My viewpoint on herbicides, pesticides, and what you can do. Please think about this one.

Today while reading yet another news story about the affects of pesticides and herbicides on our envoirnment and us, I started thinking about why such things are produced. As much as I want to follow the crowd and point my finger at the chemical companies and large scale farmers who use these products, I can't without thinking WHY these chemicals exist and are used. Yes I know, chemicals are evil, and yes I know, there are alternative ways to farming, but for now, I am going to look at the big picture.

As I have written in many previous posts, there was a time when EVERYONE produced some, if not all, of their own food. This could have been on a farm, on the prarie, or the man in the mountains eating elk and wild berries. Everyone was responsible for themselves. But as the population grew, towns grew into cities, and people moved away to have "jobs", they needed to buy their food rather than produce it. Imagine in todays standards, comparing the need for food outsourcing in 1810 as compared to today in 2010.

I did a little research, actually very little, to find the population of the US in 1810 compared to today.The figures I used were from the first website that popped up showing all 3 dates that I wanted, so they may be rough estimates and not totally correct, but no matter what, the numbers are still staggering in comparison. The US population in 1810 was 7,240,000. In 1910, it was 92,228,000, and now in 2010, it is a whopping 299,867,000 people.

I couldn't find any figures as to percentage of people growing their own food in 1810 as compared today, but I'll assume the ratio then was a LOT higher than it is today. If I was to even figure that 10% of our population now grows their own food, the number is still higher than the total population in 1810. Even as I sit here and type this, these figures still amaze me.

So what do all these figures have to do with chemicals like herbicides and pesticides? You have to figure how much food has to be produced to feed this gigantic number of people today, and factor in how many actual farms are left in the US. These farmers have to produce X amount of food to send out due to demand, but they also have to produce that same amount to even turn a profit. With the use of thse chemicals, their work load is reduced, cutting them down on labor costs and overhead. Imagine, really sit and think, about how much food it takes to feed nearly 300 MILLION people in comparison to the 7 million people 200 years ago. That's a LOT of food.
Don't think I am sitting here agreeing with the use of such chemicals with no thoughts of long term affects on our enviornment or ourselves. I care just as much as anyone else who is reading this. I will never agree with spraying fields with pesticides, or growing corn that is genetically modified to contain its own herbicide within itself. I disagree with ALL of these practices. But....I do understand WHY those things are used. We simply could not afford to produce food for 300 million people using all natural and organic methods, making them affordable, reliable, and capable of turning a profit for the farmer.
Now...with all this being said, it's time to take a stand. I don't mean send letters to the chemical companies, or refuse to buy a certain brand of canned corn, I mean produce your own. At this point in time folks, growing your own food is a revolution. With just one small tomato plant you stick in the ground yourself, you're not buying this one thing from the store, and you're raising that middle finger to the chemical companies. With a garden, you're doing even more, you're starting a battle with them. You're raising BOTH fingers, and telling them that you don't need them. With everything you produce for yourself, you're less reliant on the machine, eating one less chemical laden food, and telling the big guys you don't need them.
I'm not going to write on and on this time, I've done that enough in the past with previous posts. I just want each of you to think about a few things. If everyone with the means to do so grew just SOME of their own food, how would this hurt these companies? If 10% of us grew a garden, thats 10% of everyone with some kind of property, how would THAT affect them? It's time to take back our food folks. Time to take it back to ourselves. Time to make it safe. Time to put it back in our own hands instead of the chemical companies and commercial farms. Think about it.

And just to refer you all to the article I was referring to, go read this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/03/02/common-weedkiller-chemically-castrates-frogs-turns-males-into-females/ It's some REALLY scary stuff to know that a hericide we are all ingesting has altered the sex in frogs. Just one more reason to think........

Today I stopped to visit my folks for a bit, and mom surprised me with copies of pictures. They were pictures of my grandma's old house, which my grandfather built in the early 30's, and after he passed away, grandma raised 3 kids in by herself. I have a lot of fond memories of this place. The hand pump in the kitchen, evenings of watching late night tv with grandma and having massinve amounts of hot chocolate covered in marshmallow whip, and many Christmas's.

The place was wide open, with just a half wall seperating the kitchen from the living room. The room on the side was a bedroom that my dad, uncle, and aunt all shared while grandma slept on a rollaway bed she kept behind the couch. That bedroom (that sits lower than the main house) was origionally a chicken coop. The house was heated with a woodburner, though later it was converted to a radiant oil burner.

