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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 1, 2021 1:45:52 GMT -6
Six months gone of 2021 already! How are your preps coming along? Did you make goals for 2021? If you did, how much have you accomplished? Remember that doing a little bit each day will eventually get you to your goal. If you make monthly to-do lists, how did you do in June, and what do you have on your list for July?
Here's the place to talk all things preparedness related. Whether you are prepping for hurricane season, trying to keep a garden going in a drought, or looking to take care of all things winter related while the weather is still sunny and warm, talk about it here. Post those lists, update them during the month and share your triumphs and even your setbacks. We can all learn from each other. 😊
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 1, 2021 1:47:46 GMT -6
I'll get us started for the month. My to-do list for July needs to be filled with light duty tasks until my ribs are healed. The rib fractures are still very painful at this point. Of course, when you have to limit your activity, it's easy to dream big and make an impossibly long to-do list, lol. I'll try to keep it simple. 😄
I had wanted to get a metal roof on my house this summer, but it will have to be put off until I can handle the job. I can price the materials, which will likely give me heart palpitations, and maybe I can pick up the metal and get it brought home and stored until I'm up to actually roofing the house. See? I'm already working on an impossible list!
July 2021 To-Do List:
1. Order the riding mower parts I can't buy locally, buy a battery, remove the rust from the mower deck and battery box and repaint them, get the lawn tractor running and learn how to put the mower deck on and take it off, and learn to drive it. My buddy, TL, is helping me with this project, as he does with so many.
2. Keep up with the garden weeding and watering, continue planting vegetables that can ripen before the first frost, and do light work on the rest of the unplanted sections. If my ribs are healed before the end of the month, get back to the heavy digging, sod removal, etc.
3. Sharpen rest of the shovels, hoes, loppers and pruners.
4. Maintain the pool and enjoy my swim times.
5. Defrost all the freezers and inventory contents. Set up a list for eating more from the pantry and less from the grocery store for a few months. We have more than a year's supply of frozen food on hand, and need to use up the older stuff.
6. Do some serious decluttering in house, barn and shipping container. Stuff out, money in!
5. Source, buy and bring home the roofing metal for the house.
6. Touch up the paint on the house where I caulked the seams.
7. Keep up with all the doctor's appointments and tests/labs/procedures ordered...have a number of them in July.
8. TBD
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Post by Ohio Dreamer on Jul 5, 2021 5:51:09 GMT -6
My goals are light for July. This is a month of heat and humidity, not weather conditions I work well in. Keep up with the garden. So far we are getting enough water to not need to water much, which is great as I carry it by 5-gallon buckets from the rain barrel. Harvest garlic and replant the area with beans Keep up with mowing....a harder task than it should be. Our riding mower is down for repairs....so we have to push mow. I have been keeping the "visible" part of the year mowed, DH has been mowing the other 1/2. Nice that it worked out that way  Rework the sump pump set up. We need a bigger pump, we learned the hard way last week. DS and DH will deal with this. DS is an apprentice plumber....so he's going to check his sources for a better pump at a better price I'm REALLY going to like having a plumber in the family! Keep pulling wheelbarrows of weeds out of the permaculture bed. I don't want to do it too fast, the chickens can only eat so much as a time  Work on wood for winter. A big step in the right direction yesterday on that one. The neighbor introduced Dh to the guy that he has been getting wood from. We put in an order. $400 for 2-1/2 cords delivered! Should get it around this coming weekend. The guy harvests the "leftovers" from when people timber out their woods. With the current wood prices, he has a lot of work as more people are timbering their land. We also went and got wood from a friend. He had a cherry tree hit by lightning then a big limb fell from the tree a few hours later. He had already cut up the limb on the ground. SO it was just a pick-up job. We took the brush, too, to thank him for the wood. We will add the brush to our hugel mound. We will go back later and help him take down the rest of that tree when we can work out that schedule....and when it's cooler. July is our "party month", lol. Our anniversary followed a few days later by my birthday. 28 yrs of marriage come the end of the week No really plans, may hit a Hamfest on our anniversary, lol... |
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Post by feather on Jul 5, 2021 7:16:46 GMT -6
Ohio Dreamer, Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary, 28 years!
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Post by nbc3mom on Jul 5, 2021 12:27:09 GMT -6
The garden has started in full force. I have baseball bat sized zucchini to shred, regular sized zucchini, kale, yellow beans, cucumbers and new potatoes for dinner. There should be enough cucumbers tomorrow to make refrigerator dill pickles. I like that I can make them even if it is one jar at a time. The second batch of beets may be ready for canning on Friday.
