Food

Busy Day

Today was a busy day, I went into town with a friend, I needed to pay my internet bill, I went ahead and paid for 2 months so I don’t have to worry about it in a few weeks. I do wish my internet provider would accept on line payments, or even credit card or bank card payments over the phone, but they don’t, they only accept snail mail or carry in payments, and since they are a good 30+ miles (one way), it’s not likely I will be there in time each month to pay, and paying bills by mail is just a pain. Enough complaining. :)

Glasses & Hair Clippers

While I was in town, I purchased something I have been needing for some time, reading glasses. I noticed a couple of years ago, it was getting more and more difficult to read fine print, up until now, I have just been forcing myself to see what I needed to see, I would strain to read medicine bottles and such, well, now it’s just about impossible to read those things, I can’t force my eyes to focus enough to be able to see what I need to, so at the store, I tried on the different strengths, I think they only had 4 or 5, when I looked at the test print to decide which ones you need, I could read every line without glasses, so I looked around to find something with small enough print to test. I found the appropriate small print and tried on glasses. It turns out I only need the weakest one, WOO HOO, I’m not totally blind! (didn’t really think I was…). I picked out the frames I like and found a pair for Bob too, he is also having trouble reading fine print, we both have to use a magnifier to read most small things, I didn’t know which strength to choose, so I chose the weakest for him hoping it would be ok, I picked out the manliest looking frames, he looks pretty good in them! It turns out that he could have used a stronger pair, but for $5,00, it’s not worth going back, and they do some good for him.

I also got something else that will come in very handy, it’s something every mountain woman needs to tame her mountain man, a set of Wahl clippers, it includes an assortment of guards, a comb, scissors and oil. It’s been so long since he has had a haircut that I think I’ll have to make a name badge for him so everyone will know who he is, no one will recognize him! :)

Garden

I discovered something new about an ordinary plant that most people put in their garden, radish seed pods. I had a few left over radish seeds, not enough to plant very …

Not too much going on, let’s see, the 4th we spent with our neighbor, he cooked a whole crockpot (the large one, not a small one) full of country style ribs, we had bbq beans and potato salad, it was a great meal with a great friend. There were activities in town but we didn’t go, it was just nice to sit around and enjoy the day. The next day, we went to another friend’s house and ate dinner, too much food to list, and it was all good! These friends have lots of kids, smaller kids, and they had other family over with their kids, I must admit, it was a bit crazy over there, but it was fun, they had a pool set up and the kids played in the pool most of the time, and dinner was so good that it was worth it. :)

Today Bob worked on the roof and the solar panels, the solar panels were off all day, so not much power today and tonight, it really wouldn’t have mattered though, it was overcast nearly all day, so today was a good day to have the panels off line. He should have everything back up and running tomorrow.

Update on the house, we now have 2 decks, one on the west side, and now there is one that runs nearly the full length of the house on the north side, this is where we go in and out, and now we have a real set of stairs (WOOHOO), no more going up and down the ladder. Bob extended the roof to cover that deck mainly to protect the wood from the rain.

A bit of excitement the other night, I was using the internet until about 2 am, I was about to go to bed when I noticed a line of ants going along the floor at the wall, that’s not unusual, I followed the ants to see either what they were going to, or where they were coming in. I followed them to one corner, then to another corner, they were on 3 corners, surrounding the room, and going up the wall in one corner, and all along one window, they were starting to crawl up into the bed. Ot was an ant invasion! I grabbed the spray bottle of soapy water and started spraying, I woke Bob up to help me. I took care of most of the ants inside the house, Bob got the rest, he went outside to find out where they were coming in. He had a hard time finding the trail, there were no ants coming up on anywhere under the house. He finally found them coming up a tree, crawling down a branch and getting on the roof, from there they were going to a window. He cut off the branches that overhung the house and …

I’ve been thinking a lot about food, the availability of it now, and in the future. While I am able to get it relatively easy right now, that may not be the case in the future. And as much as I’d like to think I am prepared for food shortages, in reality, I am really not as prepared as I’d like to be… I have been stocking up on canned foods, anything that doesn’t require refrigeration, the problem is meat, sure you can get canned chicken and canned hams, but real, wholesome, tasty meats, including beef are not so easy to come by. I checked out the internet grocer, and guess what? They have canned meats, beef, chicken, turkey and pork. They also carry canned butter and canned cheese. I am ordering their smallest sample pack of meats, it includes one can of butter and one can of cheese.

I ordered the meat sample pack, and the no rinse body cleaner and no rinse shampoo, I am trying the smaller size of these to see if I like them, the total with shipping (UPS) came to just under $60.00 (YIKES), the shipping was nearly $20.00! Oh well, it costs me more to drive to town now days, and I can’t even get these items in town, not even in the bigger towns that are farther away.

While surfing their site, I ran across this, dehydrated squirrel, yes, I said squirrel, apparently there is a farm that raises squirrel for human consumption, FDA approved and everything. LOL! I just thought of them like fluffy long tailed rats, something you could get right outside your front or back door. It is said that during processing, the squirrel carcases are checked twice to make sure there is no hair in the meat, nothing like a bit of squirrel hair in your squirrel stew. :)

I’ll post another message about how well I like the meats from the internet grocer, I have high hopes. Anyone else try them?

If these are as good as they look, I might talk to a few people out here and see if some of them want to go in on full cases and split them, that’s where the best price is, but at over $100.00 a case (plus shipping), it would take me forever to be able to build up a a good stockpile of a variety of canned meats, this way splitting the cost between one of two other families out here, we can all benefit.

14 Comments

seth said…

will ups deliver to your “doorstep”?

June 19, 2008 6:11 AM

Wretha said…

If they could GET to my doorstep, yes, but since they can’t get to my doorstep, Bobby (my UPS delivery driver) will deliver it to the country store, that’s usually what he does for the deliveries to the places

Sheherezade Goldsmith

Sheherazade Goldsmith, wife of eco-campaigner Zac Goldsmith, has written a new book about living organically. It includes a section on keeping bees, which makes it likely that the streets of Chelsea in west London will soon be buzzing with the little critters. You can buy the book here. Zac and Sheherazade keep bees on their organic farm in Devon but any flat city roof will do just fine. Check out a short extract from the book:…