Water Woes

We occasionally test our preps to see where we are with things. Nothing drastic like turning off the power to the whole house or anything like that. Just create a scenario and set our guidelines, like a storm has come through and knocked the power out: what do we do? We try to work with the scenarios that are most likely for us and power outages are the most frequent. Living in a trailer park, we are not exactly high priority for the power company.

Also, we think about things that have happened to us previously that we had to figure out what to do. An example of that is when I was a child, the area I lived in had an earthquake that disrupted the water supply. We had to go to the local grocery store and get water from the national guard and other .gov agencies. For a week. In the summer. We had to share bathwater, not flush the toilet every time we went to the bathroom and all the things that go with not having water. Eeeewwww.

Obviously, having water is a huge priority. We don't have anywhere to store large barrels of water. I'm pretty sure even if we did, the floor wouldn't support them. So we started buying jugs of water every time we went to the store. One gallon and two and a half gallons. At one point we had nearly 100 gallons of water set back. It felt good to know that while it wouldn't last forever, we at least had a head start and wouldn't need to rush to the store or stand in line if for some reason the water was out.

Then the jugs started leaking. The two and a half gallon jugs started first. I kept an eye on them and as soon as they started leaking, I would try to "rescue" the water by putting it in mason jars or anything else I could find with a lid. Then we just used them up. It wasn't long and the gallon jugs also started leaking. So we have started using them up as well. The jugs that the water comes in from the store definitely will not last long term. Not even really short term, unless you purchase them right before you need them. Lesson learned.

We have found a couple of solutions to this problem. One solution that we have found is large 250 gallon containers. There is a place about an hour or so away from us that sells them. We first purchased two that needed to be cleaned out. Another lesson learned. They still are not clean. Clean enough that we can hook together a rain catchment system and I will water the garden with it. Not clean enough that I would drink it. Even after running it through our Berkey. I just would not trust the water. Next time we are up that way, we plan to purchase an additional two more that are already cleaned.

Check in your area. Do you have something like this available? If not, do you have a bottling company near by? Check with them and see what they do with the empty syrup barrels. Or someplace that bottles maple syrup. Apparently, that is one of the previous lives of the containers that we found.

Another solution we found was on amazon. We plan on getting one and seven gallon reusable water containers. Puts us back at finding somewhere to store them, but once I have one in my hot little hands I will be able to figure that out.

Even though I am not aware of any time that the water has been unavailable in the area that we live in, I feel much better knowing we will all have plenty of water to keep us hydrated and hopefully at least reasonably clean. Even if we have to share bathwater again.

P.S. Supper tonight will be the steak and veggie kabobs. I am ready for them now!

Dogs, Dreams and Dinner

So yesterday, I decided it was high time to sort and organize my shelf that holds my canning jars. Living in a trailer, of course we had to build shelves. I realize the manufacturer only has so much space and "quality" to work with, but I have seen a lot of houses with no shelves or storage either. Lucky for me, my husband is quite a handy builder. So, now I have shelves and storage.

Anyway, back to my canning jars. I need more. I have some, but no where near to what I need. I am going to start canning more of the beef. I got some stew beef canned up. Next up will be hamburger. I have never canned hamburger before so it will be a new experience for me. I will take some photos and let you know how that goes. Also, I will try some to see how it turns out. I know I won't be able to make burgers out of it, but since hamburger is so versatile, I am sure I can come up with something to try it in.

Also, I never realized dogs could have bad dreams. Last night, my husband and I were sitting in our living room watching a little boob tube with our dog sleeping by our feet. Suddenly, he jumped straight up, seemed very agitated and confused and it took some doing to calm him down. He finally calmed down and laid back down, but had to be touching both of us. He just seemed to need to be comforted. Which of course we were more than happy to do. If I could get my hands on whoever it was who owned him previously, I would probably end up in jail. There is never a reason to mistreat an animal.

We had hamburger steaks, gravy and the beans from our garden for dinner last night. The beans that we are growing for fresh eating are called gold rush beans. They are string-less and very tender. They cook in about 15-20 minutes tops. We are also eating the tiger eye beans fresh along with them. When those beans are young the whole bean, shell and all can be eaten, A little more mature and the beans but not the pod can be eaten. At full maturity, they make a fine textured and flavored dry or soup bean. Tonight, if the rain holds off, we are going to grill some steak and veggie kabobs. If it does rain, we are going to have fried ham and eggs. Either way, yum. 😀

Yesterday, we received our hydraulic log splitter. I am not keen on chopping wood when I am at home alone since I happen to be accident prone. That would be a disaster in waiting! It is a 10 ton splitter and manually operated so I can get started splitting the wood that we bought and get it stacked up where we want it. I love to sit around the fire pit outside or in front of the fire place when it's really cold outside.