As soon as we finish a row of anything in the garden, we replant. Zucchini are up in the row that had been beets. The spinach row is now green beans. Pumpkins and sunflowers replaced the garlic.
DH propped open the cold frame and added chicken manure to the soil. We had almost an inch of rain that night which came at a perfect time. I use the word “soil” loosely—that stuff was dirt! Nothing grew in the box from the first planting. Hoping to amend it enough to turn it by this fall.
Now that the garden is growing so well, weeding is much easier to keep up with. Weeding, harvesting, planting, canning and freezing will take up most of this month.
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Post by feather on Jul 5, 2021 22:59:22 GMT -6
nbc3mom, do you do any dehydrating? I'm asking because my freezer space is now even more precious than before, and zucchini doesn't fit, it's high volume low importance. I started really dehydrating last year, slices, and I made a recipe for zucchini bread that always turns out great with dehydrated zucchini. We shut down a freezer this past year, then a refrigerator w/freezer last week. We are now at one refrigerator/freezer, and one freezer. Our electric bill is large. Our growing season isn't as long as most, but we always put in our beans in the garlic bed once harvested. I wonder if I could sneak in the sunflowers I wanted to put in, with the beans. Hmmm. Might have to sneak those in. I love to see them, and I've painted a few, would like to have more to paint. I guess we'll see how that goes.
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Post by Ohio Dreamer on Jul 6, 2021 7:26:01 GMT -6
feather, Thank you!! I just pulled our garlic yesterday and replanted it with bush beans. Nice to know in this group I fall in the normal category!! My neighbors think I'm odd for filling a hole with a new crop, lol. Garlic is our first harvest, we are a month away from almost anything else (might get some squash in a few weeks). I did get some lettuce and such, but it has bolted now....so it's chicken feed.
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Post by nbc3mom on Jul 6, 2021 9:52:39 GMT -6
feather, No, I haven't done any dehydrating although I've thought about it, especially for herbs and garlic. I don't want to invest in an expensive dehydrator if I don't use it. Any suggestions?
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Post by feather on Jul 6, 2021 10:05:01 GMT -6
feather , No, I haven't done any dehydrating although I've thought about it, especially for herbs and garlic. I don't want to invest in an expensive dehydrator if I don't use it. Any suggestions? I've been using one or two of them for years but even more so this past 2 years. Pineapple (when it's on sale), grapes, zucchini slices (though might try shredded), pumpkins (for pie), peach slices, strawberries, bananas, tomatoes (slices and to grind), green or red peppers (to grind), carrots celery mushrooms (for grinding to make a stock powder), there's probably more. Oh I had a big failure rate in my canned beans so I dehydrated those too, for ready made just add water meals (say for camping, or for the emergency food in the truck). Jerky.
I've really expanded storing the dehydrated goods to the point we have to put them in a different place in the basement besides the basement pantry.
I would get a square one without the hole in the middle like the round ones, because I like to have a lot of space, and more racks. Excalibur is great--but there are other box type ones that cost less. Our farm & fleet has one for $100 or a little less on sale. There are a lot of people that use the round ones on the dehydrating group on facebook, so if you can get one for $5, or free, go for it and see if you will use it.
Right now I'm dehydrating lemon balm, next is spearmint, then peppermint, all for tea.
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Post by midtnmama on Jul 7, 2021 9:42:15 GMT -6
feather , No, I haven't done any dehydrating although I've thought about it, especially for herbs and garlic. I don't want to invest in an expensive dehydrator if I don't use it. Any suggestions? Dh's grandmother parked the truck in the sun and put trays on the dashboard. Baked em right up! Can't get cheaper than that! |
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 11, 2021 13:49:09 GMT -6
feather , No, I haven't done any dehydrating although I've thought about it, especially for herbs and garlic. I don't want to invest in an expensive dehydrator if I don't use it. Any suggestions? Dh's grandmother parked the truck in the sun and put trays on the dashboard. Baked em right up! Can't get cheaper than that! I love this one. I picked up a stack of metal window screens from in back of the glass shop earlier this year with the plan of using some of them for dehydrator trays for just this plan. Used another one to sift river sand before using it under the cement board for my front patio. Sturdy window screens have a lot of uses. 😁 |
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Post by feather on Jul 11, 2021 14:08:49 GMT -6
manygoatsnomore, when I was wanting to sift my mint leaves out of the dehydrator, my sieves are too fine, but a window screen was what I wanted to have on hand for that, but don't.
