This weeks preps check-in

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I haven't pulled any potato plants yet to see if I got potatoes yet. It was close think they could have grown a little more. Hopefully I will get enou to seed this spring.
 
My potatoes are still alive! They took a beating from a couple cold nights, but are pretty tough plants, as they have bounced back. I haven't pulled any yet, but hope to get some seed potatoes at least. I'm down to one small box of red potatoes left from the garden, and they are sprouting and shriveling pretty bad in my pantry. It would be nice to restock my fresh supply. The weather is saying we will get a good rain tomorrow night. Still doubtful, but hopefully too. Last real rain we got was early September. I raise dust clouds with every step outside right now.
 
Not a lot to report on prepping lately. Been busy with the business and building the house for the kids here. Dosent leave much time for much else. I did manage to bottle 10 gallons of wine this morning. I kind of had to as I needed the containers it was in for the next batch. Damned hobby is starting to feel like a job now....
 
I got drafted into helping build a storage building for a local church. Actually, it's helping with an Eagle Scout project,

Me and a couple others built the walls and got the roof on Friday, but it kept me from working on my preps. Saturday was Iron Bowl Saturday, so I sat on my butt in front of the tv all day, lol.
 
Got the floor finished in the new barn, well almost finished anyway. All the boards are cut and laid out and most are screwed down but still have about 400 screws left to put in. Will start building the loft next week.
Got the studded tires put on all the vehicle's and chains on the tractor and 4 wheeler. Put the plow on the tractor and 4 wheeler yesterday too. May need it today it snowed all night.
Started hauling stuff we were storing in the old barn down to the new barn. Next spring I'll re-side the old barn and start using it for hay storage.
 
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The rain filled two of the three ponds up after being bone dry for weeks. It almost flowed into the spillway to flow into the third pond but stopped a few inches shy. Luckily there are three days of rain forecasted for next week. I changed the elevations in them and added some small waterfalls, am excited to see if it all works as planned. This was the worst drought I've ever seen here in the 11 yrs I've been here. Just hope it dosent become the new norm. Pond #3 is for raising fish, hopefully....
 
Brent S said:
View attachment 6343 The rain filled two of the three ponds up after being bone dry for weeks. It almost flowed into the spillway to flow into the third pond but stopped a few inches shy. Luckily there are three days of rain forecasted for next week. I changed the elevations in them and added some small waterfalls, am excited to see if it all works as planned. This was the worst drought I've ever seen here in the 11 yrs I've been here. Just hope it dosent become the new norm. Pond #3 is for raising fish, hopefully....
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Nice to see a little water flowing here as well! My rain gauge says we got close to 4 inches the other night and another couple a couple days before that. We're still way short of catching up though...
 
WGregMiller said:
Nice to see a little water flowing here as well! My rain gauge says we got close to 4 inches the other night and another couple a couple days before that. We're still way short of catching up though...
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We didn't get much I've 1.25 inches here but at least it was slow and soaked in. The next three days are calling for 1/4", 1/4", and 1". I'll take whatever comes our way at this point.
Im feeling a little guilty here. I'm worried about filling a pond and the death toll is at thirteen now in N.Carolina. It's good to keep things in perspective.
 
Brent S said:
We didn't get much I've 1.25 inches here but at least it was slow and soaked in. The next three days are calling for 1/4", 1/4", and 1". I'll take whatever comes our way at this point.
Im feeling a little guilty here. I'm worried about filling a pond and the death toll is at thirteen now in N.Carolina. It's good to keep things in perspective.
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We had a total of 1/2" of rain for October and 3/4" rain total for November. We've had some snow but not nearly as much as we should have by now. A storm is supposed to blow in tonight. Hopefully it will bring a lot of snow.
 
Arcticdude said:
We had a total of 1/2" of rain for October and 3/4" rain total for November. We've had some snow but not nearly as much as we should have by now. A storm is supposed to blow in tonight. Hopefully it will bring a lot of snow.
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Good luck. The weather is definately changing. I never thought I'd see a drought where I am. I live near the only tropical rain forest in the contenintal US, or at least used to.....
 
i got 3-4LB bags of pinto beans.8 cans of pork n beans,12 cans of vienna sausage.plus i stocked up a few diff cans of veggies.and to top it off.i got whats needed for turkey stew,once i get the turkey cooked.i think,i'll do that friday.seeing how it'll be in the 20's at the start of the day..

p.s. edit..one case of regular mouth of one pint jars as well..
 
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I made a list and went shopping today. I basically restocked the pantrys. I just finished dating, rotating and putting everything away. I must be part squirrel as stocking up supplies for the winter is so satisfying.....
I did luck out at Walmart today's. They had pork rib roasts and a boneless ribeye roast on clearance. I got four of the pork rib roasts and the last one of the ribeye roasts, 42.00 marked down to 30.00. Seared in a pan with seasonings and slow roasted in the oven, that ribeye roast may be as close to heaven as I can get while still alive!
 
I have been pretty much horrible at prepping these past two months. Money was tight with both kids out of work (they both are employed now at least)....and we just do so much around this time....Conventions, theme parks, even Orlando's first Ren Fest...all kinds of things that fill a weekend. You have to live a little, after all. At least THIS weekend, should get something done.
 
Gazrok said:
I have been pretty much horrible at prepping these past two months. Money was tight with both kids out of work (they both are employed now at least)....and we just do so much around this time....Conventions, theme parks, even Orlando's first Ren Fest...all kinds of things that fill a weekend. You have to live a little, after all. At least THIS weekend, should get something done.
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I've been a bad prepper too. All spare cash is going into my son's house fund so there is little to spare at the moment.
 
