Andrea Mulder-Slater

by Andrea Mulder-Slater By now, you probably know how I feel about chickens. If not, let me remind you. I don't like them. They freak me out. So you can imagine my horror when I came across this. movoto.com It's a game created by a real estate blog in which you can calculate how many goats, sheep, guinea pigs, cows or ( shudder ) chickens it would take to keep your yard  manicured. And covered in crap. Now that we've moved to the country, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 acres of land. That's a lot of mowing. Assuming we had grass. At some point -  once we've been out here a few years, removed from society as we know it, living like recluses, growing our own food and braiding each others hair while wearing orange jumpsuits - we might in fact turn to the animals for help. Mostly because by that time, no one else will be brave enough to come near us. I had to try it. I selected chickens. Of course I did: I entered my acreage: And was ...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater When I was a little girl, my parents used to sing a song which has forever stayed in my brain. Little Boxes , written by Melvina Reynolds in 1962 (and later made popular by Pete Seeger), is an anti-conformist ditty which makes reference to suburban housing as little boxes made out of "ticky tacky" all looking just the same. I can trace my desire to "go against the flow" directly back to the lyrics. Geoff has been singing this tune to our girl from the time she was born and now that she's nearly three years old, she is regularly reciting the words. It's not uncommon to walk around the corner to hear her singing, "There's a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one..." My dad would be so proud. The other day, the kiddo spotted a colorful card in a British craft magazine. "Can we make that mommy?" she asked. "Of course," I answered. We cut, we glued, we colored and when we ...