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Wednesday, November 6, 2019

kicking the bucket(s) for chickens

We've ramped up our minimalist efforts as we've gotten more serious on the "we're moving" plan.  I thought I'd done a pretty good job of Marie Kondo-ing our place, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.  Sh*t's gotten real, and I see we have more to do.

I may have mentioned that when the kids were little, we were sort of preppers.  True preppers keep enough provisions on hand for a year, but we were never true preppers - mainly out of laziness.  But we still had quite a stash of food and water and such.  We've pared that down greatly over the last several months - ate or donated everything, and then I sold all our storage shelves.

I had thrown myself into denial forgotten about the buckets o' prepper food in our crawl space along with about 120 gallons of water stash.  But I went into the crawl space last week and found they hadn't gone away on their own.

First on my list was to use up all that water.  I'll just say that even just two people can go through about 120 gallons of water pretty quickly if they use it to flush their toilets.  Done!

We'll keep two 7-gal jugs, and I sold all the rest.

But the food.  Who would possibly want several buckets of unground wheat and corn?  Furthermore, why did Magnum buy all this unground wheat and corn??  Honestly, when it would appear on our doorstep, the kids and I just said, "welp, that's his thing", we had bigger fish to fry.  But I had no intention of grinding wheat berries into flour to bake bread or anything else.




















We also have a good stash of rice and beans, but that I can actually use.  Not in the abundance we have, but the Rescue Mission will happily take the extra.

So I put the wheat berries buckets on facebook marketplace, not expecting much.  Then I met Chicken Lady.

Naturally, that's not her real name, but I will always think of her in that sense.  She was so happy to haul our buckets of wheat away for her chickens at my clearance sale price.  We mentioned the corn to her, but she sadly didn't have a way to mill the corn.

Duh, I actually had a grain mill for sale too (purchased by Magnum for the wheat I wasn't going to grind), but forgot.  Chicken lady saw the grain mill the next day and texted that she wanted it, adding "still got that corn?!"

So I'm happy, Chicken Lady's happy, and I'm thinking the chickens are happy too.


9 comments:

Margaret (Peggy or Peg too) said...

I envy all you've done. I feel like it's a never-ending mission at my home. The house has gotten better but we still have a lot to purge. The garage frightens me. My husband has a complete Home Depot in our garage. You need it? He probably has it. I don't even like to enter our garage. He has to do that himself. I tried to help once and I thought I'd kill him. No don't throw that away, Oh no, I need that. After a few hours of this, I realized we were just moving things around and nothing was being purged! I left him to do his thing and nothing was accomplished. Wanna come help? I'll feed you :-)

Chatty Crone said...

You sure had a lot of items stored - wow - impressive - and I am impressed that you knew how to get rid of it! sandie

Abby said...

Peggy, I can imagine your Home Depot garage! Magnum was the same way for a long time - he'd "go through" stuff only to end up just rearranging. I've slowly got him into the get-rid-of-it fold. There might be hope for you!

Sandie, looking back, we did have quite a bit stored. Where's a good apocalypse when you need one?!

Morgan Cartwright said...

I'm glad the chicken lady found you and you were able to get rid of the things!

Annsterw said...

Oh wow! Why did you decide you no longer need to "prep"? I am just curious...it was always too much work for me ...I have three gallon bottles of water and that is it! I am surely one of the first to go if there is a disaster. :-(

Abby said...

Morgan, thanks, it was a perfect match :)

Annster, we prepped for 5 people, which included three dependent little kids. But the kids all responsible :P adults now and living on their own except for Meego the college boy. SO, we still prep a little, but on a much smaller scale. Those water jugs have come in handy a few times!

Larz said...

My family stashed stuff for Y2K. Very similar stuff. I remember the grain and the mill. And bottles of water. Fun times.

Abby said...

Larz, and then Y2K - nothing happened! I do remember being very unprepared. We were in the middle of a move then, too. No food, no water, pregnant... Fun times.

Anita said...

Omg, I just had a vision of you with a bonnet on your head and a long pioneer dress.