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.

almost empty

I vaguely recall that, several years ago, I posted about our prepper efforts.  "Preppers", those strange people that are at the ready for an apocalypse? 

Well, okay, we've not been quite that extreme, but we did live in Utah for about 4 years, and while I can't buy into the religion (after death, I become Mrs. God??), there are some appealing aspects to the Mormon Ways...

One of which is being prepared for emergencies, natural disasters and the like.  Where would you rather be?  Home with the family, comfortably living off your provisions or standing in a long FEMA line, hoping for a bottle of water?

Especially with three little kids, this was something into which we put some thought and effort.  For that particular blog post, I snapped a pic of our food storage.

Fast forward to today - the nest is pretty empty, Magnum and I are looking to downsize, it's no news that I've been tidying, discarding, organizing, and generally removing our lives from the lower level of our house.  I'm not going to search through the archives for that food storage pic, but I can show what the former stash room looks like today.  Voila'

Yeah, a whole lotta  not much.  Note that there were two more of the large utility shelves - one is sitting empty in the hallway, and the other, I disassembled and Chaco took it for his use last weekend.  

And really, the main reason that one on the end still has stuff in it is because the cat likes to go up there to hang out near the heater vent sometimes, and I was afraid that, if the shelves were empty, the whole cat 'n' caboodle would come crashing down when the cat did his graceful climb and totally threw off the center of gravity.  

It's  nice having the room so open and airy.  This was also the room where I'd strung my clothesline and dried the laundry - because we're frugal that way and live in a dry climate.  Now, I'm doing laundry for two and don't need that whole clothesline network.  I've got a nice dryer rack that Wolfgang left laying around gifted me when he moved last spring.  

This isn't to say we have no provisions, I've just made room for that stuff on the main level and transferred while the cat gave me dirty looks.   Thought I'd mention that in case some zombie apocalypse was out there waiting for me to jinx ourselves.

Anyone  need some utility shelves?  

home for the holidays

Some of the old long-time readers of this blog may recall past Christmases around here when we used to go on our yurt adventures over the winter break.  We'd go a-yurtin' for a couple of days up in the mountains.

It was always a good time, but one of the drawbacks was that we had to reserve the yurt plenty in advance, and the weather and roads getting to and from yurt country often presented mild peril.  As I recall, one of the roads along the journey is called "OH MY GOD! Road".

So we stopped going.

BUT, this year, we've got the next best thing!  We've decided to field test our Zombie Apocalypse tent.  (Thanks to setup team of Magnum and Meego)



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This is to be our accomodations for Christmas Eve.  I've decreed no prezzents for anyone who doesn't make it the full night.

... which means I'll probably have a lump of coal, if anything, to show this year.


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for the record

I went running this morning for the first time in a week.  The air quality last week was such that it was probably healthier to spend the day on the couch with a jumbo bag of pork rinds than to go outside and breathe heavily.

Source

The last press release has the Black Forest fire at 75% contained, which is a lovely number.  Some evacuees have been able to go back in, but others are still waiting.  Mr. Steve and family are doing well, all things considered.  They're being deluged with gift cards and the like and  looking for a rental home in our area.  Know anyone?




One thing that the evacuees have to deal with, those whose houses were spared, is some nasty clean up.  Think about it.  Those homes have been submerged in smoke for days with no power.  Care to open any of those fridges and freezers?  They're nasty.  NASTY nasty.  So nasty, there are special dumpster areas just for spoiled food.

As I was watching the news updates last week, an insurance rep gave some recommendations.  These included having a physical inventory of all the stuff we own.  She recommended taking photos or walking around our homes with a video camera to record it all.

A lot of people, myself included, tend to think, "Oh well, it's not the 'stuff' that's important", and we would probably remember most of the high dollar items.  But as I made a mental trip through my house, I realized that little things add up.

For instance, since I work out of the house, I've built a small library of books and other reference materials over time.  They don't have sentimental value, and I probably wouldn't remember each item.  But as a whole, it's significant and would be a task to replace.

I'm also reminded that we do a bit of "prepping", with a small zombie apocalypse stash going on.  Just how many buckets of grains and other provisions do we have now?  Heck if I know!

The rep said to make sure to hit every room, even closets.   And don't forget the garage and tool sheds.  Open drawers and cabinets.

"Good idea!", I thought, "I'm going to do that".  Sure beats writing everything down.  Then I looked around my house and thought, "No way I'm recording this mess..."

So I've been doing some *ahem* tidying of my own...  THEN it will be video time.

After you make YOUR video, if disaster was headed your way, what would you be grabbing on your way out the door?
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Silver Liningness Sunday

I should start by being thankful about that rib thing from about a month ago. Remember? You DO remember don't you? Anyway, it is much better, and I'd put it at a 95% at this point.

And, as already mentioned, kids are all back to school, and I think I've gotten all of the first-week-back chaos out of the way. Forms and agreements have been agreed upon, checks have been checked, school supplies have been supplied...

Chaco finished his final phase of Master Drive today. So now what?

Magnum and I watched a movie called The Last Station. It wasn't rivetting. I'm not falling over myself to recommend it. It was entertaining enough, though. I only mention it because James McAvoy is yet another cougar crush of mine and, in my opinion, can do no wrong.

OKAY... in closing, I just want to give a shout out to our storage efforts from the last few weeks. Magnum and I think everyone should have at least a 3-month food supply if not longer (I swear, sometimes I think I married my DAD!). I've been working on ours, and it's lacking in some areas, but here are a couple of photos of it's current state:















Anyway, I'm thankful for the preparedness blogs I found to help inspire and guide me. Not to mention, they're FREE!

We've got storage, yes we do. We've got storage, how 'bout you?
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