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 12, 2021 18:35:33 GMT -6
manygoatsnomore, when I was wanting to sift my mint leaves out of the dehydrator, my sieves are too fine, but a window screen was what I wanted to have on hand for that, but don't. I suppose you could take a screen out of your windows for long enough to process the mint, lol. Make sure to wash it well. 😂 |
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Post by feather on Jul 12, 2021 18:40:00 GMT -6
 lol yeah, no 
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 12, 2021 19:01:22 GMT -6
Looking at my to-do list, I'm doing well on some of it, but I have a lot to do to finish off my list this month. After adding a new horse, it's even more important to get a couple of them sold, which means possibly consigning them to the auction, which will mean another looooong trip next month or the month after, if they don't sell locally by then.
The riding mower parts have all been ordered and have arrived, including the batteries (extra one is for the generator), and we worked on it today. TL took one wheel home to work on the rim - there's a slow leak in that tire that is probably at the rim, rather than a hole in the tire. He also took the carburetor home to rebuild, so it will probably be a few days before we do anything further to the engine. My assignment is derusting the mower deck and repainting it. 😊 I still also need to figure out what's needed to get a walk behind mower running again. I have 2 and neither one runs at the moment.
The bush beans have flowers on them, so I should have green beans in a few weeks. I've been able to keep up with garden weeding, but no heavy digging yet...ribs are still too sore if I tug on anything. Some of the potato plants are starting to fall over...once they die back, I should have potatoes to dig. As I dig them, I'll plant back the tiny ones and also some sprouted potatoes I didn't get around to planting before I broke my ribs. There's still plenty of time for a 2nd planting to make decent sized potatoes before frost.
The cucumbers I planted in pots are up and growing, but the ones planted in the garden haven't come up at all. In fact, everything I planted from seed in the garden has been slow to come up, other than the green beans. Plus, the ground has been drying out so fast that I can barely keep enough water on it. Covering the unplanted ground with black plastic really helps. I need to cover more of the ground in the raised beds.
I'm keeping the pool in good swimming condition. That daily dip makes the cost of a new pump this year worth every penny! I may only swim and skim for 20-30 minutes a day, but it's probably the best part of my day, although time with the horses is a close second.
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Post by feather on Jul 14, 2021 15:29:48 GMT -6
Well it was about time I looked at our fruit supply for the year (or two).
From the old way of canning, lots more sugar: peach plum jam and marmalade 11 pints. mulberry 1 pint.
Fruit that is not like jam or puree for toast: pineapple pineapple salsa cranberries green grapes (I didn't count those)
Puree/Jam (only sugar or honey added if the fruit was not sweet enough naturally) (I also use the grape purees for making the 'oat cookies' for sweetness.)
Sweet cherry will be 30 cups, or assorted sizes of jars 8 oz 12 oz pints. Plum 7 12 oz Peach 24 8 oz, 24 12 oz, 1 pint black grape 24 8 oz nectarine 19 8 oz, 9 12 oz, 13 pints red grape 13 8 oz, 4 pints strawberry 21 12 oz, 2 pints sour cherry 10 8 oz 8 oz: 120, 12 oz: 61, pints: 20, Total 251 cups of concentrated puree, enough for at least 2 years.
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 18, 2021 0:53:53 GMT -6
That's awesome, feather! Well done. I have a feeling that no matter how much you already have on hand, if you find a good sale, you will make more! I just love looking at full jars on the pantry shelves...and then eating all that lovely goodness. I'm still trying to plug away at my list. I have a Covid test tomorrow and a pulmonary function study on Thursday, followed by a follow up appointment with my pulmonologist, and then I think I'm done with medical stuff until August, when I see the specialist at OHSU. I'll be able to check that one off the list. The new carburetor for the riding mower is supposed to be here on Friday, so if I finish rust removal and painting the mower deck by then, I could potentially be mowing this weekend, if TL has time to put it all together. I'm trying to keep up with the watering, but it's so dry and our soil drains so quickly that it's a challenge. Hmm, what else is on the list? I guess I need to go look at it. I can't post and see other posts at the same time on my phone. Looks like I need to price roofing metal, touch up the paint on the exterior of my house and finish defrosting and inventorying the freezers, as well as more decluttering. I've done a bit, but not as much as needs doing. |
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Post by feather on Jul 18, 2021 5:38:53 GMT -6
That's awesome, feather ! Well done. I have a feeling that no matter how much you already have on hand, if you find a good sale, you will make more! I just love looking at full jars on the pantry shelves...and then eating all that lovely goodness. Thanks. The 8 oz cup of fruit is approximately the equivalent of 1 lb of fruit (16 oz). Usually 10 lb batches, cooked down into approximately 10 cups of puree/jam. If transportation of fruit/vegetables, at the grocery stores stopped, that's enough fruit for maybe a year if we were careful. So far looking at the pear and apple tree. The pear only gives us a harvest every 2 or 3 years, but the apple trees (there are 2 left out of 4) have never given us even a bushel of apples, and the trees are 25 to 30 years old. So I guess they just don't produce apples when young. This will be a first for apples of any volume, just from one of the apple trees. I'm guessing that cooking down apple sauce and pear sauce (or butter), will happen after tomatoes, sometime in Sept-Oct, God willing. There's not an upper limit to the amount of apple sauce or pear sauce we can use for eating and baking. The other opportunity for fruit, is dehydrated. So far we have pineapple, a little strawberry, and peaches. All of them are easy to deplete with snacking. Bananas are currently lower cost, easy access, but dehydrating is a good idea I haven't made time for and probably should. We don't have local banana trees. |
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 18, 2021 13:19:59 GMT -6
It's always good to be thinking of the "what-ifs" and how to prepare for them! My favorite saying is "Better to have and not need than to need and not have."