When my uncle built her the new house that I posted pictures of 2 weeks ago, she stayed next door at my aunts. She watched the dozer push over that house and cried all day. She started her life with my grandfather there. He built the house with his own two hands. She raised 3 kids there by herself. That tiny house was her life. My uncle just wanted better for her and had the means to do so, but my dad has never forgiven him for tearing it down and making his mother cry. She didn't like the new bigger house at first, but after getting used to quilting by a woodburner in a sewing room the size of the old house, she got used to it and got more comfortable.

While I could live with ease in something like this by myself, I cannot imagine raising 3 children in it. While I like to shun modern conviences and gadgets, I think of this house and can only imagine how hard it was. All of us have memories of that tiny house, and now I have pictures to look at and bring back more.

Sorry about the picture quality. My scanner is down, so these are pictures of a picture.

This view is of the right (east) side of the house. That door was rarely used, and was boarded and sided over not far after these were taken. It's hard to tell on these pictures, but the house was not on the ground. It was on wooden stilts and cement blocks.

This is the back of the house. That room to the left is the bedroom made from a chicken coop. The place never had shingles, only tarpaper. That door opened into the kitchen, and the living room started roughly 8 feet to the left. The sink with hand water pump was right under that back window.

This is the other side by the driveway. Note the size of the car in comparison to the house. Yea, it was tiny. That mirror on the right of the picture was on an old GMC stakebody truck that belonged to my uncle. The back was enclosed with wood, and it was always our "fort" when we played at grandma's. That driveway was lined with tiny rubber cutouts about the size of a penny from molds where grandma worked her second job. (she was a school custodain in the day and worked in a rubber shop in the evenings) She brought them home in buckets and poured them onto the drive since she could never afford gravel. I wish I still had one as a momento, but I don't.

Food storage shopping (yes it's that again)

There is really nothing exciting going on here at all. We've been dealing with the snow, then yesterday it decided to warm up and rain, THEN today it gets cold again...oh joy, ice. Even though a lot has melted, there is still around 10" or more. I'm really getting the itch to start garden plans, but looking out the window at snow reminds me that we have plenty of time until we can plant. I love winter, but hate this part when I just want it to go away so I can get outside.

I've been getting a fair amount of side work and odd jobs, so we've done a fair amount of shopping to restock the pantries and freezer while we can. We've gotten so much in fact, that this weekend I'll be cleaning out a closet in one of the spare bedrooms and converting it to pantry #4. I'll need to build some good strong shelves as we've decided to start buying more canned goods than we origionally considered. In the odd chance we have a bad crop of green beans or tomato's, we'll still have some on hand. I know we generally do really well with the garden, but there is always that chance. And besided, canned goods can last 5-10 years. We'll have plenty on hand for that "just in case", and we'll have plenty so the kids can come here to shop as they do quite often, and not cut us short at all.

We stock all the store bought items by ONLY shopping sales. We get the ads in the mail, go through them, and make a list of who has what we want, and how much we will be saving over regular prices. We watch for general sale prices, and always watch the buy one/get one sales. Some of these aren't that great, but some are. For instance, Saturday we bought buy1/get1's on kielbasa, smoked sausage,and roasts. The savings were pretty substantial, so we got 2 each of the kielbasa and sausage (getting 2 each free) and one roast (getting 1 free). We found boxed cereal at 5/$10, (regular 2.89 each) so we saved $4.45, plus the ad was buy 10 and get 3 free gallons of milk. We gave the kids 5 boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk, put the rest of the cereal away, and put the other 2 gallons of milk in the freezer. With milk going for 2.29, we saved $6.87 on it, plus the $4.45, making a total savings of $11.32. The second store had an unadvertised "one day sale" on peanut butter, normally 2.89 each, for 1.88. We bought the limit of 6, even though we had just purchased peanut butter at the first store for a sale price of 5/$10. (you can never have too much peanut butter lol) Between both stores, we saved a total of around $90.

Nothing we bought was anything we were out of or needed right away, but we took advantage of sales and got it anyway. Buy buying at sale prices and stocking up, we're saving even more in the long run. The regular price could rise, as would the sale price,and we'd have to burn gas to get to the store to get whatever we were out of. If I don't get back to work full time anytime soon, we'll already have food like we did before, which saved us a LOT of money over the past year. We have no intentions on slowing down on food storage, even if I was to go back to work full time tomorrow. It didn't take long to realize how much money we had saved, and how much having food on hand saved us from going hungry, or having to choose between the electric bill and groceries. Nope, we won't slow down at all. In fact, when I do get back to work, (which may be the end of this month or early march), we'll step up the storage. This economy is unstable, and so is the availibility of construction work. If something would happen and I would end up layed off again, even in a year, I don't want to have to worry about food at all.

