Believing in Tomorrow

When I started my garden the plan was for a 16 x 32 foot fenced-in area and it was going to be primarily straw bales. I ordered my seeds from a seed store about 20 miles away from me. I was super excited when my order arrived. And then I opened it to find someone…

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How are you doing out there?

Are you hanging in? I’m on self-isolation as much as possible, however my job is considered essential, so I’m still working a little bit. Like everyone else I’m going to be feeling this for a long time. Which means my little victory garden is super important as is planning out what I’m eating and sticking…

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I don’t know what I was expecting.

When I started down the road of using up Mom’s prepper pantry I had no clue what was coming. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t this.   Before I get to that, though, a quick update on how I fared the first two months that I had going before everything…

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Workshop Wednesday⁠—Pressure canner rebuild

In addition to the massive amounts of dehydrating I’ve done over the years I also do some home canning. Since moving home after my mom passed last year I’ve been trying to make use of her dream kitchen that she designed specifically to make canning easier and more efficient. There’s a huge island, five burner…

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Dehydrating food: Mushrooms

I had some stew beef that I canned last winter that I wanted to use up, so on the way home from work yesterday I stopped and got a few things to make beef stroganoff. My local grocer had several packs of sliced shiitake mushrooms on sale for stupid cheap. Thankfully I have my dehydrator…

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Workshop Wednesday—I’m not going to Mars

Lately I’ve been listening to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks due to lots of solo time at work. One subject I’m stuck on, not surprising to anyone who knows me well, is space and space travel. Today I was working on some back episodes of StarTalk and listened to an interview with Dr. Mae…

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Workshop Wednesday—Leclerc Meco Restoration

The last few years I’ve been learning various new crafting and making skills—fiber spinning is a big one since that fits with the knitting I’ve been doing for years. I’d been thinking of weaving, but one of the roadblocks was the cost of a quality loom. I’d been keeping an eye out for a used…

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Moving forward

About two weeks ago I went to New Orleans for an Ingress Anomaly. I’d planned to stop and visit with Ranger and Halo’s breeder, but Mother Nature decided it would be better to rain on her place and make it impossible to have any real fun or allow the dogs to play around. So instead…

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Drying food: Banana “jerky”

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like raw bananas. Put them in bread and you’re on. I also don’t like the fried-then-dried ones from the store. Then I found the dried mini bananas at Trader Joe’s. The only problem is the price. So I figured out my own version of…

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