I had to fire off a blast from the shotgun early this morning. The coyotes were yipping and yapping way too close to my chicken pen. It worked, although it did startle my new mare, Fly, a bit. The other 3 just looked at me like, really, again?
She'll get used to it, because the young coyotes have found my chickens. We've lost a number of tweenage birds and babies lately. The crows and ravens will also pick off the tiny chicks if given half a chance, and I've found at least one feather pile from a speckled hen. No sign of hawks yet, but after all the haying is done in the area -easy pickings for mice when the fields are hayed - I'm afraid they will find us.
I think my solution might be to both tighten the chicken pen and sell off most of the flock now, including babies, half grown chicks and a bunch of broody hens. I can probably get $50 for a broody hen, more if she's on eggs or I send eggs with her. With over 40 hens, I could sell 30 of them and still have a going flock. That's $1500! Good grief, I'd never done the math on them before. 😯 I need to place some ads!
That's just the hens. I've lost count on the chicks and youngsters, as it fluctuates a lot. Probably between 50 and 100, with 3 more clutches set last night and a new hen wandering in from the woods with new chicks...oh, and the hen setting in the compost pile, lol. I'll be glad when her eggs hatch, as I have to be very careful where I toss my weeds with her on there!
Well, I'm about to head for town...my Covid test awaits. I'm going to try to get everything I need for my trucks and mowers that I don't already have. Have to pick up my Symbicort refill, meet a friend to deliver eggs, and take Abby grocery shopping. I might need to snap a quick pic of the model numbers on the push mowers so I can pick up a new pull rope for one and new spark plugs.
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Post by nbc3mom on Jul 20, 2021 17:20:22 GMT -6
We were away for a few days last week for our grandson and granddaughter’s birthdays. It rained almost 3” while we were gone. Our friend was supposed to pick the garden but it was muddy so he just took a few things that he could easily reach. With the rain, heat and humidity, everything grew like crazy. We had 6 zucchini the size of a little kid’s fat whiffle ball bat and a dozen more about half that size. I was able to shred the “smaller” ones and freeze them after discarding the seeds. Something, rain, insects or fungus, killed most of the cucumbers. I composted 15 that were large and turning yellow and had enough good ones for 3 jars of dill pickles. That may be the last cucumbers for the year; thankfully I have about 20 jars of pickles that I canned last year.
We pulled the onions yesterday and I hung them on racks to dry. They aren’t as large as I would have liked but the rain and wind had knocked the stems down into the mud and they would probably have rotted. We planted cabbage and beets in the rows. We also had to pull the kale; planted some herbs in that row.
All of the seeds were old but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Been eating a lot of green beans, yellow beans and beets and 3 cherry tomatoes. Picked 5 peaches that were getting eaten by something, and I’m ripening them in a brown paper bag. I have to check the tree and pick any others that look damaged. I hope to get enough to make a few jars of jam.
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Post by manygoatsnomore on Jul 27, 2021 22:27:28 GMT -6
I got my first small picking of green beans a few days ago...just enough for one good serving of quickly pressure cooked beans for my supper, plus what Abby ate raw. Oh, they were good! There are a lots of green tomatoes on my plants, but nothing ripe yet. Plants are growing like weeds.
My water filter system needed work after the pressure relief button broke and popped off of one of my filter housings yesterday - something I couldn't fix. The well company guy was out shortly after noon today, and I now have a fully working system, complete with water pressure to run the garden sprinkler AND have running water in the house at the same time. What a concept!
I had to make a custom hose with 2 female ends on it to work around that filter cartridge and provide water until they could get here to make the repair. I didn't think about having an extra set of washing machine hoses out in the barn that would have worked just fine, lol.
I'm getting down to the wire on finishing my list...I don't think I'm gonna make it, but I tried hard!
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lol yeah, no 