I got the hole dug for the underground service on the kids house were building. It needed to be three ft + deep. Digging in Ga is a mother! Anyways, the power company is supposed to be here at 8am to start putting in the transformer and underground lines. It's going to be in the low 20's in the morning, by far the coldest night so far. Not looking forwards to working on it, although I'm mostly watching this part.
 
I went to town after lunch today to check on my parents and get some fuel for the generators. It started snowing about an hour before I left home and snowed all the way to town and back, and it's still snowing. Anyway, as I was returning home I realized just how important a grab and go bag is, and that It's geared for the expected conditions. It's a 36 mile round trip when I go to town. It's not unusual to drive both ways and not see another vehicle on the road, especially in bad weather. On this trip it was snowing hard, 10 degs and visibility was poor. The visibility was so bad I ran off the road as I was coming around a corner. Fortunately I was able to get back on the road without much problem and continue on home.
The moral of this story is that my grab and go bag had my summer gear. I had neglected to swap my summer gear for my winter gear. Even though I had a heavy coat, hat and gloves with me, I never could have made it home in this weather on foot the way I was equipped.
I won't make that mistake again.
 
Arcticdude said:
I went to town after lunch today to check on my parents and get some fuel for the generators. It started snowing about an hour before I left home and snowed all the way to town and back, and it's still snowing. Anyway, as I was returning home I realized just how important a grab and go bag is, and that It's geared for the expected conditions. It's a 36 mile round trip when I go to town. It's not unusual to drive both ways and not see another vehicle on the road, especially in bad weather. On this trip it was snowing hard, 10 degs and visibility was poor. The visibility was so bad I ran off the road as I was coming around a corner. Fortunately I was able to get back on the road without much problem and continue on home.
The moral of this story is that my grab and go bag had my summer gear. I had neglected to swap my summer gear for my winter gear. Even though I had a heavy coat, hat and gloves with me, I never could have made it home in this weather on foot the way I was equipped.
I won't make that mistake again.
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Glad you brought this up. I've been meaning to go thru my bob for a while now, and The cars supplies are under a plywood piece and down in a spare tire well. It's packed, but needs to be gone thru. I know there's some mre's that are probably bad after the summer heat, and the 9mm ammo will get changed out for target practice.
Glad you avoided a really tough situation there! Even with the right supplies having to hike it in 10 deg weather would be rough.
 
Picked up some more vegetable seeds to store in the freezer.

Not so much a prep but picked up some more volquartsen exact edge extractors, auto bolt release, firing pin and power custom firing pin spring for the rest of my ruger 10/22(s). Something I'll be working on over the weekend.
 
Brent S said:
Glad you brought this up. I've been meaning to go thru my bob for a while now, and The cars supplies are under a plywood piece and down in a spare tire well. It's packed, but needs to be gone thru. I know there's some mre's that are probably bad after the summer heat, and the 9mm ammo will get changed out for target practice.
Glad you avoided a really tough situation there! Even with the right supplies having to hike it in 10 deg weather would be rough.
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I keep some basic supplies in all my vehicles; MRE's, small canned foods, fire making kits, etc. Then I also carry my grab and go bag everywhere I go, which now has my winter gear in it.
I carry a few basic items on the tractor when I'm plowing too; canned food, extra gloves, fur hat and a fire making kit with a metal cup to melt snow.
My driveway is narrow with steep drop offs that would be easy to slide off and roll over. If something happened to me no one would know until I failed to show up at the airport when the wife comes home in mid January.
 
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Brent S said:
Glad you brought this up. I've been meaning to go thru my bob for a while now, and The cars supplies are under a plywood piece and down in a spare tire well. It's packed, but needs to be gone thru. I know there's some mre's that are probably bad after the summer heat, and the 9mm ammo will get changed out for target practice.
Glad you avoided a really tough situation there! Even with the right supplies having to hike it in 10 deg weather would be rough.
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Which duly reminded me to put my Fleece, hat and gloves in my GHB, cheers guys especially as tonight at 11 PM I have to drive far up Weardale to pick up my son, a 70 mile round trip on unlit twisting rural roads where a young man died only last night at the same time on the same road.

THIS is my route tonight taken last winter.
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We got the new power line put in yesterday, all underground and safe from ice storms and trees falling. Had to drop a carport I had just put up this summer to park equipment under, so still have that to clean up and rebuild later. The trencher cut the water line in two places so we had to dig 120' of new line to repair it before it froze last night. Other than that it went pretty smooth. The local power company was awesome. They sent out about eight vehicles and two crews to finish the job in one day. They cut trees, set a pole, set a ground transformer, went under a creek, buried the new lines and connected everything all in one day. really impressive job. The kids new place has its own protected power line now. I will install a new service on the front of my house before long and run from the new ground transformer to it too. I want both places on protected power. Now let's hope the grid dosent go down....
 
Oh, also ordered a hard copy of 'one second after' from Amazon. Was really suprised the hard copy was six dollars and the kindle version was ten. I commented to my son that it was stupid for a real printed book to be less and he simply said its because no one wants them anymore. The world is changing.
 
Silent Earth said:
I would love to collect hard backed books but my budget only stretches as far as paperbacks.
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I actually got a paperback. I meant hard printed on paper vs electronic download. I do have some hard copies of books, but don't care about binding as much as content.
 
My most treasured paperbacks are 1 Alas Babylon, 2 Earth Abides 3 Down to a sunless Sea, 4 Patriots 5 One Second After, 6 Day By Day Armageddon.
 
I prefer non fiction factual and reference books, my latest purchase is "Living without Electricity, lessons from the Amish" by Stephen scott & Kenneth pellman. isbn 9781680991703 price £9.99.
 
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