We've started do store other things here as well, mainly pertaining to the bathroom and medicine cabinet. Storing these things makes as much sense to us as storing food; it's better to have it than not. We started with the usual things-TP, soap, toothpaste, razor blades, shaving soap, shampoo, etc. Now we're taking it into medicines and first aid. When we realized a month ago that we were out of ANY kind of aspirin/excedrine and Lisa had a headache, we started getting things a little at a time. Now we have everything for headaches to sunburn, from an upset stomach to poison ivy. Once again, I'd rather have it here, and don't want to make that unnecessary trip to the drug store for drawing salve or pepto. When I get a full list completed and stocked, I'll post it here.

I know I have posted a lot lately on preparadness, and I know that some of my regular readers don't do it themselves, or understand why. But, this is something that we are growing in as much as our homesteading or living simple. It's just another aspect of our lives that I choose to share with everyone. We aren't just about growing vegetables, or raising chickens, or making our own household cleaners and soaps, any more that we're just about being prepared. We live different than many people do, some say simple, and some say complicated. There are many sides to us, all of which we are very passionate about, and I share all of those sides with all of you. I just write these entries with whatever happens to be in my head that day....and today it was again about preparadness and food storage. Tomorrow could be chickens, lol. I never know where my head will be.

My sick uncle, and an ode to Grandma's "stuff"

On Friday evening, I got a strange call from my uncle. He asked me if I would take care of his dog (Duke) if he had to go into the hospital. It was a very odd and shocking question, so of course I had to ask why. It turns out that he had shoveled his driveway, then a path 100 yards to the woodpile, and was on his second wheelbarrow load of firewood when he got a tight chest, hot, and a bit dizzy. (keep in mind he's 74) I told him to call my mom since she's 5 minutes away and go to the ER, but of course he said no since he was feeling better. We talked for a few minutes, but after I got off the phone and talked to Lisa, I decided to pack an overnight bag and head over there to be with him in case something happened or it was worse than he made it sound.
He seemed ok that night other than a mild headace, so I slept on the couch. He told me in the morning he was fine, and after an hour or so of talking I headed home. On the way I called my mom to ask her to go see him, which she did. When she got there, he said he was having pains in his arm and leg, so mom took him straight to the hospital. They admitted him, and he is staying there tilll at least Tuesday morning so they can watch him and run tests. I'm staying there with Duke and watching the house while he's gone, but came home for our usual Sunday dinner with friends, and to gather work clothes and lunch food for tomorrow. Some Valentines weekend, huh? *sigh*
While at the house early yesterday, Lisa and I decided the place needed cleaning and started at it. It wasn't messy by any means, it just needed dusted and swept. While I was helping, I kept noticing things around the house. This little knick-knack on the mantle, that ceramic something-or-another on the buffet, little things all over. Everything I saw reminded me of Grandma, and made me miss her more than I usually do. Afterall, I was in HER house, still full of her stuff even though she has been gone for almost 14 years. My uncle still hasn't changed a thing, other than putting away all of her sewing stuff. Every little nook and cranny in the house had something of grandma's, whether it was some sort of decorative item, or something she made, or her cookware and more plates and bowls than anyone would need to feed a family of 40. Even her bedroom remains unchanged, other than her clothes are now gone. Walking around and seeing all of her stuff made me happy and sad at the same time. I'm happy to see things that remind me of her, but I'm sad to remember that she's gone. But...with all of her stuff still around, and all of the memories in my head, she'll never be gone.
I stood at the back door this morning with a cup of coffee, staring out over the 8 acres behind the house and trying to picture it in my head how my dad and uncle said it was when they were kids. I tried to picture the chicken coop, the pigpen, the dairy cow, and the fruits and gardens grandma had all over. At the same time, I pictured how I would return it to the way it was when the time comes that I inherit the place, and wonder if grandma would be proud. I can only hope that she would be. I watched some birds eat from one of the feeders, and saw 5 deer walk through the very back of the property near the creek. I smiled the whole time, remembering grandma, enjoying the view, and thinking how someday I will make this yet again a working homestead as it was when my grandparents moved there in 1930.
I love you grandma. I miss you. And I will take very good care of your property, and your stuff.

