Homesteader

Saying of the day (think .... who's on first base, if you're that old):

If the vaccine does not protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, and all the unvaccinated get vaccinated, who will protect the vaccinated from the vaccinated.

That sure was a lot of fun.  NOT!  Just got out of the VA hospital after four days of constant testing for low O2 blood levels. I HATE nose cannula breathing devices. Even worse, I hate being woken throughout the nights with dropping O2 levels and increased liters of O2 through the nose. 

After all that, they told me I had Lyme, Shingles, and new onset of emphysema. Nothing surprised me. However, they still can't tell me why the O2 levels are all over the place. One explanation is the auto-immune meds I take for psoriasis arthritis. They're hard on the lungs.  I think I have four different medical departments calling me within the next week. Thankfully, I talked them out of bringing home O2 tanks. I will do any kind of exercise just to bring back my health.  

I still haven't figured out why they gave me cholesterol and blood pressure scripts. Both of those are well within normal numbers. They will be set aside in my medicine cabinet until it can be proven it's necessary. I even had to take a Covid test in ER because I had shortness of breath. Everything came out negative. 

I have to say that the VA hospital was a great experience. I think I went through about 9 intense tests in those four days. It's a good exercise on the health of so many human organs. I would have enjoyed more interaction with more of the patients but I ended up in isolation due to shingles.    I certainly expected to be discharged sooner, but the VA is not run by private insurance companies who have you pushed out the door in record times.  

They couldn't get blood draws the last day. The veins kept rolling on the techs. I kept telling them I didn't have much to drink because food/water was withheld most of the time those four days due to tests and possible procedures on the horizon. They finally let me go, but I had lots of bandages on my arm in an attempt to extract blood from a dehydrated patient.    Can't wait to get my strength back so I can tour the garden. It's so good to be home. 

Dang, my weight is down to what I was while playing intercollegiate sports 40 years ago. I sure wish I had some of that energy back, though.    After the Shingles clear up, I can go back to the health club on a regular basis. Having everything closed down due to Covid certainly causes so many other diseases to flair up and kill people besides that virus. 

 I noticed a few weeks ago that I was getting winded carrying trays of food up to my mom upstairs. Gardening was getting more difficult as I carried bowls of produce up to the house. I talked to several doctors and they suggested I head to ER and get checked. Instead of getting checked out, I got checked in.   They said it was easier to get the battery of tests while in-house instead of dragging out a diagnosis over a couple of weeks.

They kept bugging me to breathe deeper and finally put O2 on me in the evening. Now I know why mama hated her cannula and long hose.   lots of heart and lung tests today. Not sure if I can go home. Tomorrow is DH'S birthday. I shouldn't have procrastinated on that card.  

Oh yeah. My bothersome rash turns out to be shingles. Now everyone comes into my room with lots of garb on. I feel like I am on the Covid unit.  

Canned 4 quarts of green beans last night. I can't seem to get into any kind of a rhythm since my mom's funeral this week. Just when I think I'll tackle something, I go take a nap instead.      Part of the problem may be the Lyme's disease, or just exhaustion from the past few years of caring for mama. Either way, I have lots of canning to do and DH needs to start cutting down some trees for firewood. We're about 3 months behind, but do have a year's worth of stacked and dried wood in the shed. Mama used to ask why we have so much wood. This year is the prime example.

10 quarts of green beans earlier this week and approx 10 quarts of tomato juice today. I don't like heating up so much water on the stove for waterbathing so I just pressure cook them based on what the Ball book or county extensions recommend. I am hoping to do a few pints of dilly beans and basil pesto this weekend. Thankfully, I didn't plant much this year as mama was declining so quickly. Even what is ripening seems overwhelming. Thankfully, much of it was perennial and come back faithfully next year.

If you want good advice, look for links in YouTube from County Extensions or Universities. Otherwise you will get 150 different answers from 100 different backyard beekeepers. Dar is a good resource too.

We generally keep back around 80 # of honey each year to feed back to the bees. It gets really cold up north and they can eat through the stores very quickly. Since we don't sell the honey, we just let them eat their own honey in the winter. Otherwise, we would make candy boards for them, too.  

4 hours ago, Littlesister said:

I am hoping to have enough pint canning jars for when I make soups, I was canning them in quarts as that was just enough for 2 people, I will need to make more before long and want to do the pints for just me. 

With the shortage of lids, you might want to rethink canning in pint jars. Yes, a quart jar is a lot of food, but just pull out what you need each day and have a few meals from just one canning jar lid. 

47 minutes ago, Mt_Rider said:

She's up and disappeared suddenly and a cranky, selfish person has taken up residence. 

Our long-term hospice nurse said that mom was getting 'sassy' with me.     Sometimes I'd just go out to the garden and rip a few weeds out by their necks. Seemed to be good therapy. 

