2021-10 October 2021 Prep Journal and To-Do Lists

I loves me a good list, Ohio Dreamer! It's almost as satisfying as actually doing the job, at least on a very temporary basis, lol!

1. Move the firewood around to empty one woodshed for next winter's wood. ✔
2. Split the pile of rounds from last Spring and stack in woodshed.
3. Cut some of the downed trees into logs and firewood, split as needed and stack in 3rd shed.
4. Pick rest of tomatoes and the bean seed pods. ✔
5. Clean out the chicken litter and spread fresh shavings.
6. Turn lights on in chicken houses. ✔
7. Take down 2 sagging gutters and repair fascia and trim boards before rehanging the gutters.
8. Repair roof where needed to tide us over until I can buy and install the new metal roof.
9. Plant some veggies to grow under lights in the house, bring in a few of the flowers to overwinter and add more LED lights to the racks in the kitchen nook.
10. Finally get the chiropractor here for the horses and arrange for trims after.
11. Bring home pallets and other wood from the neighbors and build some sheds from it all.
12. Roof the woodsheds with something more permanent than tarps, after trimming back the overhanging branches.
13. Continue to record all money in and out. ✔
14. Continue putting the outside of the property to bed for coming winter.

Today, I finished moving the kindling and pallet wood, scraps, etc out of the 3rd woodshed into the 1st one and organized the rest of the stuff in the 1st shed. I'd hoped to get some of my woodpile split and maybe run the chainsaw, but my back gave out before I got that far. Tomorrow is another day.

Abby finally got a response from the chiropractor recommended to her and he will be here on Saturday, so she also got in touch with the trimmer. I hope only one treatment is needed - it's expensive. If continuing treatment is needed, the horses needing it will have to go to new homes. We can't afford horses with medical problems, and it's ridiculous to keep horses we can't even ride.

Nice list, Ohio Dreamer, and great progress on it, too. 👍

Today, I got most of the woodpile split and stacked, and worked on getting more cleaning and clearing up done outside. The rainy season is starting, although today was beautiful, and there's a lot to do before the weather REALLY changes.

Congratulations are in order! 10 lbs is an accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself! And strength is good, and feeling good is good, yay! Whatever you are doing is working for you. And a lb or two a week is healthy. I always worried about my mister dropping 4 lbs a week because that is too fast and I was afraid he'd lose so much muscle, and trust me, he did, and it bothered him, but once his stamina was back his balance of muscle to fat improved. That was bound to come to a good natural balance since he is so driven. So sister manygoats, congratulations, enjoy having the control over your weight, you are mighty.

adinwnc, I'm so sorry to hear about your dog. That had to be a hard loss for you. You have my condolences. They can be such a comfort and a friend.

Then cheese too, that is tough, I did that too and it was hard for me. It took a while for me to get past it. The addictive qualities in it are hard to shake. Congrats on that though. If you can shake cheese off, then you can do almost anything.

Cut yourself some slack, it's tough stuff, and you're able to get through it. I'm also impressed your christmas shopping is done too.

My friend brought me a bag of basil and picked a bag of lettuce as a trade. We each grow some different veggies and share any extras.

I was able to make 5 containers of pesto for the freezer.

I’m going to close the cold frame tonight to cover the lettuce. Low 40s in the city means mid 30s or lower here.

Ohio Dreamer, I'm so impressed your garlic is in. I saw that when you first updated your list above and said to myself: I wish our garlic was IN.

Ohio Dreamer, It's going to do great in the compost.
We usually don't measure our planting by lbs, but for giggles, I weighed them, we're going to plant about 10#.
Based on 2#=12#, then 5#=30#, you'll have near 20# left to sell or eat. At $12-$15/lb, 10 lbs would be $120-$150, by the lb or the bulb.
I found that when we plant 200, we have just enough for planting the next year (probably 10 lbs and 10 lbs) and the rest to eat, which is what we are doing this w/200 cloves, which is why I want more extras because we give it away. (because we used to sell it, and people become accustomed to looking to us to share) The problem was I ran out of garlic in May and we had to buy it. I was not happy about it.