Saturday morning we woke up to our share of the winter storm we had been warned about. Sure, it's a bit of a pain, but look how beautiful it is!
I had to shovel a path from the stairs to the gate to even get it open,then from the gate to the car, and to the garage and chicken coop. Behind that blue tarp is the front of the chicken's run. and from there down the whole 45 feet to the coop,it had drifted to well over 2 feet deep. I got the hens fed and watered, gathered eggs, then started digging out the car. In some areas in the drive, it was between 1 and 2 feet deep, but at the top,thanks to snowplows, it was over 3 feet. I shoveled most of it,and a good spot to turn around, but left the areas that weren't as bad. That little Pontiac is awd and goes through the snow like a champ.
We took off about an hour after I was done, to visit Lisa's mother and do some shopping. The roads were still a bit snow covered and slow rolling, but we made it just fine. She asked us to stop and get her some nutrition drinks on the way, and while we were there, I stocked up on 2 packs of safety razor blades, 88 cent sale dish liquid, 3/$4 pain relivers & aspirin. We went to her moms place for a few hours, had a great visit, and headed out for more shopping.
One large grocery chain had a lot of 10/$10, 5/$5, and buy1/get1 sales on things we normaly eat and store, so we filled the cart with those and headed to the next one. There we picked up more good sale items to use and store, but were dissapointed that they quit carrying washing soda. They had everything else we use to make our laundry detergent, but not the soda. We got the Fels Naptha,Borax,and Castile soap, but now we have to find someone else who carries the soda. When we find it,we'll just get4-6 and not have to worry about it for about a year.
After we left there, we had to stop at the drug store for Lisa's prescription,and pick up a few small sale items we needed there too. While Lisa looked through the sale makeup, I went to the area that has bandages and first aid to price check a few things we were low on. I noticed a lot of clearance signs, and picked up a bunch of bandages,iodine, lighted pointed tweezers,and small 81 piece first aid kits at 75% off! The tweezers rang up at $1.25, the kits at $1.50, and the bandages at $1.00. I restocked and added to our first aid supplies for under $10 total. They also had batteries 40% off, so I got two 8 packs each AA and AAA. First aid and batteries are some of the things I *really* hate being low on, so I was happy to spend a few extra dollars at sale and clearance prices to restock my cabinets. We had one last trip to the pet store for dog food, where we decided that when I get paid for some side work this week, we'll buy 2 more, and keep a constant rotation of 3 going at all times. One open in the bin, and 2 behind it in full bags. With money being so tight the past year, some weeks buying dog food was hard at $30 a bag. Now that I have a little extra cash coming in, we'll set up the 3 bag rotation so if things get tight again, we'll at least have the other 2 to fall back on. We store and rotate everything for us, so why not dog food. It makes perfect sense. We got the food, came home, put it all away,and relaxed for the rest of the evening. We got to see Lisa's mom, and restock a lot of things we needed and/or were low on,so it was a good day. I checked back today to see if there were any more of those first aid kits,but they only had one...ahh well. I picked it up and will give it to the kids since I doubt they have anything at all at home.

We've been talking a lot about the diet change, and both of us are on board and doing fine with it. We talked about saving to join a local gym, and someone at Lisa's work offered her a treadmill for free. We picked it up Friday after she got off work, and I wanted to stop at goodwill just to look around. In the back sporting goods area, there was a $10 exercise bike,(cheap because it was missing a bolt in the seat), and a $15 rowing machine. Lisa had enough of their little stamps to give us a 30% discount, so we ended up getting both for $17.50. We flew home, unloaded the treadmill,and went back for the other 2. We ended up rearranging the living room to set it all up in since the basement ceiling is too low for me to use the tradmill. The ceiling is only 6'9. I'm 6'3 and the treadmill adds another 3". That only left me with 3" of headspace, so anything over a walk would be out of the question. It all fit just fine in one end of the living room, and we've been using all 3 this weekend. I'll keep watching goodwill for weights since I see them there once in a while,and we will be all set on our own home gym. We can both now exercise together in the comfort of our own house, save the money required for a 2 year membership, and be able to use it anytime we want. I'm gonna like this. Diet change and exercise together all the way. Lisa is already feeling great, and as of last Thursday hit the mark of losing 50 lbs!!!! She's done such an amazing job that she has inspired me to do the same. I'm not really overweight, but I am out of shape a bit thanks to being off work so long. So with changing our diets and exercising together, it will be another fun journey here at the W house....amd we do love our journey's.

