Catch Up (not Ketchup)

A post with a bunch of randomness thrown together (aka "what's been going on around here").

I've been using the soap I made with my church girls. It's pretty nice, but could have used more essential oil. When I put it in I didn't measure how much I added, and the whole church kitchen smelled like lavender so strongly some of the girls had to leave the room (that, or they were just looking for an excuse to go play in the gym). Seems the scent dissipates over the curing time, so next time I'll try to add more. Wish I'd measured how much I put in . . .

The polls I put up forever ago were really interesting. I'm not too good at analyzing results scientifically, but some of us need more food storage and a bunch of us are amazingly talented! I think any of you who said you could not do anything else useful were a bit too hard on yourselves! And I'm planning to learn to knit something or maybe crochet at some point . . . (my amazing mom can do both, so I guess I better learn).

I got some non-hybrid seeds from can't remember the place in a "survival seed bank" which gave a nice variety of heirloom seeds to try out. It said it would plant a full acre garden and since I didn't need a full acre, I split the cost and the seeds with a friend in town. However, whoever put the pack together must plant in rows and not beds, because there really aren't THAT many seeds in the pack, even though there are the hundreds of seeds they say they have, 50 tomato seeds look like nothing in a packet. SO, I have ordered more seeds a la carte from another can't remember the place to supplement some of the seeds I got in the seed bank. The seed bank did come with a very nice PDF file of instructions on planting, growing, and harvesting heirloom seeds that hopefully will answer all my questions. Should be fun. I got the peas planted finally, and am planning on starting my other plants this weekend or maybe the next in the little Jiffy seed starter kit my sweet husband picked up for me while HE was in town last week. I didn't want to start them too early--I've heard to start them 8 weeks in advance, then 4 weeks, and also 2 weeks, and I'm still a good 5-6 weeks before safe transplanting time around here, so no hurry. I also got my baby gurney's replacements in the ground so hopefully they'll live this time.

We have a place to put chicks! My husband very graciously volunteered one of his big wooden boxes that is almost empty after I put "build a chick box" on his list. I just need to clean it out and put another board in the bottom of it since it had oily stuff in it like the chainsaw. So it should be a fine place for housing some chicks in the next week or so. (here's me doing the happy chicken dance--too bad you all can't see it!)

Went to the grocery store today (by myself--amazing, I know), and they have started carrying food storage stuff! Wahoo! They had a whole variety of #10 cans of freeze dried and dry goods plus buckets, lids, buckets of wheat, water barrels, etc. Very nice. I think I'll talk to the manager and make sure he keeps stocking some of that stuff. Almost bought some, but wasn't in the budget this week.

I spent a good part of this last weekend watching LDS General Conference. Some amazing messages were given--very timely. The video and audio archives are available on the LDS Church's website. Church President Thomas S. Monson, after discussing the difficult times we live in, said, "The future is as bright as your faith." Love his simple yet profound messages.

And one last note, I just this week opened a jar of pre-salmonella scare peanut butter marked "best by Jan 28 '05" (in case you can't do math in your head, that's more than 4 years ago) and it was still fine. Amazing. (And in case you're wondering, there's only one of us that likes peanut butter, so no, we do not go through it very quickly.)

And one last, last note, because I like pictures in my posts, here's one of the snow dog (kind of a puggish dog, kind of looked like the sphinx) we made when it snowed (again) last weekend. Good thing the sun came out and melted it all before that evening.

Whew. I feel better now I've updated. :) Have you bought your wheat grinder yet? If you're local or feel like a trip to the sticks, you can come try mine out--I'm sure you'll love it!