Today, I am picking up some hours for a fellow employee who needed off for a funeral. While I am at work, I will pick up some pepper and cucumber plants. Since mine are super pathetic and not growing, I will supplement the garden. I really hope to have some better luck starting the peppers from seed next year. It's been a bust for about two years in a row now. If we have some at work, I am also going to get an okra plant. Maybe two, but that would be it for okra. That stuff is prolific here.

I also would like to say thanks to Wirecutter for sending folks my way. I appreciate all the folks who stopped by to visit. Thanks to all of you!

It's Later

It is now later. Here are some photos of my garden now. 

3 Sisters Garden

Tomatoes and carrots

Good companion plants

Several kinds of beans

Peanuts

Nothing like home roasted peanuts

My pathetic vining plants

Cantaloupe, watermelon, and winter squash

My super pathetic cucumbers

Fig Tree

Blackberry

New strawberry plants

Lime bush

We harvested some beans. Almost two pounds. Not enough to can, just enough to eat so far. We harvested gold rush and tiger eye beans. Both are really good for fresh eating. We have not gotten and strawberries yet as we just planted them a month or so ago. I don't expect to get any this year. We also have a lemon tree. We got lemons last year, but not so far this year. So here is a fairly big look at my garden this year. 

Random Thoughts

Some random thoughts about where we are in life.

I still have my snarky teenager at home. I did finally pull him from the public school. At the end of his 11th grade year last year, I pulled him out of school. I tried homeschooling him personally, but with our tense relationship, getting him to accomplish anything was a big struggle. I enrolled him in an online school at the beginning of this year. He is actually accomplishing it. Slowly, as he hates anything related to school. He will be done in a couple of weeks and be an official graduate. He says he wants to join the military. The Marines. Wow! What a complete turnaround in his attitude. I am not sure if he will actually sign up, but he says he wants to. He has already gone and talked to the recruiter even.  I hope he does follow through with this as he really does better with structured routines. (Don't we all?) I do dread the day they send him off. I'll be super proud, but worried none-the-less.

We added a dog to our household. A "Scary Pit Bull"! I sent a picture to my sister after we got him and the first response she had was "Oh he looks scary!" Yeah, I don't think so.  Course, I'm not afraid of dogs. He's about 60 pounds now and just loves life. When we first got him from the shelter, he had been there a little over two months and seemed nervous about everything. Cowered at the slightest movement, flinched when we would reach to pet him and never wagged his tail. Boy, what a change in the past couple of months. He's now full of life and a happy, friendly, tail-waggin dog. He does have some idiosyncrasies, though. He does not like to walk on tile, linoleum or concrete floors. It's really kind of funny to watch him tiptoe through the kitchen. Also, he will chase a ball all over inside the house, but not a bit outside. He just watches the ball go flying and then looks at me like "so what?". So I play fetch! 😀

I have a job now. Not in my field (accounting) and I am happier for it. I work at a garden center one or two days a week. I can share my love of digging in the dirt and gardening with all the folks who come in. It has been enlightening to talk to all the folks who are focusing on edible landscape and planting fruit and nut trees and all kinds of berry bushes. I'm glad the folks in my neck of the woods are growing their own!

My husband is still at his same job. He received a promotion and is finally being challenged again. He had a meeting with the President, Gen. Manager, and some other middle management a few days ago. The promotion they gave him was a pilot position to see if they needed to add the position to several of the other locations. (They have about 20 total locations although some are just satellite locations with no actual buildings.) They told him as he progresses the job, there is room for more advancement. As long as it makes him happy, I will support whatever he chooses.

I've also learned a few things about being prepared. Little things that I don't really recall reading or hearing anywhere else. Probably is out there, I just didn't see it. Or don't remember seeing it. Either way, have had a few problems crop up that I will be sharing with you.

We have also started changing our diets. We still eat a lot of the same stuff, we are just making as much home made as possible. I have found that not eating out and cutting out the prepackaged foods out of our diets has made me feel a lot better. I don't get headaches like I used to. My gut issues have almost entirely faded away. I just feel better all around. We watched a documentary called The Magic Pill a few weeks ago. I recommend it. We are now cutting as much sugar out of our diets as possible. This is a new change so it remains to be seen how this change will affect us. I may end up giving up coffee completely as I don't care for it without sugar and cream. I also never realized how many products have sugar in them. Even tomato sauce! Why? Good thing I like to cook!

