Well I'm sitting here waiting for my chicken bones to de-pressure so I figured I'd write something today.  Not as much as yesterday mind you... btw in case you were wondering it came out to about 4 pages on my word prossesor when I converted it over.  Looks back a few words.  I love those spelling mistakes that the "suggestions" have no correction for even when you know you spelled it wrong; but cannot spell it right.

I have watered all of my plants that I put in yesterday and they do seem to be doing rather well except for 1 of the red cabbages.  That poor thing is drooping.  I think I know why too, it got only about 1/2 of the roots available when I had to cut them apart.  So it probably does not have enough roots to make it.

We discovered this morning that the 2 hoses we are using can reach everything but... The pecan tree and the current.  No biggie, we need at least one new hose as one of the 2 like I said has a leaky connector.

I have discovered this morning that we have 1 small frog living near our pond.  I hope there is more but 1 is a start.  My blue berry is looking very promising so far and I hope it produces well this year.  It has buds everywhere, it looks as healthy as the Elderberries do.

Once I get my soup going I get to go out and do some clearing near all of my plantings from yesterday.  Just to ensure no over crowding and plenty of sun for my new plants.  I did notice the Kale seems to have sprouted finally, just when I was ready to give up on them.  I also may have one carrot sprout, we'll see as it grows.

Time to go work on the soup,




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Well, it's been a wet couple of days here. ..wet and cold, we've had rain,snow, sleet all in the last few days. Fun times! (my sarcasm over bounds) I am hoping the weather will be good Monday as our strawberry plants arrived and I need to get them into the ground soon. I am hoping to get pictures of them.




I've been downloading some info on various wildcrafting methods in the hopes of broadening my skills a tad more. Some are about making primitive tools, which I do find fascinating. So we will have those things to work on as well.




Soapbox time...




I had received on one of my posts the other day a message from “Heather” to email her as she wanted to talk to me about something. Now what happened after has me slightly annoyed.




#1 her name is Heather Von St. James

Good, so I have a name yes? Well there is more...




#2 She sent me a “canned” email asking me to post her story on my blog.

Which outwardly I have no issues with, however I did a bit more digging and sent another email asking a few questions about her as person. As I will not post about someone's story without knowing what kind of person they are. Just telling me you survived mesothelioma won't get me to post your story. Even telling me your daughter has it won't get me to either.




#3 She has through whatever method this is she contacts people she has at least 100 private blogs posting her story.

Ok, so again we fall to a question I sent her.. why my blog? I have a small amount of followers on my blog, so why would someone who needs to get info out about mesothelioma use me to do so? Doesn't make much sense to me.




#4 She has a facebook page and a Twitter feed.

This tells me she can reach millions of people is she truly wished to. Again why my blog? So I sent her a facebook message to her asking the same message I emailed her with.




#5 Upon digging deeper I have found out she herself has through lawsuits gained $5mil due to lost wages and medical bills.

Well in my opinion, if she has gained that much money she does not need my help gaining any more money. If she wants money for mesothelioma research then she should send me a message saying that. Not sending me a message saying she is trying to gain money for her daughter. Why not put aside some of her money just for medical expenses for both her and her daughter? Makes more sense to me.




#6 If you wish to make someone pay for what they did for you, do more than hit them in a pocket book.

Besides, the people who made the materials that did this nasty thing to them are probably not being bothered by it. Also, the biggest issues with it is if things are tested more/longer then maybe they will learn that the “thing” is bad and not use it.




Now go back to #2, I sent the email early this week. I still am waiting a reply. Same for the Facebook message, and I know she has her facebook page very active. So my guess is she doesn't truly care if I post her story or not. Now digging I found out that people call Heather the voice of mesothelioma good, they need a voice. However, a good voice would be very concerned if their message got out to all the people they contact. Not send one canned message and then ignore them.




Just wanted to put all this info out to everyone out there, just so that if you get the “hey email me I want to ask you something about your blog” message you you have info to look back at and make a informed decision based on more than just a canned email.




Now it's time for me to step off my soap box and finish breakfast.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Well it's a lovely cold morning, so nice to have to light a fire on the first day of spring... yeah ...  Anyway. not much going on with the weather not co-operating.  WE have a winter storm warning which starts tomorrow...fun.  I did manage to get something done yesterday, besides laundry.