Shopping and inventory

On Saturday, we spent the day together going to a few new stores too look around and eventually hit the local Sams Club since I got paid for some side work. We visited a natural foods co-op, where I found stevia and got a small box of 50 packets. I've been using it since in my iced tea and am getting very used to the taste. At first, I noticed a bit of an aftertaste, but now after a few days, I don't notice it at all. It takes a LOT less stevia to get the same sweetness that you do from sugar. Articles I have read state that stevia is between 10-20x as sweet as sugar in it's refined and powdered form. It can be used just like sugar or any artificial sweetener, and is calorie free, and perfectly safe versus the manmade artificials. We plan to switch to it and honey as much as possible, which will mean finding it in reasonably priced bulk bags rather than tiny packets.

The trip to Sams almost completely restocked the bulk items in the pantry. We got 50lbs of flour, bread flour, sugar, and 25lbs of brown sugar. We were hoping to find whole wheat flour and brown rice, but they don't carry either. We'll just find another source. Other than a case of TP, everything else was just plain groceries. Later this week when I get some more cash, we'll hit the local grocery stores for the items we have circled in the ad flyers. There are quite a few buy1/get one, 10/$10 and 5/$5 sales that we will take advantage of and continue to restock the pantries. We also need to restock the shelves of cleaning supplies, and supplies to make our laundry detergent. I plan on getting (minimum) 2 each of Fels Naptha, Zoat, washing soda, and Borax, which are the four ingredients for the laundry detergent.

Beyond food and cleaning supplies, we got a good look at the medicine cabinet and bathroom cupboard on Sunday. There are things that we are low on or out of that we shouldn't be. Some things should ALWAYS be here, but somehow right now they just aren't.The kitchen items will be mainly spices and additives, though some will be things that we can't or don't grow for ourselves. Lisa had our usual Sunday dinner guests stop and get her Advil because we were out, and that made us go take a long overdue inventory. We'll be getting a minimum of 2 each of pain relievers, cough medicine, antihystamines, decongestants,feminine products, shampoo, and first aid type of supplies like peroxide, iodine, and more bandages. I hate the fact that we are low or out of these things, and despise the thought that if our friends weren't coming over, I would have driven to the store just to get one item. That's one of our main motivations for storing/prepping. It's not so much for emergencies and such as it is convienence. I'd rather have everything we need here at home than have to worry about going to the store for something as simple as Advil. This Saturday we will be taking an inventory of everything in the house, comparing it to the inventory sheets we have neglected, and make out a shopping list.

In keeping with our wanting to preserve food, and our desire to now eat healthier, we have decided to save for a semi-expensive purchase. We've talked long and hard about it, and after some reading, watching videos, and listening to a TSP podcase, we are going to buy an Excalibur dehydrator. We already have 2 of the smaller ones, one with a fan and one without, but neither have the size or the options that the Excalibur does. They have a temperature setting, timer, and have the fan in the back rather than in the bottom like one of our round ones. (the fan in the bottom pushes/pulls the water through several layers to the top, where the Excalibur pushed it straight out the front) We dehydrated a lot over the last year, and planned on doing more. It's just more feesable with an Excalibur. We did mushrooms, onions, apples, bananas, and a few peppers. This year we want to do more for several reasons. Dehydrating retains more nutrients in food over freezing or canning, storing in bags takes up less space than canning jars, and we can dehydrate fruits and vegetables for snacks rather than buy something out of the box from the store. Though I'm not keen on the idea of using more plastic bags to store things in after they've been dehydrated, we'll use ziplock style bags that can be washed and re-used. They're around $250, but have a great waranty, and will be something we use enough to pay for itself rather quickly.

Now with the new bigger dehydrator and diet change in mind, garden plans will change yet again. We won't only be growing more to eat fresh, but we'll be growing more to store, and more to dehydrate. This will mean MORE potato's, more onions, more peppers, and adding other vetetables to the list for the dehydrator for basic food ingredients. Some fruits we want to dehydrate we simply can't grow here, but we will watch for those things on sale at the store or at local markets. We'll of course add more and save plenty to can, but we're taking everything into condsideration and planning from there. So, once again, the garden grows as we take another step in our journey to a better life. Something new always seems to happen every year, just like every year we seem to umnplug ourselves from something unnecessary. We are constantly growing here, whether it be personally or in our homesteading goals. Each new step gives us new experiences, new knowledge, and less reliance on the machine. I love our adventures, I wouldn't trade this life together for anything.