Does 10#'s of garlic to eat, per year for 2.5 people, does that seem excessive? I think maybe, not really.

Thanks for reminding me that I need to plant the garlic here, too. Sometimes I think I'm getting ahead, and then I read Ohio Dreamer and feather's garlic discussion...sigh.

The horses had their hooves trimmed today, so I can check that off the list. They'll get their teeth floated Saturday. I'm working on firewood nearly every day,among other things. Still working on getting everything buttoned up for winter.

feather, I love to read all the discussions - I quite often learn something along the way. 😊 The kind of garlic commonly sold in the grocery stores, is that softneck? Seems like I heard that somewhere. Hardneck garlic stores longer? I need a garlic tutorial, lol! It's good to know that if I plant on the spring, the crop won't be all that far behind the fall planted cloves. I'll still try to get to it this fall, though.

I managed to add another albuterol inhaler to our home pharmacy today. I also didn't use all of my pain pills over the last month, so 32 pills go into storage for those times when I really need them, like when I broke ribs and they didn't believe me when I said I was in so much pain that I was getting zero relief from my normal dose of pain med. I hate being made to feel like I'm drug seeking, when I just need enough pain relief to sleep at night. So, I don't take my pain pills unless I really need them, but I still fill my prescription every. single. month.

I also finally got an answer at my dentist office...I noticed the lights were on when I drove by today, so while I was filling my gas tanks, I called for an appointment. I've called and left messages and never heard back - I really thought they'd closed up shop! I have a broken filling and need a checkup and cleaning, too. They are down to just one dentist and couldn't get me in until December 9th, but at least I have an appointment. I should have made Abby an appointment at the same time - I was so shocked that someone answered the phone that I totally spaced it! 🙄

If Covid numbers will continue to fall, maybe I'll even feel comfortable with being in the chair. Which reminds me, I need to go to the Rite Aid website and schedule my Covid booster shot. Should have put that on my list for the month.

feather, thanks for the excellent explanation of how to tell soft from hardneck garlic. I'm sure now that I've purchased softneck. I usually plant any leftover cloves if they start to sprout, figuring any time I get them in the ground is better than letting them go to waste. I know you and Ohio Dreamer are probably unfamiliar with the concept of leftover cloves, lol, but although I like a bit of garlic in dishes, too much, for Abby and me, overwhelms the other flavors in the dish. So, we have leftovers. 😊

Re: the pain pills, yes, the opioid crisis has made it far to hard to obtain pain relief for true pain. For years, the pendulum swung too far and pain pills were prescribed too freely. Now the pendulum has swung too far the other direction and made it hard to obtain any kind of opioid relief. Not only does that mean many people with pain are not appropriately medicated, but those who did become addicted to the pills were no longer able to obtain them legally and resorted to the black market or heroin to feed their addiction. Now we have a huge problem with people overdosing on Fentanyl laced pills from China, and the demand for heroin has increased. Supply WILL grow to meet demand. Imho, we would be better off to have kept people addicted to pain meds on their meds and step them down gradually while they are in treatment and rehab, than to have sent them down the current road. It just can't be more expensive to do that than to treat/punish the way we do. Just the cost of treating one addict for skin-popping abscesses and endocarditis far exceeds the cost of rehab.

Yesterday, I ran a tank of gas through my chainsaw, cutting up dead trees that came down last winter. I ran out of gas in the saw AND in me about the same time, unfortunately. I should have pushed through and moved the wood to the woodshed then, because it started raining overnight, and it has been pouring since shortly after noon. All my lovely dry wood is getting a good soaking now. 😪

I didn't sleep at all night before last, and after a late afternoon nap yesterday, I was awake until 0430 this morning. Woke up late morning and pretty much just rolled over and went back to sleep. Didn't wake again until dusk, and have no plans to stay up late tonight.

