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Scariest time was when I was going out to feed the bulls with a bucket after it had been raining for days on end. . . . for whatever reason hunny wasn't home to do it. They were in the middle pasture and that was when their feed troughs were located right behind the red barn so all you had to do was open the back door and walkout about 10 - 15 of and pour in. No prob flight? Well my boots sunk to mid thigh to almost knee all the way out. When you are in mud like that your boots are suctioned in that mud and you need to work them back and forth for every step. It was hard work to just take one step and when those bulls saw that back door open they come a running. I though Charlie was going to run me over and I was stuck! We did eventually get washout poured behind the barn so you didn't sink so bad. The bulls are also not allowed to go back and forth between the middle and big pastures anymore. We have a rock road that goes to the big pasture where they are fed right beside. A friend of mine had gone out to feed her hunnys cows one night while he was at work and got knocked down. . . ended up with a broken leg. She was 71 at the time and lucky she didn't get trampled more than she did.

Anyhow that friend I just mentioned stopped by the house for a visit yesterday. She wanted to bring me some clothes that her daughter had along with her daughters loom. Her daughter was my good friend who had passed last year with cancer. My friend had started making a scarf on it. So after I finish the quilt I am working on, then planting, then next grand baby quilt due in Nov, I will finish making that scarf to honor my friends sweet spirit then give it to her mom as a gift. She also told me that I will be getting her quilting frame. Her and her husband just haven't made it over to her daughters house yet.
 
My goats love to stick their noses in the feed buckets too. . . I do try to hold it up high while walking out to their bvarn at feeding time. Although they do manage a time or two. They think so clever and getting a treat :)
 
Me ad My Wife had a unexpected trial run . Whenever I get another car to drive to work and back I usually keep My old one as a backup vehicle and drive it a little on My days off to keep it from setting up . Most of the time just a drive around the country . Yesterday Me and the Wife were riding around the "cove" and about 5 miles out My old 240 Volvo took a dump . Probably the alternator . We live in a rual area no one around so its time to walk . I was carrying My .45 . This is hills and valleys all the way . Cows and horses came to the fence lines to check us out , We had a good time for most of it . We pasted one house and out of nowhere a pitbull snuck up close and charged My Wife . She screamed and got on the other side of Me . I pointed at him with my left hand and put right hand on My firearm and yelled back back . He locked up all 4 feet and retreated . He was right on Her when She heard Him with mouth open . Around 2 hours walking we got home . I got My Chevy Blazer went back got the battery charged it went back and drove the thing home . Its time to get something else to drive to work and Blazer will become My back up .
 
Didn't do much today. Heavy snow last night and all day today. Good day to stay inside. The wife worked on our house plans some and I hung up one of my wolverine rugs on the wall. A couple weeks ago I had a local wood worker make a plaque out of hickory to display a wooly mammoth tusk that I found in Alaska years ago, got it mounted on the wall too. It takes up a lot of space. I'm finally doing some decorating in the cabin.
 
I finally made it out to the greenhouse. I tilled in a lot of composted material and got a water line going for it. The pump is still dismantled as I know we aren’t done with the freezing thing yet. I hadn’t watered in there in ages and it was a dust storm while I was tilling. Anyways, had enough compost to add to half the area, watered it in really well and planted some cold stuff. Carrots, beets, lettuces, onions, broccoli, spinach, and cauliflower. Felt good to get dirty again. I think this year I am going to focus more on a smaller garden and go more for quality than quantity. Last year was just a full time job trying to keep up with it.
 
Rain, rain, rain. In the greenhouse, which is heated, I've planted tomatoes (three big pots of two plants each) and cucumbers (two big pots, several in each: thinning is hard for me). And salad greens in a cement mixing tub from Home Depot. We eat the salad greens regularly. Keep watching for aphids, though. They don't bother lettuce or spinach or beet greens much but anything cabbagy, they do get on. Darn it, because Chinese cabbage and kale and such make great salad greens. I'm not gardening organic, but spraying salad? Not attractive. Young leaves, though. Pick 'em, look at 'em, put them in the salad bowl.

I plan to sow another big salad tray out in the cold frame, which is semi-heated in the sense that it backs onto the greenhouse and has a heat tape inside it which I can plug in when it's around 25 or below. But lettuce and spinach and such should sprout fine in that little cold. They love cold anyway. We have gotten winter tomatoes and cucumbers from the greenhouse for years, but I find that the cukes need two things: warmth (lost the crop last winter putting them on the floor, so now they are up on the warm and sunny bench and climbing up the chickenwire I gave them) and the days to be getting longer. They pretty much won't thrive if sown much before the winter equinox. And for that matter, cucumbers in the summer garden are not happy if sown when the days get shorter, say after the summer equinox. Darn cucumbers. You'd think they'd be easy.
 
I should start some tomatoes inside soon too. I love a cucumber, tomato and onion salad. Been too long without it now. I could heat the greenhouse but don’t see the cost benefit being worthwhile. One of these days I may build an insulated glass greenhouse small enough to be worth keeping heated. It would be nice to grow all year.
 
Brent S said:
I should start some tomatoes inside soon too. I love a cucumber, tomato and onion salad. Been too long without it now. I could heat the greenhouse but don’t see the cost benefit being worthwhile. One of these days I may build an insulated glass greenhouse small enough to be worth keeping heated. It would be nice to grow all year.
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The wife and I have been going back and forth over whether we're going to heat the new greenhouse. We haven't decided if we'd go with wood or propane heat yet. Even if we heated the greenhouse, don't the plants still need a certain amount of sunlight to grow? We plan to use the greenhouse mostly in the late Fall and early Spring, which can have a lot of overcast days.
 
