Life on a little urban homestead in the making, showing ideas for self-sufficiency, Permaculture, DIYing, organic gardening, food preservation, Chicken keeping, cookery, crafts, thrifting and more...
Well we got the big snow that was predicted! I was watching the weather really closely Friday because we knew it was coming, but wasn't sure exactly about the timing. I follow a local young meteorologist on Facebook (Treasure Valley Weather Headquarters Kody) who is much more on track than the TV weather guys and he really nailed it right down to the hour or so. No snow Friday night on the way home which was really nice, forecast from NWS-
We ran some errands Saturday morning (yesterday) and got home, the snow
started in the afternoon. It really picked up after about 4:00 p.m. and then we really got hammered. The high for the day was 17°!
I kept the heat lamp on in the coop overnight. I do turn it off during
the day even though it's hard wired in. I'm always a little paranoid
about a fire. Had about a good five or six inches on the ground when I
went to bed, woke up to about 4 or 5 more inches! The top photo of our herb boxes, the solar light are buried completely. There's a video of the snow on my Instagram account, just click on the link! Looks lovely but Dave
definitely had a lot to dig out. He shoveled the front sidewalk or
driveway and the neighbor sidewalk as well. Lows of 6 degrees tonight, 2 degrees tomorrow night! More snow later in the week.
Love our little tree!
He created a little walkway
for me to get to the coop and he cleared off the sunroom. This is the reason
why we always put this up!
Gives the chickens a lot more dry space when
the weather is bad. I've been going out every day and giving them some
greens and some wild bird food to give them something to peck at and
keep them busy. Deck-
Solar bulbs still showing last night
Queen's Cake Baking-
Since I had tomorrow off as a holiday I decided to do some baking this weekend. Since I was still recovering a bit for my surgery I didn't really do any traditional Christmas/holiday baking. I love the recipe for the Williamsburg Queens Cake. I've made it quite a few times before. It has lemon and orange extract with Currants. It takes about an hour and a half to bake but it's worth the wait! You want to let it cool completely before you slice into it and it's even better the next day. Keeps really well! Today or tomorrow I'll be making some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with bittersweet chocolate chips. I did make the cake yesterday with half whole wheat pastry flour to make it a little bit healthier and I'll do the same with the cookies. When it's 17 degrees out it's a good time to bake!
I don't know if it's been the weather, current world news, etc. but I just have had major blahs as far as blogging. I also came down with a non-C virus a week ago +, almost gone. Nothing like being sick in the summer, yuck. I browse around online and I think I've gotten to the point of not really being interested in blogs that show all these fun arts and crafts ideas, etc. On a certain level I think that there are just so many people who are still so asleep. While I appreciate the stress reduction aspect I'd rather spend money on food, fuel and OTC supplies to stash than craft items. But that's me. As I've said before- no downside to being prepared.
Anyway, on Memorial day it was 45 degrees! Yes 45 degrees. Heavy cold rains for 3 days, we were supposed to plant the veggie garden that weekend. This weekend it was pretty warm yesterday, so Dave turned the entire vegetable garden. Last fall I told Dave I wanted to expand the veggie garden so we can plant more intensively. I had the idea to cordon off a small portion of the veggie garden area and increase the length of the chicken run in the shade. We expanded the chicken run this spring which works great. I suggested that he create a gate out of the old coop wood door-
We had replaced it with a used glass storm door. He came up with the idea to also have it articulated, so that will fold up for the winter, will get some touch up paint-
Gate attached to coop, then chicken wire to the fence
Gate attached to coop
The hens can get in and out of the coop, then also have the long shade run. We can plant much more intensively now, no worries for the hens digging into the veggies. Once the fall garden is done the idea of the chickens will have full use of the whole area again. We have so many eggs now I have decided to start dehydrating some. I'm ordered some trays for my dehydrator with lips for wet items. More later on that. Will be nice to have more room in the fridge! We woke up to heavy rains again today, Sunday. Dave decided to just go ahead and plant since his work week is crazy. He does the heavy digging as it's a lot easier on my arthritic knees and back. I will plant my smaller flowers and herbs, etc. He was out with wet clay soil today. He planted the 6 tomatoes, 3 peppers, a Bird's Nest pine and a yellow squash. Will plant the strawberries and others in the next week or so. Needs to dry out a bit -
I wouldn't mind a cool summer, this this is crazy! We're supposed to get almost-record rain today that we would usually get in the entire month of June! What can you do? We'll get some more veggies planted in the next few weeks, will be a late growing season, fingers crossed. Fruit trees are LOADED too, great news!!!
