Mother

Trudy. I hope your day will be super!

That link brought back lots of memories. A GREAT tutorial. Westy had a wealth of knowledge on so many many subjects and was a super asset to Mrs. S. I still miss her. By the way, what IS your sourdough’s name.

Thanks Annarchy.. That is basically the same one I use but for some reason I couldn’t get my mind together to do specific directions. The last ten years I have been living and baking gluten free and have been using sorghum flour for making sourdough but I’m finding it more useful for pancakes than bread. With no gluten for the yeast to ‘loft’ I have to use xanthan gums to get a really good rise and I’m not crazy about it. I have been experimenting with gelatins and various flours with varying degrees. The good thing about this though is the possibility of using wild flours like acorn, seeds, dock, amaranth, or cattail as a substitute. I haven’t attempted sourdough with any of the wild flour but I’ve been thinking about it.

Homey, I LOVE that suggestion.

I’m sure you can buy it online. I know that Cultures for Health (.com) has it. Amazon most likely. Natural Grocers, Fresh Thyme stores, or other places where they sell health market items would have it as well. I believe I saw it recently at our HyVee grocery store recently in their health market section. I haven’t bought it in years as I always make my own.

it seems the ‘food dictocrats’ are alive and well in France as well as the US.

Thanks, Homey. It was back again last night and dug up the only area not covered which was plants. Grrrrrr. Might have to go with baskets or milk crates to cover plants or live trap whatever it is and remove it. We live on the edge of fields and wooded areas though so I’m sure we will need to find a more permanent solution

Here’s another might give you ideas. https://www.mrssurvival.com/topic/56504-contingency-preps/#comment-481953

Start with reading this one while I look further. https://www.mrssurvival.com/topic/56865-inside-winter-gardening/#comment-489309

Certainly but let me check to see if there’s already info here on it. If not I’ll start a new thread so as not to hy-jack this one.

The wooden planters are just deck boards and 4x4 frames with two heavy duty totes in them. The totes have drains that can be hooked to hoses. When I get my worms in them they will become combo planter/worm farm. I will be able to tuck peelings etc into them and use the resulting worm tea that will drain out the bottom as fertilizer for pots and etc while the worm castings feed the plants in that bed. The excess worms could be fed to chickens if we get them, fed to wild birds that eat bugs to naturally control unwanted ones, or put into the ground soil to enrich it. Or so my theory goes. We are already having critters (raccoon we suspect) digging into the beds so will have to stop that before adding worms. The worms probably will not survive our winters so we will bring a start for next year inside to a worm garden there. We will use the tote lids to cover the beds during the winter to make sure the nutrients aren’t leached from the soil from rain and melting snows and they should be ready to plant early in the spring again with very little work. The totes, if needed, can easily be emptied, removed, and replaced. We also have two large commercial self watering raised grow bed that you can see near the ramp and various sizes of containers, three ‘Grow Boxes’ and various containers and pots. It’s amazing how much you can get on an 8’ x 30’ deck and still have room to set. It is a pretty ambitious project for us so we’ll see how it goes.

You can make your own sour dough starter with or without yeast. The only thing the boughten starter does is give you a specific culture for a specific taste. There are lots of recipes and instructions online. I use simply water from boiling potatoes, flour to make a thin batter and a very small amount of sugar to feed the yeast as they start to grow. Set in a warmish place (I set mine right on the counter) and cover with a cheese cloth or porous material and let it work. Each day stir in more flour and water until you have a bubbly slightly sour smelling ‘starter’. Be sure to check online for specific recipes as there are a lot of really good ways to make it.

Joyfilled, you are the perfect gardener for sprouts and regrow veggies not to mention hydroponics or aquaponics. No dirt involved unless you grow microgreens and even then their are soilless mediums you can use and even grow pads. I love gardening. I love putting my fingers through the dirt and watching the tiny plants emerge in almost miraculous birth. But I almost always have a jar of sprouts growing on the kitchen sink or the root end of celery, lettuce, and dozen’s more sitting in small cups of water on a windowsill. You don’t have to get dirty to garden and while you probably won’t produce enough to can or freeze (except perhaps with hydro or aqua phonics) the fresh foods added to a meal give the same satisfaction.

Joyfilled Redhead This sounds like the routine followed by many people in the past. There were many reasons why it worked so well. Men often had more strength and we’re more able to watch for dangers while doing outside work. Women often were nursing or caring for young children, easier to do inside. Today, with the necessity of both men and women to work outside the home, has both doing any of the work. Today it makes sense to divide the work according to abilities. You and your family have done that and have created a true survival team. 👍

Stephanie. I hope your day was super!

The old vax was discontinued after realizing that if a person had had Lyme they got seriously Ill with the vaccine. Hopefully this new one will come with less problems. What I don’t understand is why there is an effective vaccine for dogs and not people. There are also fairly affordable and effective treatments for dogs even if they have had it long term. Not so humans.

UPDATE: We finally have my handicapped deck farm up and going though there are still things to do, like move piles of soil and various building supplies. We also still need to put steps in on one end and the railing needs to be painted for those and the ramp and installed.

I might mention climate change as a causative factor in ALL our struggles. I believe it has an effect on us and our plants alike. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Even if these confirmed cases are at the lowest of their category that’s still over seventy confirmed cases and 19 suspected cases. I’m glad they are following the changes. I wonder, though, how many other diseases they are following that show similar changes. Lyme disease comes to mind. There are 476,000 new cases each year in the US alone and it is now believed that over 2 million people world wide suffer from post-treatment Lyme disease in over 80 countries with the suggestion that it might be spreading via other vectors including (possibly) human to human. Admittedly I am probably biased because of being one of those sufferers but I see no WHO or media concern about the changes Lyme is making.

Joyfilled Redhead. I’m so glad you finally got to post. I think it’s great you are interested in prepping like your Mom. My daughter isn’t on but she preps too and lives just ‘up the road’ . It’s nice for us to work together.

Thankfully I still have an old but working computer has USB, floppy, AND CD capabilities but it’s definitely time consuming to transfer my old ones as I have tons of them.

What a wonderful find, Darlene. We have an Amish community in our area but they have been here only a couple of years. They have a home bakery and a small bulk food store but no greenhouse yet. We have greenhouses in the area but they mostly focus on bedding plants and flowers. Congratulations on getting a head start on your veggie and fruit preps. I truly believe we all need to be doing what we can to get there.

Ambergris. Thank you for tracking this for us. Following your posts gives us a look at the spread of the virus. While it isn’t unusual to have cases and even small clusters of cases around the world each year this appears to becoming more of a concern to officials. I’m wondering why. It would be unlikely it would become pandemic unless it has mutated beyond it’s beginnings. We haven’t heard that yet.

Jo.

it seems that a previous small pox vaccine will offer protection from Monkeypox. https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/clinicians/smallpox-vaccine.html