Abby made corned beef hash for dinner...so very yummy!

manygoatsnomore, Um, yes, I know what leftover cloves looks like, I dice them up and put all 10 of them in the plastic bag in the freezer, near a 1/2 cup of them. Since you are so far north, give some thought to hard neck garlic, my russian red are amazing in size. 3.5 cloves per bulb. I'd rather work with them than anything with smaller cloves. Why, because I'm lazy, who wants to peel 35 cloves when they can peel 3 or 4?

I saw a really good (though political) video today, about the mexican fenatyl (I'm not spelling it right) crisis, which is like a heroin and the huge serge coming into the country, and problems from that. It's coming in on ADD medications and other counterfeit medications, so people start an addiction problem with other problems, scares the heck out of me. This is also why I'm not pro-medications (not entirely that, other reasons when the drugs are legitimate but have side effects). I'm not AFRAID of taking medication if I read the side effects and then decide, but being tricked into an addiction is very upsetting.

Have you ever tried Mary Kitchen's Corned Beef Hash, or the Roast Beef Hash, OMG, I used to love that stuff.

Oh manygoatsnomore , don't get me wrong. Mary Kitchen's was a treat, one can, in 3 years at best but I remember a friend that was head over heels in love with MK's roast beef hash, it's like a favorite flavor of tootsie pops, he liked the orange while I liked the red one's.

You may recall I don't eat meat anymore but I'm still a fan of breakfast hash, the potatoes, onions, peppers, in the oven, until they brown just a little. Adding corned beef is just easy. And making corned beef is easy easy. You just take the cut of beef, add salt and sugar, water and pickling spices, and you can add "pink salt", Prague Powder #1, which will make it stay pink, or go without and it will turn grey, into a zip lock bag in the fridge for a week, then cook, dice, and there you have it. (meat and pink salt, well not healthy for me) Now add that to the hash, and you have corned beef hash.

feather, put me down for the grape and chocolate Tootsie Pops! 😉 The article on Portugal's approach to opioid addiction was very interesting. Common sense tells me that we are doing it all wrong in the US. We have the highest rate of incarceration of any first world country, and a large percentage are drug related. Take that same amount of money and use it to keep people out of jail and in treatment. It would also lower the theft rate nationwide, as most burglaries and thefts are to support drug habits.

Ohio Dreamer, hurray on getting the wood splitter and knocking a few more things off your list! Hope the foxes don't find your chickens.

We have a series of storms rolling in off the Pacific that make working on roofing projects and other outdoor tasks difficult. It's merely raining today, but tomorrow they are forecasting high winds and thunderstorms! I loves me a good thunderstorm...I guess that will be Mother Nature's birthday present to me, lol. I could do without the high winds, though. I have enough downed trees to work on already.

I'm headed out this afternoon for another Honor Guard. If it's not raining when I get back home, I hope to get in more quality time with my chainsaw. 😊

Eta: I had added getting the horses' teeth floated today to my list for the month, but we got a phone call this morning postponing it until Nov 3rd. Our trimmer, who does the floats, had goat kids born this morning and they weren't doing well, so she needed to be there, not here. I certainly understood that after years of raising goats. So, I removed it from the list and will put it on the November list instead.

We went to visit my son and ddil, grandkids and my great-granddaughter yesterday afternoon after moving all the cut firewood into the 3rd woodshed and sharpening saws. It was a good visit. 😍

Then we stopped at Wilco and TSC for horse feed...I used my $10 off $50 birthday coupon at TSC to buy leg bands for my chickens. I want to put bands on the ones I want to keep so I don't accidentally sell them.

We also stopped at Joanne Fabrics to get some mending supplies for the horse blankets. Abby has enough blankets for all 4 horses, but some of them are pretty trashed at the moment. With the rainy season upon us, it's time to get them mended.