nini2033a

Watering with Sugar water helps against transplant shock (Or so I have heard) .

Be careful though, they grow like gangbusters.. (PNW here, with 12 acres of brambles). The berries grow on second year canes. They are near impossible to kill. Here, we need to go over them pulling them out 3 times with the tractor before we make headway to clear spots of them. They keep coming back!

They are a kind of bush apricot? I bought a couple and will be planting them as soon as their home is free. (We are doing construction and big trucks drive down near where they will be planted.) Are they anything like real apricots taste-wise?

Well one of the next steps we have taken towards being more self sufficiient has been to acquire rabbits. We only have 2 of them, one of each, they are Silver fox? Anyway, we thought we would try to keep them alive over the winter, and if successful we will try to breed them in the spring. We hope to raise them for meat. But I have never purposely killed anything except a vegetable plant or an insect, so I am not sure if we will be able to harvest them. My DH says it is all up to me since I am the one who wanted to try raising them.... gee thanks. But I will definitely try. If I can bumble my way thru this successfully, we will get another female or two and really try to go into meat production for family usage. I am trying not to get too attached. They are cute, but very skittish. I have not really tried to tame them yet because of the whole harvesting thing. I am afraid once I see the babies, it will be all over... I would like to eventually have chickens, but that will have to wait I think until we move to a place with more land and NO HOA. I hate having an HOA. You would think that with 3 acres, we would have a bit of room for a few ladies, but it is not allowed. I hope to move within the next year. It makes the whole adding to the orchard thing very difficult because I dont want to put in alot of trees just to move. We finally got our soapstone stove put in. It is really great and heats the house wonderfully. We are only using half the heat from last year. We still use some because we are not home alot and for example dont want to start a fire first thing in the morning when we are leaviong for the day in 2hours. So we will take off the morning chill with the regular furnace and then build a fire when we are home in the evenings until we go to bed. Well, it is almost the end of the year, hopefully the next year will bring more changes.

So, it has been way too long since I have posted anything. To be honest, I forgot all about the blog. Lets see, in the past year, I sent 2 kids away to college, my DH graduated college after going two classes at a time off and on for 20 years... Yea! Continuing to homeschool darling son.I lost my longtime friend/puppy Jillie, and recently found a new friend to join our lives and protect our home, Avery Calypso (black lab/border collie). I joined a prep group in the area and have met some local like minded souls. I have expanded my garden and bought a small greenhouse. Now if we could only get some +70* weather, maybe I will have more luck with the warm weather garden. Oh, and we bought a wood burning stove to heat our house this winter. Now as soon as our tax refund arrives, we will have it installed, (want someone else to cut the hole in the roof!) But we are also looking for a new house with land, having to move my elderly parents in with us. So if we find something soon, I will wait with the install for the new house, otherwise I will have to move the stove too.

So, it has been way too long since I have posted anything. To be honest, I forgot all about the blog. Lets see, in the past year, I sent 2 kids away to college, my DH graduated college after going two classes at a time off and on for 20 years... Yea! Continuing to homeschool darling son.I lost my longtime friend/puppy Jillie, and recently found a new friend to join our lives and protect our home, Avery Calypso (black lab/border collie). I joined a prep group in the area and have met some local like minded souls. I have expanded my garden and bought a small greenhouse. Now if we could only get some +70* weather, maybe I will have more luck with the warm weather garden. Oh, and we bought a wood burning stove to heat our house this winter. Now as soon as our tax refund arrives, we will have it installed, (want someone else to cut the hole in the roof!) But we are also looking for a new house with land, having to move my elderly parents in with us. So if we find something soon, I will wait with the install for the new house, otherwise I will have to move the stove too.

We are having turkey (no butter in baste) ham (I am allergic to turkey) Quinoa stuffing with chestnuts and mushrooms Yams topped with corn-free marshmallows cranberry/apricot sauce Pumpkin pie (for DH) cranberry pie(for DD#2) pecan pie (with rice syrup instead of corn syrup)(for DD#1) Spinach "cheese" casserole (with Daiya cheese- based on tapioca) and 2 types of bread, (1 will be GF) for appetizers, there will be dates stuffed with blanched almonds and then wrapped with a piece of Bacon, black olives, rice crackers with Hummus(for DS and Myself), regular wheat crackers with smoked oysters or Brie(for DH and DD#1), Oh and I make a "caramel" dip for applewedges by pureeing some dates, really good and much healthier than the real caramel apples. It is a bit confusing dealing with everyones allergies and my DH being diabetic, but we manage, and we celebrate Thanksgiving 3-4 times each fall because I believe we should be thankful everyday, not just on the third thursday in November. (Of course, we celebrate birthdays for a whole week with something small but special every day)

just finishing up 5 quarts of applepear sauce. Staring at a large bowl of plums and a large bowl of oranges and wondering what to do next... Oh, and somewhere in there, I need to peel and prepare 14 ears of corn for freezing. (only my DH can eat corn,,,)

I was talking with my mom about possibilities. She is Sinthroid dependant at the highest available dose currently and we were wondering what we could do/grow in case SHTF and she couldn't get her normal medicine? She is trying to get some stored up, but it would eventually run out... What other possibilities are there and is there any herb I could grow to help her?

We love cranberries in all forms. This thanksgiving, we had both a turkey and a ham (I am allergic to turkey). So I made cranberry apricot sauce. It turned out fabulous. I canned up the extra and have 9 beautifully sealed bright red jars of the stuff. I figure that is one for a month for most of the year. Yipee! I have also been making Pear sauce with a hint of apple. Every time I open ajar, A eats the whole thing. I can tell that next fall I will need to make alot more of this stuff. He could easily eat a jar a week, so I will need at least 52 jars next year. Gee, I wonder exactly how many pounds of pears and apples that would be....

Yesterday we went to the local LDS cannery. We had heard that you dont need to be LDS to purchase there.... I really hope that I won't now get inundated with missionaries because I am happy in my own religion. I do have to say though that there are some things that the Mormons do very well, preparing is one of them. After growing up in Utah and seeing how in times of need the church can mobilize their people and avert disasters, I am impressed. I just do not subscribe to the same religious beliefs. Anyway,so we picked up Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. Now I want to start putting away Sorghum, Milletand Quinoa, the GF grains that we use. They do not offermuch in the way of GF foods at the cannery. They did have Rice, (I already have some of that on our own) and oatmeal, but that often has cross contamination issues, so we use GF oatmeal which I will slowly gather. And of course, we are corn free, so we need to stay away from thier corn products. We did however pick up 1 (#10) can of Black beans, 1 can White beans, 2 cans apples, 2 cans carrots, and 2 cans potato flakes, 2 dry onions,and 1 salt. Their prices are much better than any I have found online. I am hoping to pick up more and to start using this stuff in my household cooking and storage as well. I am currently trying to find recipes and such to help me learn about cooking with my storage.

yesterday we stopped at a store for a few essentials. I just got back from a trip out of the country and my DH was living it up while we were gone, eating nothing but junk food. So we needed to get some real foods,,, when we left the store, I made one more stop at the local salvage store on the way home and happened to pick up a few tuna tins and a few spams. Anyway, at home, my DH said to me how we messsed up because the one thing we forgot to pick up was something for the storage. He was lecturing me that since we had decided to build up a storage, we needed to pick up something for it every time we went shopping. I had to chuckle and told him about the few tins I had stopped to pick up.

What is Security Landscaping? nini2033a

what about puting the reflective tape on the flat bottom of the tin instead of the moulded top pf the tin?