Victim of Changes (old Judas Priest song, but the title kinda fits!)

The past 2 weeks I have managed to do a bit of side work and earn a little extra cash. It couldn't have come at a better time since things were starting to get so tight that it hurt. Tonight we'll take some of the money and restock the pantry since the flour and sugar are getting low. We've also decided to stock whole grain flour and make more with it, so we'll be looking for that in bulk as well.
The idea behind the whole wheat is another diet change for both of us. As some readers may know, Lisa has changed her entire diet, taken up bellydancing, and has lost 47 pounds over the last 6-7 months.(how awesome is that?!) With her change of diet, the grocery shopping has changed, and I have decided to change with it/her. We don't eat hardly anything people would consider junk food, but still we are both going to work towards a more healthy diet. We'll slowly work away from white flour and use whole grain. We'll eat more fruits and nuts, and will turn down the sugar machine. Lisa already uses more honey for sweetener for herself, but since I don't care for it in iced tea, I plan to start using stevia. I have no plans on watching and measuring everything I eat like she has been doing, but I will be cutting down my portion sizes. I've always been a big eater, but it's time to slow things down a bit...I really don't need 2 sandwiches in my lunch or eat 3 turkey burgers at dinner. I'll just slow down.
Now with the plans on diet change will come changes to the garden as well. We'll be planing more greens this year, and a better variety of green vegetables. (brussel sprouts, asparagus,etc.)With that will come a slight garden expansion, probably just another 5 feet, taking it to 45x95. We also want to plant more things for making soup, like carrots and celery, so the expansion will definitly be necessary since we are going to double what we planted last year in onions and potatos.
We also want to plant more fruits, mainly blueberries and strawberries. Since my motto is "less to mow-more to eat", I have no problem with this at all. I think maybe rather than make 2 new strawberry beds in the spring, I'll go ahead and make 4. We'll look around for good prices on blueberry bushes too, since as of now we only have one. I'll also go ahead and thin out the blackberries and extend them another 10-12 feet to the property line. With more production, we'll have more to eat fresh, and more for jams and jellies. It's a win-win situation. I'm going to prune 1 or 2 of the old trees next door too, just to see if they'll produce better fruit. Again, more food.
I'd love to be able to grow more meat birds this year, but we're just plain out of room. With the run for the layers now reaching 50 feet long, there is just nowhere to put them. My uncle had always said we could put some at his place, but that means buying materials for a coop and run, and I have no idea if that money will be there. And I can't rely on getting freebies like I did last year, I think that was just pure luck. I will be getting more rabbits to breed, but for now the idea of meat birds is up in the air.
So again yet more changes here at home, but all are good ones. We'll both be eating better and will be exercising more often. We've even talked about getting a couple inexpensive bicycles and doing some trail riding on weekends. It will be hard working, doing all the garden work, exercising, and making time for bike riding, but we'll make it happen. Again, without the idiot box as a distraction, we have more free time in the evenings to do these things, plus work on more food storage.
Some people thought we were nuts for storing food, but after seeing how we are able to eat even during this layoff, they are beginning to understand. Of course it doesn't mean our friends will do their own storage program, but at least they get it now. With having so much on hand and doing careful shopping, the past year has been fairly easy on the checkbook in the food department. We have friends over every Sunday for dinner now, and since neither of them are working, they can't understand how we can eat so well. We tell them about food storage, but we always get that goofy look. I may have mentioned it in a previous entry, but all we hear from them was that her mother was one of those "Y2K crazies", and that it took them forever to get rid of what she had stored. I told them if they'd used and rotated what she had stored, they would possibly still have food on hand, but they want no part of it. They'd rather go once a week and get canned soup, mac n' cheese, and ramen noodled....no thanks. They don't get it at all, but other people we know have, and maybe a few of you readers will see that storing food isn't just for the typical SHTF scnerio that so many "prep" for. It's saved us a lot of money, and a lot of grief. Think about it folks. This can happen to anyone.
For now I'll leave on a bit of humor as I wander outside to warm the car and feed the chickens-
Some people are like Slinky's. They aren't good for anything, but they are fun to watch if you push them down the stairs.
(and I know a LOT of Slinky's!!!)