Inchworm's cocoon - busy spinning away

[inchworm]

Hmmm. I think I need some SS goals for the year:

1. Install water storage tank in laundry room.
2. Improve drainage ditch.
3. Get rain barrels.
4. I need to identify a place for long-term food storage.
5. Rebuild our dilapidated wood shed so we can store up dry wood for the winter.
6. Expand garden to include rhubarb and blueberries.
7. Look into making jam and easy canning.

Still thinking.....

 

[modern_pioneer]

7. Look into making jam and easy canning.

I can help you with this, I can even teach you how to can meat, free can too.

As for your other goals, well you know you have to decide for yourself. I might be able to help you with #4 but really need to know more info and what you have to work with.

If I might make a suggestion, here is a book that will help you.

I have been reading it over and over for the last couple years, it answers a lot questions, as well as guides you in what you need to do for your own SS way.

 

[keljonma]

Here are some other good books to help you along...

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery

The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour

How to Store Your Garden Produce: The Key to Self-Sufficiency by Piers Warren

 

[inchworm]

Thanks! I'm ordering them from the library right now

Inchy

 

[inchworm]

Earlier this week, my darling cats left a snake on my doorstep. Thankfully, it was dead. Yesterday, I was greeted with a bat. Mentioned it to DH who said it might have rabies. I told him I thought bats having rabies was an old-wives tale. He looked it up and informed me that bats were a major carrier of rabies. So this morning I drove to the local Health Department (30 miles away--groan!) and dropped the bat off for testing. I should know the results Monday afternoon. I guess the worst scenario would be that we all have to go in for rabies shots. None of us handled the bat, but we did handle the cats who brought us the lovely prize. The cats are vaccinated, but we would all still need shots and the cats would need boosters. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[inchworm]

Well, the rabies test came back negative on Monday.

So this morning, my daughter looks out the window and shrieks that the cats are after a bluebird. I dash outside to save the bluebird, but it's not a bluebird --- it's another bat! This one is bigger and alive. I don't think anyone got bitten and the bat isn't being aggressive, just flailing around because I think the cats' claws injured a wing. I put a metal pan over it with a heavy rock on top to keep the cats from it. I'll make DH deal with it this evening when he gets home. He's a city boy and just loves it when I leave him chores like this one He'll probably make me run 30 miles to the Health Department again to get it tested.

I have lots of mosquitos and gnats and would be happy to have the bats eat them, but what are they doing out at 8 a.m.? And why are my cats able to catch them so easily?

Our water storage tank should be here tomorrow. It will probably take DH a couple of months to get it installed and hooked up. He bought some electrodes to stick into the well to sense when it is low. When the water in the well runs low, it signals the pump to turn off so we don't run the well out of water. The water tank will sit in our laundry room and store 350 gallons for our daily use. The electrodes allow it to refill at a slower pace. Hope it works out.

 

[hennypenny9]

We only have small bats around here, I wonder what kind yours are?! When we were getting a new roof put on the cabin, as they pulled off a wooden shake, there was a bat hibernating. The guys all got freaked out and wouldn't climb back up the scaffolding. So I had to go get it down, with a shoebox and my step-dad's welding gloves. I never let those roofers forget it, either! They work for my step-dad.

At least getting rabies from a transmission other than a bite is rare. Hope everything turns out!

 

[BeccaOH]

Do you have a pine tree (one where branches reach the ground) that the bats could be sleeping in? My cats climb my blue spruce like it is a ladder. They could grab a sleeping bat. And they do love to play with their prey before they kill it.

 

[lorihadams]

If you want to keep them around you could always make them a bat house. Maybe it was looking for a place to sleep?

 

[inchworm]

Bat #2 managed to escape. Of course, a couple of days later, the cats brought home bat #3.

Soon after reading Reinbeau's post on getting shingles, I started with a deep pain in my back and a sensation of a sunburn on my skin. Unlike shingles, it has spread across my back, through my hips, and down my thighs. The doctor is running a few tests, but in the meantime, I'm fairly uncomfortable and getting increasingly fatigued. Just walking out to the chicken house is starting to seem like a daunting task. I have some food stored up - enough to get us through the week, but I'll have to ask DH to go to the grocery store for me this weekend. Who knows what he'll come home with

I did manage to make 2 batches of strawberry jam. I had to put it in the freezer as I don't have a pot appopriate for canning yet. My mother canned years ago (not her favorite chore) and knowing her, she still has her canner. I suggested that I could use it, but she has yet to offer to let me borrow it -- no big surprise there. Love her dearly, but she hangs on to her stuff with a firm grip, if you know what I mean.

Radishes, lettuce, spinach, and peas are done. I have replaced them with more green beans. The duckling is growing well and the chicken mama is very devoted to it. The duckling has to live in a rabbit hutch until it's big enough to not be attacked by my bat-killing cats.

Hopefully, by the end of summer, I will have a new 25' x 3' garden bed. When they come out to fix our drainage ditch, they are going to scrape off the sod there so I can backfill it with decent soil. It is in my sunniest spot. I'm thinking about using it primarily for perenniel herbs and vegetables. Any suggestions?