Arcticdude said:
The wife and I have been going back and forth over whether we're going to heat the new greenhouse. We haven't decided if we'd go with wood or propane heat yet. Even if we heated the greenhouse, don't the plants still need a certain amount of sunlight to grow? We plan to use the greenhouse mostly in the late Fall and early Spring, which can have a lot of overcast days.
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No doubt the sun is a factor along with temperatures. Even this can be gotten around with grow lights. Unfortunately, pot seems to be the only plant worth enough to justify the electric bill! Tomatoes just don’t sell for enough..... now if you could cross a tomato with some vodka you might have a product to sell....
 
I know of a couple people up north who heats their greenhouse during the winter months. One even said she heats hers by building a fire, putting rocks in it and then placing the hot rocks around the plants to heat. She did say she had to switch out when the rocks got cooled off. Not sure how effective this was for her, as I didn't really ask questions at the time. I would think you should still be able to grow a pretty descent crop even with an overcast. As long as you get some sun throughout the day. I've never had to garden up north, but I would be more concerned about the temp. You can always try it once to see how it goes.
 
Brent S said:
No doubt the sun is a factor along with temperatures. Even this can be gotten around with grow lights. Unfortunately, pot seems to be the only plant worth enough to justify the electric bill! Tomatoes just don’t sell for enough..... now if you could cross a tomato with some vodka you might have a product to sell....
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I never thought about grow lights before. Since we're on solar, electric is "free". A couple grow lights might be a good idea.
I like the way you think about crossing vodka with tomato. I'll have to do some experimentation on that.
 
As long as the snow isn't too bad, we are going to view a property today. It's nothing spectacular, a nice 3 bed 1930's semi detached property on a small housing estate up on the moorland side of the city. For what my son wants to spend, he will be buying a fixer upper, but this looks to be a bit of a gem. We've seen a couple of real stinkers over the last few weeks and we now fully understand estate agent(realtor?) jargon!!:rolleyes:
It's the next step to improving prepping. Owning rather than renting means I can help my son get a more self reliant lifestyle up and running and in turn, insulate him from much gooberment daftness.
 
Arcticdude said:
I never thought about grow lights before. Since we're on solar, electric is "free". A couple grow lights might be a good idea.
I like the way you think about crossing vodka with tomato. I'll have to do some experimentation on that.
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Well, oranges and vodka came to mind first but growing citrus in the N West might be more of a challenge than getting a plant to naturally produce alcohol....
 
We retrofit a lot of parking lot lights to LED now and get lots of 1000w bulbs and ballasts that are still in working shape. I may set a few aside for the greenhouse. They can even be used as a heat source overnight as they do put out a lot of heat. The downside to that would be needing a battery system too. If you just ran them in the day the panels would supply them directly. Scratch that. It just occurred to me that low voltage can affect the ballasts and lamps. It would be better to run them through batteries for more stable voltage. I’m thinking about cloudy days and such when the panels may not be putting out as much.
 
Ordered 450rnd of 5.56 55gr NATO, 6 15rnd S&W magazine, 5 Colt Commander mags and 4 15rnd Ruger mag. Also picked 10 pack magpul 30rnd gen 3 mag

The IMI was on sale $109 for 450rnds, the S&W mag was $18ea the damn Ruger mags though $35 ea. never find them on sale. The package deal were $68.90 for the magpul, $14ea for the Colt mag

Forgot mention, picked 3 boxes of 1000 215 primers
 
Mavs post above inspired me to get two extra magazines today. Not a big prep, but it’s probably smart to have at least two mags for each firearm. I will say that while at the counter it was really hard to resist the urge to get the stainless ruger target pistol I was eyeballing. I have enough toys already.
 
Brent S said:
Mavs post above inspired me to get two extra magazines today. Not a big prep, but it’s probably smart to have at least two mags for each firearm. I will say that while at the counter it was really hard to resist the urge to get the stainless ruger target pistol I was eyeballing. I have enough toys already.
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I have a few new ones myself. I was pretty tempted to buy 1000 rounds instead of 500, but I already had a good bit.

The gun/pawn store had a LOT of really cool guns I’d love to have. I saw a long barreled 357 magnum in stainless I really liked. They liked it as well. It’s like an adult toy store,

They also had 9mm blemished rounds for 6 cents each as well. Looked like the blemish part was that the brass wasn’t shiny.
 
WGregMiller said:
I have a few new ones myself. I was pretty tempted to buy 1000 rounds instead of 500, but I already had a good bit.

The gun/pawn store had a LOT of really cool guns I’d love to have. I saw a long barreled 357 magnum in stainless I really liked. They liked it as well. It’s like an adult toy store,

They also had 9mm blemished rounds for 6 cents each as well. Looked like the blemish part was that the brass wasn’t shiny.
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Reloads are a good option for saving some money too. There is a huge company here in Ga that does reloading on a large scale. Georgia something or another..... I’ve targeted with lots of them and never had any issue.
 
WGregMiller said:
I have the equipment and supplies to reload several of my rounds.

I’m calling the extra 500 rounds ‘brass stock’. Hey, it worked.....
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Something I’ve wanted to learn about and considered doing for a while now.
 
jontte said:
just learned a small lesson;get some meds for eye infection,not that I have,but got a call from son who has,didn't like the feeling
when I couldn't help,in shtf it can be even more difficult.
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There are many minor illnesses that we can cure with a simple trip to a pharmacy or walk in clinic today that would become major problems during an emergency.
 
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