I thought I'd share some info on vloggers I have followed for quite some time, and have found to have very useful info. Many of them were way ahead of the curve news-wise. I was watching a really great YouTube video last night. This is the channel I don't usually watch, but I heard something about a message from a farmer it peaked my interest. This video really nails it in my opinion, and that's only my opinion, watch through the end-
Points- Some people seem to think that if there is not a shortage in a grocery store now that that will continue. Farmers & ranchers plan out a year + in advance. The farmer that was quoted mentioned when you grow a calf to an adult for beef it takes about 18 months. So if you like beef you may be able to find in the store now, that's last year's production. Many didn't breed for this year, too expensive with feed prices. Many are cutting their herd size. I have heard this from many other sources as well. Buy now if you can. I also like these guys, pretty a-political and informative- Canadian PrepperAlaska PrepperCity Prepping and my fave female blogger Appalachia's Homestead with Patara, she is pretty blunt, so skip if you don't like that! I LOVE her! Great vlogger for food preps, a food scientist Rose Red Homestead. For a really FASCINATING vlog with old world preserving and more watch Country Life Vlog, located in Azerbaijan I love this new post! Very relaxing!!! Really a gorgeous property-
Our first big winter storm is arriving! Woke up to about 1/2" of snow and 21 degrees this morning. We're talking lots of feet of snow in the mountains in the next week. This is our first really big snow storm to hit. I've seen there's more weather problems up in Canada and Washington, sad. We usually get snow November/December, but it varies every year. So far nothing big down here in the valley, but look at the forecast!
Birthday Ikea Trip/ Holiday Decor Downsizing-
It's that time of year! I started putting up our winter decor about a week ago since I like to take a break after Thanksgiving. I also had my birthday! I won't say which one, but a BIG one. I like doing something fun since I never had a birthday parties as a kid. I always got combination birthday and Christmas gifts, what a bummer. Dave and I did a one-day birthday drive to Salt Lake City Ikea so I could buy some holiday goodies for my birthday present. I did about 95% of the driving, perfect weather. I know it may seem crazy but I've wanted to buy some of their winter decor, and you can't buy it online. We never go to the Portland Ikea for family visits in winter. So we went! We never got a vacation this year or last year, so we didn't feel guilty. Just gas, a couple meals, and shopping. They were out of a few things but I got most of the fun holiday items-
Finally a Dala horse! And a Tomten with deer (ceramic)
Fox and tree candle holder, ceramic too
I really wanted their 3-piece glass mushroom set, but were out. I found one on eBay for a bit more, I was thrilled! Three sizes, heavy glass with heavy clips-
Red and white mushrooms were said to be the basis for Santa's hat!
I added to my display, I love the nature look with the greenery-
Bigger shot here-
Also from eBay, an Ikea LED mini candelabra, battery operated, $10.00-
I stocked up on their amazing whole grain/Rye crackers, cookies and a little Swedish cheese. Got a mistletoe table runner, some mini star lights and some stocking stuffers. I really love Scandinavian folk art and natural types of holiday decorations. So there's a sneak peek of what we have out. Our Christmas decor will be coming out this weekend!
Dining room farm window
Kitchen window, thrifted new prim snowman
Dining room
Living room
Entryway Gingerbread theme
Living room window
I moved my Jul decor to the living room this year!
Holiday Decor Downsizing:
Phase two was letting go of some winter decor. I decided I wanted to get rid of at least one or two chunks. I always start off with putting winter decor out first. Then I add Christmas things a week or two later. First thing I did with the winter stuff was spread it out and open the totes which created quite the mess! Then I started going through things that I really love versus things that I was ready to let go of. Since a lot of my holiday decor was thrifted there wasn't a huge amount of financial investment. I looked at what do I really love, how much storage do we have, etc. I wound up emptying out one complete tote and donating all of it. Next phase will be going through all the Christmas stuff. The biggest part of that is our artificial tree, wrapping paper, ditto. The rest is tree decorations and tabletop things. Over time I'm liking something less cluttered looking, although my style might be more cluttered than other people's. That's okay. I think decorating for winter is my favorite thing because I've always loved snow! Probably from growing up in Southern California where I didn't really see any except way up in the Sierra mountains.
Preparedness & RX Shortages-
What's new here for preparedness. I have noticed some distinct shortages in the grocery stores and escalating prices. I saw some bell peppers for a $1.75 each, instant noodles ramen type of foods completely off of all the shelves. This was in a Walmart Market. I see our gas prices here are going down a bit which is good. I was happy to see the Walmart Market did have some canned Keystone meat on hand. I picked up a couple cans of chicken. Keystone meat comes really really highly recommended, it's affordable only meet in a lightly salted Brian no other flavors and big chunks. Still getting a few eggs here and they're usually about one a day, glad I had some frozen! When we were getting four per day in the summer I decided to start freezing them. I did also buy some sprouting seeds in case the quality and price of greens gets really exorbitant. I have noticed some quality issues with some things like romaine and spinach . Not sure if it's from the trucking shortage? I also found a nice deal on a bread proofing basket (Ikea) with a cloth cover-
I also bought an Ikea knife sharpener, has a well for water to wet the sharpening stones-
As for RX shortages- I'm hearing this from some of my medical employers insurance members, more RX's are getting more backordered. This is a sobering list from Drugs.com Drug Shortages, what's scary is it's so long, and growing. Wondering how are you doing in your neck of the woods as far as availability of foods and products, prices?