I went out and first I fluffed up the potato patch and then I planted my seed potatoes (we didn't manage to get the sun chokes again).  The one red potato I planted last fall is starting to  grow as well.  I did have a surprise when I got out the seed potatoes, they had all sprouted and had roots on them already.  So on the few I had to cut down to be smaller I cut them so that they would all have some actual roots on them.

Had some good news from the weather people the other day, due to all the precipitation we have gotten ourselves out of the "severe drought", and are now just listed as "dry"; I am hoping pretty soon we'll be past that too.

A friend of our's Mark Cheneil writer of the "Missouri Journal"  over on homestead.org is in the hospital, we all wish him good health; and to get well.




That's it for now...




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

I WANT Spring so badly as I'm so sick of MUD.  Tons of MUD.  I HATE MUD... I REALLY HATE MUD.  Know why?  It is because the MUD we have is clay, it's THICK and HEAVY and if it gets on your foot wear it feels like you dded another 50lbs to your feet.  So I am tired of MUD. Sad thing is in Spring we normally get tons of rain so that means... you guessed it more MUD.

I also think the idea of daylight savings time is so outdated that it really should not exist.  Now when I went to school we were taught that it was started so that farmers would have more daylight hours to work their farms.  Well, now-a-days it's kinda un-nessicary for the need to have the farmers working in daylight as tractors,combines, etc all have headlights that could bring in a 747. Also I know that Amish farmers generally don't use the concept of daylight savings time, so who really benefits from it?

Kids that's who.  Now think on this... Kids that have to walk any distance to either get to school or their bus stop during the early morning will have more light during fall back than if the time was at normal.  Ok, well I can see a point there... BUT... again I must comment on modern society here.  There are tons of flashlights out there on the market that people can use to see with at early morning hours, so the kids can still be safe.

How many people wind up late for work right after "time change" and use it as an excuse?  Doesn't seem that it is nessicary at all does it? I certainly don't see a point to it.  As it is there are places in the US that do not even use it anyway.  Some are farming communities, strange huh?

Well, I'll get off my soap box now... and talk about here.

Well, aside from my 3 sweet peppers all my tray starts have died.  I have replanted the tomatoes and egg plants, but I'm worried I may have to buy some plants this year.  If so there is a small local nursery here that a nice farmer owns, his plants are always good.  I bought flowers from him the first year here.

Now that the snow is melted and the days are warm enough to dry the mud some, the pond has lost some water.  No worries though as it is still over 1/2 full.  Tuesday I am going out to gather cat tail roots for it, I am also planning on planting the taters then.  My flowers are all coming up and I think I may have a couple more day lilies this year than last year.  I still have to come up with some amendments for the apple trees that are coming sometime this month they are suppose to be shipped Monday.  So we'll see.





That's it for now.





Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Well it's coming to that time of year my friends, and I am hoping to have my taters in the ground by week's end.  Also I just found out that the Elderberry trees have baby leaves on them.  As the snow is melting in the lovely temps of the last few days our pond shrank a little, which I expected; I hope the rest of the water stays.  My day lilies are coming up as well, so I defiantly think that the warm weather is on it's way.  I set my plant starts outside they have to come inside tonight, but they should be able to get some time outside tomorrow too.  My good tomatoes are not doing as well with the weaker light we have this year.  While the eggplants love it.   Go figure.





Hope it's warm by you!





Be Well, BE Safe, and Blessed Be...

Yes, I have some minor news for all who are keeping up with what is going on here.  Yesterday evening me and Silver went out to peek at the pond and discovered that it is about an 1/8 of the way full.  So we seem, so far to have a good possibility of having a full pond.  I am certainly hoping it'll be full enough by the time the local farm store has their fish ordering days.  As they will send for catfish, I do not know if they do tilipia or not though.

I will be once the pond is full enough and it's warm enough.  Be going across the street to get some cat tails and one bucket of pond water.   Why the pond water?  Well I have in one of my homesteading books that the best way to make sure you have the right microbial life in your home made pond is to go to a living one and get a bucketful of it's water and dump it into your own.  There by adding the "pond life" that is surviving in one pond to your own.  Also this way you know the microbial life is acclimatized to your area as well.