It was a sad week this past week. I had been sleeping on the floor at my mom's new assisted living apartment just down the road. She had gotten so bad, I couldn't care for her anymore (6 aides and a chef replaced me) . The social worker is a very wise woman. She asked me if I wanted to be the 'daughter' once again. I said Yes!. The private facility where we placed my mom is brand new. It's state of the art and CNA's are trying to get a job there. They are very particular and hire very compassionate and trained people. They took care of all her physical and medical needs, and I was able to spend each day by her side being her daughter once again.

Well, mom only lasted three weeks and passed away two days ago. Either my brother or myself were there full-time the past week. We switched places on the living room floor and talked mom into taking her meds. She thought the staff was poisoning her with the pills. She went psychotic and paranoid on us. I am so thankful she didn't turn on my brother or me. She always knew a familiar voice and would follow our commands, except one time when she stuck out her tongue at us.    Bro and I would argue at the end of her bed as to who was the most favorite child. Towards the end, she could only grunt or moan, but we knew we made her laugh on the inside. 

Wow. Caregiving isn't for sissies. I don't recommend it for everybody, but God gave us the grace to care for mom the last 1.5 years in our home. DH was awesome. He kept picking up the pieces and kept everything tweaked and humming around here, including new central air and a new 40' deck this past year to keep mom busy and comfortable. He's the best. 

We have a quick turn-around on the funeral. Grandchildren are in town for a baby shower. They agreed to stay for the funeral on Monday.  Everything is in place except a hole hasn't been dug at the cemetery yet.   It seems the city worker who makes that decision is in Canada. The gravedigger said if he could get permission on Monday morning to start digging, he would be ready for the funeral in early afternoon. What a guy!!  If not, mom goes back into the refrigerator until there's a hole to receive her body.

I have SO MUCH to do for paperwork. Everything has been set-aside the past few months. I barely keep up with a few things in the garden. I guess I'm thankful I didn't have the time to plant like in past years. It won't be so overwhelming this Autumn. I did ask mom several weeks ago if she would help me snap some beans like I've done for her the past 60 years. She just grunted at me. 

Yes, hubby flew into there and then 15 hr cross country trip. We installed radio stations. 

Copied and pasted from a post in FOX online. Since only 1-2% are actually reported, we are in deep doo doo.  

"VAERS data released Friday by the CDC showed a total of 595,622 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 13,068 deaths and 81,050 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and Aug. 13, 2021."

We worked in many African countries in the west. Would you care to divulge which country she is in?

9 hours ago, Annarchy said:

She enjoyed it, said she felt terrible, her arm hurt so much she couldn’t move it and didn’t want to get off the couch.

Our Hospice nurse ended up with a frozen shoulder after her second injection. Spent weeks at the chiro trying to get some nighttime relief from the pain. She left the medical world several weeks ago. Such a huge loss to the hospice patients in our area.    We're seeing more and more burn-out from those we cross paths with. My niece went after a religious exemption and received it. They told her that she would have to continue to wear her mask at the hospital. She laughed and said that they were too.  

We had to tweak mom's psychotic and pain meds at the assisted living facility last night. She wakes up and starts yelling when family isn't there. She thinks they are poisoning her with her meds. We backed off all meds except pain and psychotic ones. They added a morphine patch and all pills are now being crushed and given with a water in the side of her mouth. Thankfully, I have a friend who just went through this with her husband. She keeps me ahead of what's coming in the next phase. It helps me and gives her a feeling of helpfulness in the midst of grief. That's how God works in the church body.

I am hoping to get some green beans canned today. I carve out time here and there to prep the garden food and then look at all the food getting backed up in the refrig, ready to process. 

I am working on snapping green beans and canning them today. Need to clean a bucket of peppers and get them dried. May try powdering them today. Found out that Madison is back to mandatory indoor masks, starting today. It may spread north if we allow them to continue to fudge the numbers.  . I keep getting emails from the VA in response to the disastrous pull out in Afghanistan. We must be having Gulf War veterans coming unglued with PTSD. I've never seen so many attempts at stop-gapping a coming tsunami.  

I found a few boxes of these lids in both regular and wide-mouth. Made in China.    I took several boxes of both as I can use them for dry goods and honey. At the same store yesterday, it said on a new sign that those lids HAVE to be use with the Country Classics canning jars.     Sure glad I didn't make an investment in them.  

I read in the news yesterday that the City of Brotherly Love (Philly) will require all employees to wear TWO masks if they want to keep their jobs.   

There's a great research story about experiments done in the 1950's and decades beyond, using the same set up. (Peak Prosperity, Dr. Mortensen, YouTube). It talks about a rat that's put in a metal cage. Every once in awhile an electric shock is administered. The rat jumps and runs around the cage. Then it settles down and goes back to eating or sleeping. This continues for quite awhile. The rat never knows where the pain is coming from. Then another rat is introduced to the cage. After awhile the first rat thinks the shocks are somehow related to the second rat. It begins to attack the second rat every time the shock is administered. He never thinks to see if it's the researcher that's pushing all the buttons. 