That's all for now as I have to go to work in just a bit and still need to walk the dog.

Have a wonderful day!

June 8, 2018

It's been a long time. Life seems to just keep happening that keeps us busy. There has been a lot of changes in our family in the past year. Some very good. Some very sad. As the saying goes, however, we keep marching on.

We have expanded our garden this year. Last year with all the spring rain, it seemed most stuff we tried to grow was a washout. This year is a different story. We had freezes and frosts throughout April so that it seemed we would never get anything growing. We got our seeds planted and had to keep covering the beds so that we could try to prevent any damage. Finally we had a few things start to sprout. It seemed to take all the seeds more time than usual to sprout, even when it warmed up. Now it's going gangbusters! We will be harvesting our first beans tonight.
Then:

Please ignore the cushion-less chairs. I have not decided exactly what I want for replacements.

Now: My batteries are dead in my camera. You will get the now later!


We also got an entire beef, grass-fed, thanks to a contact from my son-in-law. It was almost 600 pounds! Holy cow!! Took up almost our entire freezer. Which we are just fine with. We have eaten some, given some away and started canning some of it. I am also going to try dehydrating some hamburger and try my hand at making jerky.


Well, I was going to add in a picture there, but blogger seems to be feeling lazy right now and won't load it. Maybe blogger is a vegetarian and doesn't like meat pictures. Too bad for them. Leaves more for us sane folks who eat meat.

After we picked up our cow, we obviously brought it home to load into our freezer. We decided it was a job well done and to have a beer. Only to have barely cold beer because apparently our fridge decided that morning to die. (Remember the part in my profile about being prepared for the everyday stuff happens?) So off we went to Home Depot to buy a new fridge. I couldn't be more pleased with it. The old behemoth was hauled off and the new one brought in. And it's beautiful.

Next on our agenda is getting our teeth repaired. We both need some dental work done and have decided to just bite the bullet and get it done this summer.

That's all for now. I am going to get todays dishes caught up and get ready to start some supper.

Food Storage I

A question has come up about storage. Specifically, buying food in bulk and how to store it.

There are actually several options available for storing bulk purchase foods. This particular question was about a grain so that is where I will start.

First of all, when you buy any grains (note: sugar is NOT a grain, do not freeze it), did you know that you should freeze them for a few days? If you haven't heard that before, well now you have. The purpose of this is to kill any bugs that might be in there. EEEWWWW! I hear you saying. But if you believe there are no bugs, parts of bugs or eggs (and worse) in the store bought stuff, you are sadly mistaken. If you ever wanted an ironclad reason to produce all your own food, go do a search on the allowable "extras" that are in your food products you purchase. So freeze your grains for a few days to eliminate those mealy moths or whatever buggies are lurking in there.

If you choose to, you can leave your grain in the freezer all the time. Just take out what you will use for the week and you are good to go. Store it in the freezer Ziploc bags if that is your choice. Or use any container that you like: empty, washed soda jugs, mason jars, just about anything will work.

If you are trying to eliminate the use of your freezer for items like grain, take it out after a few days. Let it come to room temperature and repack it. Again, there are many options for storage containers. Ultimately what you use will be preference and availability. If you are a single person or the only one in your family that will eat something, say rice, then it makes sense to store it in much smaller individual packaging in your cabinet. If the whole family likes it, say oatmeal, and you eat it regularly, then you want more of it available to you in your kitchen cabinet.

The first, optimal (but most expensive) option is to store all of your grains in mylar bags. These bags eliminate air, moisture and light from getting to your foods. These are the three items that will ruin your food. Once you seal the food up into the mylar bags with an oxygen absorber, then you would store them in a food safe plastic bucket with a gasketed lid to seal it completely.  This works very well for long term storage.

A second option is to skip the mylar bags and put your food into a food grade plastic bucket.
Side note - how do you know you are getting a food grade plastic bucket? Look on the bottom, there should be a wine glass and a fork. That is the universal symbol for food safe.

Putting your food into a plastic bucket with no mylar bags will still keep your food fresh for a while. Not long term, but possibly long enough to go through the whole bucket.

Another option is to use the zipper storage baggies. This will be a relatively short term way of storing things, but still an option.