I already have permission from the people who own the property across the way to go over and gather some cat tails.  They had, had a hard time finding a place that sold them when they put them in, so they were very willing to let me go and get some once we had a pond set up.  Now that said I know of one nursery that has cat tails at it also Lowes has them in the middle of summer in their "water garden" area.  So I do have them available if necessary, but I'd prefer to get some that have grown "wild"




That's  it for now, have a good Saturday!




BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Well here we are the morning after the storm and I'm making brownies.  Sourdough brownies specifically, it takes about 25 minutes after the sponge sets most of the night to mix them.  However I am a tad worried that they might come out a bit burnt as my oven is now running a lot hotter than it was before.

As for the storm...?  Well we have ice, we have snow, and we have power.  That makes me happy, not long after my post yesterday our internet went out for the whole day, it was expected as we have satellite internet; breathe the wrong way and it goes out.  The kids again have no school so lets see... They had a total of 2 days of school this week, guess it's better then them not having any school at all.  Granted though some school are having a late start today it would be near impossible for them to walk to the bus stop safely.  Also as Silver mentioned yesterday due to the ice, we are not driving for the next couple of days.

We are planning on either tomorrow or Sunday to go out and set the rebar stakes into the ground, more likely on Sunday as we are going to be in the 50's then.  Maybe I'll cook something outside on our mini grill if it's going to be that nice out.  Though we had something interesting in the storm previous to yesterday's.  The old dishwasher that was left on our property before we got here that we are going to turn into a smoker was knocked onto it's side by wind.  Now it's sat on it's base for years and a couple of days ago it gets knocked over?  Defiantly a strong wind, or rather strong gusts.  The wind that day also picked up one of our 2 good outdoor chairs and dropped it in the pond breaking it.  So now we are down to one outdoor chair, we need a couple more; hopefully we can find some more cheaply as we still have building supplies to buy.

Speaking of which on next Friday we will have money again and after bills/animal  feed/gas are paid for and my DL is replaced we are going to go and buy soil for the apple trees then the next item on our building supply list.  Which may be either wire, pipe or fencing for the dome itself.  Depends on what we have left really.




Well have a nice day all, I have to go check my brownies as they are starting to smell very done way to soon.  Where did I put that aluminum foil again?




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

… my daughter came home with a stomach bug over this weekend and yesterday after Silver finished working it struck me. So I couldn't even eat the nice dinner I made last night, Roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn. Then I got to spend some quality time with the porcelain goddess around midnight. So imagine how much sleep I got last night...




We took the track hoe back this morning and had no issues getting it back to them unlike the trip out. I will say if you are ever in my neck of the woods try out:




Bailey's Rental & Sales

305 S. Madison

Lebanon, Mo 65536

(4170 532-2353




I would recommend if you need at least 2 days of rental do it for Saturday as you'll get Sunday for free as he is not open. We are considering when we need scaffolding renting it from him. His prices are reasonable.




Tomorrow barring any rain we're going to go out and start putting up the the rebar framing for the house starting with the stakes. I am hoping to be able to set up some flower beds this month near where the outdoor kitchen will be. I have flower bulbs coming some time in the next month along with my apple trees. I want to this fall get some mums as well so we have flowers most of the year.




Well as it's rainy today and the kids are off of school we are watching movies today. Have fun everyone!




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed be...

Well today was not the fun day we were hoping for. The delivery people called us to let know that the flatbed truck is in the shop so it'll be a few days before our rebar shows up. I am almost anticipating that they will wish to deliver it on Friday when we go to the grocery store. I looked ahead at the rest of the month weather wise and due to overnight temps it'll be to cold to put in the potatoes. However day time temps certainly will be warm enough.




I have taken the covers off my plant trays, and I did discover so far one of my sugar cane seeds have sprouted. All of my tomatoes have sprouted, though I am still waiting on my peppers of course to sprout. My eggplants also have not sprouted as yet.




We did run out and get some straw for the dogs and the chickens, next time we re-straw the chickens I'm going to get pictures as they are so funny when we put fresh straw out.




That's it for now...




Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...