Record-Breaking Storm/ Last Preparedness Post 14.0- ***UPDATED***
If you've been watching the national news there was an "atmospheric river", a Cyclone-type rain storm that hit the West coast and the Pacific NW. We definitely got hit with lots of rain and some gusting winds. We had almost 3" of rain in three days!!! While that's not record-setting that is a lot of rain in October! We haven't had any real damaging winds in Boise luckily. Supposedly there were much higher winds up in the mountains. Just glad we finally got some rain, as it was so dry! We have cooler temps coming next week, time to get out the comforter and add the sunroom to the coop. The sad part of the storm was it hit some areas with high winds, mudslides, power outages and road closures in parts of California. Info here Record Rain Storm California Excerpt- A rainfall record was shattered in Sacramento-Northeast of San Francisco, 5.44 inches (13.82 centimeters) fell on downtown Sacramento, shattering the one-day record for rainfall that had stood since 1880. Lake Oroville, a major Northern California reservoir, saw its water levels rise 20 feet (6.10 meters) over the past week, according to the state's Department of Water Resource.
We got lots of notice ahead of time which was good-
Good news for the fires and drought! More goods news here-
Yosemite falls come back to life
Autumn here-
Time to stash the table/chairs, empty the pond!
Some blue skies today
Fall colors
Last Preparedness 14.0-
I decided this will be the last specific prep post for a variety of reasons. You're either getting prepped or not. There's plenty in my previous posts for those who are interested! I went to our local Natural Grocers store a few days ago and their section for oats was completely empty. An herbal supplement I've taken for a long time was out, they said they were having supply chain issues, not a surprise. I stocked up on a few more bags of wheat berries, Natural Grocers had 2 lbs for a $1.50. Our Winco grocery store has been looking pretty good, as far as being stocked, but I have noticed some of their produce is looking pretty sad. Meat prices, especially beef, continue to go up. Two of our largest local school districts are running out of foods for school lunches. Supply chain issues. Supply Chain Disruptions School Lunches While some can start packing homemade lunches many high-poverty families can't. I saw this first hand working in my school as a librarian. Doesn't matter why but kids need to eat to function and stay healthy. I've been stashing extra veggies with some leftover freezer baskets-
I was watching a video blogger and she was talking about doing self rationingmoving forward. That idea, if things start getting pretty tight, might be VERY useful. People survived the Depression doing that.
*** UPDATE*** Here's the video I was speaking about, I really like her approach (on this blog I do, however, stay of politics)
If you can't see videos on your phone choose "web version" at the bottom
Another good vlog of her's is called Make Them Feel Pain NOW, about cutting back and getting used to it!
I also think it is really aboutRESILIENCY. We might have to change how we shop, how we eat, how we garden and preserve foods. How could we barter moving forward? What do we spend $$$ on? Do we really need the newest technology, streaming services, etc? Do we really need to spend, spend, spend like we used to? I just shake my head when people buy certain things. People are worried about buying plastic toys for their kids and not buying food or fuel. With everything on the news about this perfect storm people still bury their head in the sand. There are also so many people that can't cook anything from scratch, at all. If I gave somebody a bag of flour, baking soda, baking power, etc. they would probably look at me and say "what am I supposed to do with this?" I used to make homemade mac and cheese for our kids, on a work night, and it didn't take that long! Cook the pasta, make a simple cheese sauce, toss toss toss and it's what's for dinner. No preservatives, no fake food coloring, just plain food. I'm hopeful that some folks can make the tough transition I think is coming with some flexibility. I hope so. For now winter is coming, time to get your house in order...
Canning Tomatoes Vs Dehydrating-
We harvested all of the tomatoes recently so I finally had enough to can some! Pretty easy to do, add a some lemon juice to water and off they went. Because some of them are really dead ripe I didn't really push them down hard enough. There were a few floaters, but that's okay. I have some more, will wait another week and let those ripen a little bit. I mixed the really ripe ones with the slightly less ripe ones to balance out the flavor. After thinking about it I decided to dehydrate the rest, it's faster and take less space to store. They'll look like this-
This jar is full now, 1/2 gallon
We have made some nice pizzas too! I buy dough from a local pizza place, add tomatoes, herbs, etc, yummy!
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