The moral of the story? It's not the people around you that are the problem. It's the conditioning from above that's turning us onto each other i.e. politicians, big pharma, doctors, and social media story scrubbers.  If it was put into a spiritual realm, it's satan stirring up God's little darlings to turn on each other ... us.

I am thankful I live in the boonies, away from the crazies. They are closing in on us though, and freedoms will continue to be eroded away at lightning speed. Keep your pantries full and your bills empty. 

7 hours ago, Jeepers said:

Plenty of cast iron cookware. They even have their own brand with their name embossed on the bottom. It looked really nice. Probably a really nice price tag too. 

Thanks for the update! We installed a cell site within an hour of them (MANY) years ago, so I popped in and fell in love with them.      Thanks for the update.

I try not to get caught buying anything from China. It's probably too late for our #1 economy in the world, but I will go down with a fight.    I would like several more iron skillets, but struggle with the one that I have.     I need to get back to the gym.  

This guy blew my mind. He's tops in so many different areas, and writes peer review articles for major US medical publications. Listen to how he hits the nail on the head!! No one wants to talk therapeutic drugs but only want to discuss the 'shot'.

The testimony in front of the Texas State HHS is second to none. 

I have been saying for months, "If I ever have the opportunity to meet Trump, I only want to ask him him one question. Why did you ever give that doctor the mic?"

MtRider - 2 weeks ago, DH graciously shared his cold with me. Men aren't too careful when they hack all over the house. Thankfully, I was able to keep mama from getting it. With her COPD, it probably would have her singing angelic songs in no time. Then they would have blamed it on C Vid.

Yesterday, I went down to the VA hospital ER and had them check out a deer tick wound. Came back with a diagnosis of Lymes Disease and a bottle of antibiotics. Will have to drink lots more smoothies and eat pounds of yogurt in the next 2 weeks.   

Been a rough day today. Just have not felt good and thinking it is one of the meds for B/P doctor put me on. Will be calling him tomorrow about it.

Same thing happened to DH. They changed meds several times, and the strengths. Adding the water pill may have complicated things. Be sure to take your time when working with new drugs. I do get motivated, though, when you guys post what you've done. 

On 7/27/2021 at 3:26 PM, Littlesister said:

I do store most of my seeds in the freezer and so far no issues. But have found some that DH must have put on his bench and forgot about. They are from 2019. I am going to try them out next spring to see if they do anything. Not counting on it as the garage gets hot and they were on his bench out there. To late now to plant them. But are stored in freezer now for next year. Just hope they work but not counting on it.

Place 10 seeds in a wet paper towel. Count how many sprout after a few days. That will give you the percent that's needed to calculate your yield. Parsnips are only 50% even when bought in the same year.   

On 6/30/2021 at 1:51 PM, Annarchy said:

Hope you have a wonderful trip, Jeepers.

 

 

  New AC is installed!!!  It’s cool in the house!

 

The appointment was scheduled for 8 am, they showed up just after 7, asking if they could get to work.  Definitely!  Crane was scheduled between 10:30-11, it showed up at 8:30!  I am very impressed with the company’s promptness, quality and efficiency of their work.  Completely installed & turned on by 10 am, including a new thermostat.  Yeah, we bit the bullet and got a Bosch 3.5 ton heat pump, bigger, energy efficient unit, but, if it keeps the house cool, when it’s over 105°F, it will be worth every penny.  All the other companies proposed replacing our unit with a similar sized unit & charging, just about, what we paid to get the one we chose.  
 

OH!  WOW! It is after noon, over 100° out… and it just turned off!!!    The old unit stayed on 99% of the day.  
 

 

See if you can get a rebate from your utility company. Our heat pump system allowed a $750 rebate check. It arrived today. Love our system. So quiet and efficient. It will also heat the place down to 30 F ambient temperature very efficiently. That's easier than trying to get a draft from the woodburner chimney.  😉

I was reading about the breakdown of some of the latest stimulus package. A total of $3 BILLION dollars was allocated to marketing the jab. I was shocked beyond belief. As a marketing major, I find that this has gone way beyond medicine and science. I see the ads all the time as I walk past mom's sitting room during the ads on tv.   

When I left the farm store last week, there was a table with hundreds of hand sanitizers sitting on it. The sign said "FREE". I didn't take any, and they can't seem to get rid of them these days. I try to be careful around others, and am uncomfortable after leaving a place, I use my sanitizer in the car. This virus sure changed my shopping habits. I have more money in our savings account to buy what the old homestead needs. Too bad the lumber prices are through the roof.