If you are trying to eliminate plastic out of your home (and you should-look it up), then you can use glass. Mason canning jars come in a variety of sizes. They do not offset toxic gasses. They do not however block light, one of the three food damagers. Make sure you have a secure, solid, dark place to store them.

Now you have a few storage ideas for bulk food storage.

No Room at the Inn; Storage Space Part Two

When we left off last, we had covered a couple of ideas for adding storage to your home. Shall we look at more? There are many more, I assure you.

I think we should start with the kitchen. Tell me about your cabinets. Are they organized and alphabetized? All containers facing the exact same direction(out), like good little soldiers? No? Why not? Just kidding! Well, just a little. If you are one of those that comes home from the grocery store and just shoves what you bought in the cabinets, please rethink that. First of all, it is very hard to inventory when you don't have things together. Second, how do you ever find anything? You don't have to be as anal about it as I am, but do put some order to it. Rotation is key to food storage. ( I will cover this in another post right around the corner.) Also, look in that cabinet that you store all your gadgets. Do you use all of them? If not, donate them. Just keep the ones you actually use. If you really want to go hog wild with purging gadgets, consider the space the microwave takes up. I went a long time without one. Believe it or not, you can live without one. If you can live without a microwave, you can live without most kitchen gadgets. If you can't, no problem, I am not here to judge you! We have one on our counter now.

Look around your kitchen and see where you can add storage. Can you add a shelf anywhere just under the ceiling? Think those handy little containers again. Can you add a bookcase or any kind of cabinet with doors somewhere in a corner? Do you have that cabinet that has wasted space because the shelves inside are so far apart? Any big box store has these handy little wire shelved that stack together to create more space. They are relatively cheap as well.

Don't forget wall space. Years ago, I put rings on all my regularly used cooking utensils and hung them above the stove. All I had to do was grab them while I was cooking. Can you put up one of those magnetic strips to hang your knives? What about your pots and pans? Do you have nice ones, like cast iron? Instead of taking up cabinet space, show them off. Hang them from the ceiling if you are able or have a space you can, or hang them on the wall over the stove. Just make sure they are anchored well, you are not after ripping a hole in the wall if they fall. I have an enamel covered cast iron dutch oven that I love. I keep it out on the stove all the time. It adds a nice splash of color and shows it off at the same time. And if my husband misbehaves, I can simply grab it and smack him upside the head with it! I love double duty items, especially when they double as an attitude adjuster!

We also have a large spice rack that my grandpa made. We hung it on the wall above the window. Displays my spice rack, keeps the spices easy to grab and use and frees up that valuable real estate in those cabinets. Don't let those vertical spaces go to waste!

Do you have hard to reach cabinets or spaces in your cabinets? Who doesn't? I think that the folks that put cabinets in think that everyone is either 7 feet tall or 2 feet tall. Anyway, that space is a wonderful place to store those items that you want to keep for long term.

Now on to the living room. But my wife/husband would never let me store things in there! Oh, but you can. Be creative. Look around and see what you have in there. I am not suggesting that you just put in a bookcase and start filling it up for everyone to see and look at. But what about the end tables? What could you fit under them? Then all you have to do is cover them with a table cloth, of which you can find many styles to suit your living room colors. You can do the same with a coffee table. Replace the footstool with an ottoman. Is your couch and chairs flat against the floor? If not, next time you buy some canned goods, keep one of the boxes they stack them in and slide it right under there. Is your couch flush against the wall? Put some items back there. Is it out in the middle of the room as a divider? Buy or build a table to stand behind the couch. Put some pretties on top of it and either cover it or add cabinets and doors under to store more items. Also consider freeing up closet space by using your couch and chairs to store your extra blankets. Especially in the winter time, or in my case all year! Fold the blankets and put them on the back of the couch or chair. If you are not overly fussy about these things, let everyone pick their favorite and mark their spot. You do have favorite or usual places where you all sit, right?

Again, look at the walls. Do you have a corner you could build a set of shelves? You may need to take a chance and see what's behind a wall. We found a marvelous amount of space on one side of our fireplace. We took a chance and ripped part of the wall down to see what was behind it. Loads of room! We put in a bookcase. Of course with my love of books, we filled it up immediately...But doing that allowed us to free up another moveable bookcase for other uses. And by using as much scrap lumber and pieces from other projects as we could, we didn't really spend any money on it. What we did buy was red cedar to frame it with. It smells wonderful and looks good too.

Be critical. What can you get rid of? What do see when you look around your house? Where can you "add" more storage? It's there, all you have to do now is find it.