) They seem to be taking to their new coop pretty well, although the egg count has dropped. Maybe it's just stress. I hate to think that they've found a new place to lay their eggs!

My apologies - a catch-up

I apologize for not keeping up with the whole blog thing. I have trouble staying committed to it. It’s not that I’m not “into” the whole blog thing, it’s just I keep going back and forth about sharing my life with the ENTIRE Internet population. But I digress….. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of events.


It started with us purchasing 12 chicks to replace our current flock. Replacing chickens serves two purposes (for us anyway) – 1) it allows us to start our flock fresh, knowing exactly how old our chickens are and 2) we will have both meat and eggs. When we first got our chickens, we bought them from different people who were uncertain about their ages. And chickens lose 20% of their laying abilities each year after the first year…. I know, I sound like I’m trying to convince myself. The lady at the store who helped me with my chicks looked at me as if I were crazy – replacement chickens??




Then I started my next college class online – business ethics. Normally I love learning, which is a dramatic change from my high school years, but these online classes are sucking the life out of me. I can’t wait until they are done!





Then I weaned our goats off of their lunchtime bottle – well, I should say it’s a work in progress. They still cry a LOT at lunchtime, but I just switched them to grain and they seem to be getting over it. And, as for crying, well, Bonnie is a Nubian and from what I hear, that’s what Nubians do – cry a lot.






After that, it was the normal, day-to-day stuff – household chores and taking care of children, animals, and husband. Actually I was waiting for the rain to stop long enough for us to get the vegetable plants transplanted. The rain didn’t stop until the 10th and we’ve been busy since.


We moved the chickens to a new coop - it’s actually a stall inside of the barn that we closed off. We wanted to give them a place to lay eggs without the threat of my boys terrorizing them. The new coop has a door with a lock on it so maybe it will give the chickens a sense of security from my boys. And the stall is HUGE compared to their little coop.

I felt a sense of empowerment over the weekend because I, the one who hates bugs and generally being outside, mowed the entire backyard. Not an easy feat but I did it. And it only took me 2 hours. And the best part – watching my husband fly kites with our boys while I did it. It was nice to see him have some time to play with the kids. His current schedule keeps him away from us for 4 days out of the week and the other 3 days he’s been working on the farm.



Yesterday was the best day – it was gorgeous, sunny and warm so we dug and tilled the garden. We were able to cut the sod out and start laying it over the “sandpit” (where the previous owners had their pool). The kids spent most of the day outside (complaining the whole time but nevertheless outside). We had our first grilled dinner of the season – T-bones no less. And we retrieved 5 eggs from our chickens – the most in a long time. Maybe the new coop is serving its purpose…..



Well, I guess that’s a pretty good “catch-up” of the last few weeks. I’ll try not to let so much time go between postings.

A woman on a mission

I know, I know, it's March. The end of March no less. But I have a New Year's resolution: I AM GOING TO DECLUTTER MY HOUSE.

I recently read an article that talked about spring cleaning. In it, there was mention of a woman in North Carolina who offers daily emails with advice and tips for housekeeping. When I went to her website, I was inspired. It was much more than that. It was about loving yourself enough to keep a tidy house. Not only was there tips and advice, there were testamonials and a clear, laid-out plan of attack for decluttering the house. I LOVE IT! This could be the help that I need to declutter, thus de-stress, my house and my life.

The goal: declutter
The help: http://www.theflylady.net/

Day 1: Shine my sink

Normally, anyone could stop by my house and find a sink full of dishes. It’s not that we’re dirty, it’s just that I’m lazy. I admit it. And - I HATE doing dishes! (This is funny since I was a representative for a well-known home-based kitchen accessory company.) At best, there would be a dish drainer full of clean, drying dishes.

I've cleaned my sink before. I've taken that old toothbrush around the edges and scrubbed that gunk out that no one really wants to talk about. I've made the fixtures shine, well, as well as they can for being brushed nickel. But since taking on this new outlook, this new attitude, the sink looks different. It feels different.

Now, I don’t want to cook because I don’t want to dirty my sink. It looks so pretty and shiny that I don’t want anything to mess it up. I’m actually cleaning the dishes AND drying them AND putting them away. Not 20-30 minutes between tasks either. And the result…..

**Update 5/2/2011**
I stopped following the above website not long after I posted this.  I know, I'm a terrible person.  I just found out that I can keep a clean sink (and a clean house) and not have to stick to someone else's schedule.  I've got too  much on my plate to listen to someone else tell me how I should be doing things.