Friday Roundup

Aren't you proud of me? Here it is Friday, and I'm actually putting up a Friday Roundup! On a Friday!

Friday Roundups (regardless of what day they're posted) are posted so we can all check in on what steps we've taken, big or small, to inch us incrementally toward greater preparedness.

Since it's winter and outdoor work is limited, our Friday Roundups have been modest lately, but here goes:

• I wrote a WND column on why prepping is still important despite Hillary's defeat.

• A bunch of us teamed up to help get a neighbor's vehicle out of the snow (no photos, sorry). March roared in like a lion with 30 mph winds and snow, which built drifts three and four feet high across our road. Neighbors got together with a snobmobile, shovels, snow blowers on a tractor, and finally a bulldozer to get the road cleared. Community, the third leg of preparedness!

• I did a webinar with The Survival Mom as part of her Prepper's University "Advanced Intensive" series. The subject, of course, was homesteading and self-reliance.

• As a continuing process of decluttering our house, I took some of the accumulated discarded papers...

...and got about half of them burned in the burn barrel.

Some of the stuff we had packed away was absurd. A wall calendar from 1998? Oh puh-lease.

We probably had 150 lbs. of old papers to burn. Didn't get to all of them, but it's a start.

• Our wood cookstove started smoking and not drawing properly. We suspected the stovepipe was due for a major cleanout. We just didn't realize how bad it was.

Earlier, a reader asked why we didn't burn the purged papers in the cookstove. The reason is because it builds up ash in the pipe like crazy.

Cleaning the stove is dirty, but obviously necessary.

And once it's cleaned out, there's no finer way to both cook and heat the house than a wood cookstove, in my opinion.

• I went through the girls' old doll clothes, which had just been tucked in an open-topped box and so had mice poo on them. I washed everything (including some of the cloth dolls) and scrubbed down the plastic dolls. I'll pack everything away in a mouse-proof crate after this. Some of these dolls' clothes were made by my mother with the girls were young. Others I wore when I was an infant, or when the girls were infants. Preserving childhood treasures is, we feel, important.

• I tentatively -- and that's tentatively -- plan to be at the Self-Reliance Expo in Denver in September. That's tentative ... or did I say that already?

So that's our roundup over the last two weeks. What has everyone else done, big or small, to increase self-sufficiency?

Friday roundup

I honestly meant to put this post up yesterday (Friday) but it turned into a surprisingly busy day, so sorry about that.

Friday Roundups (regardless of what day they're posted) are so we can all check in on what steps we've taken, big or small, to inch us incrementally toward greater preparedness. Since it's winter and outdoor work is limited, our Friday Roundups have been pretty pathetic lately, but here goes:

• We had our regular Friday neighborhood potluck (it was our turn to host). It was full house this time -- five families, 14 people total -- and we had a lovely visit. I know I've said it again and again, but I can't help it: we are blessed with wonderful neighbors. These weekly potlucks we've had for the past eight years are a cement that has bound us together in ways that are hard to describe.

Some people in our group are experiencing serious health issues, so as spring unfolds we'll be pulling together and pitching in on chores and tasks that need doing while they recuperate. It's what neighbors do. It's the third leg of preparedness -- community.

• Another of these neighbors experienced a first: making elderberry jelly. She has an elderberry bush in her yard and had frozen much of the fruit, so this week she decided to try her hand, for the first time, at making jelly. It worked and she was thrilled. Food preservation -- a good thing to know!

• This same neighbor and I signed up to attend a gardening seminar in March. Among the classes offered are pruning and permaculture. I don't know much about either subject, so it will help to increase our knowledge.

• I learned a tasty new way to cook legumes (specifically lentils). Since legumes are one of the best prepper foods available (cheap, nutritious, versatile), having attractive ways to prepare them is important.

• I took Lydia to the vet. She's coming up on eight years old, and suddenly started limping and lifting her left front paw. Turned out to be arthritis, so she's on some temporary anti-inflammatories, as well as more permanent glucosamine/chondroitin. If her antics and energy levels are anything to go by, she's feeling like a puppy again. The vet confirmed she's in excellent health.

• I made curtains to cover the clutter in the pantry, which is right off the living room. (Don't worry, Don intends to install barnwood trim to hide the curtain rod.)

I absolutely love how these curtains look. I keep stopping to admire them. As the artist William Morris once observed, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." These curtains fulfill both those requirements.

• Along the lines of figuring out what's "useful," I'm continuing the slow but steady purge of unneeded things in the house. I am floored by the amount of paperwork we had cluttering up corners and shelves. I emptied four file cabinet drawers...

...which allowed me to take all our remaining tax paperwork we must retain...

...and fit it neatly into the file drawers. Whoo-hoo, no more big honkin' banker's boxes taking up closet space!

• I also emptied TEN binders of paperwork (old articles, writings, clippings, seminars, workshops, etc.), some of which were 20 years old. Why on earth was I holding on to this stuff?

I kept a couple of the empty binders and donated the rest to a thrift store.

• I also took a trip down memory lane and purged our extensive collection of children's books.

Now before my kids see this post and FREAK OUT, rest assured I kept all our beloved childhood classics. We have a rich treasure-trove of excellent children's books, and I have no intention of discarding them.

What I got rid of were books they never had much interest in, or duplicates, or are so commonly available that holding onto copies was pointless (don't worry, I kept every Dr. Seuss book). You know how much all the discarded books weighed? Sixty pounds.

• I also took a good hard look at our collection of DVDs.

I withdrew the movies I thought no one was interested in. Then I had both Don and Younger Daughter hold back ones they wanted to keep.

In the end I got rid of 75 DVDs. SEVENTY-FIVE. How on earth did we accumulate 75 superfluous DVDs? The answer: thrift stores. Friends. Freebies. We kept the movies we thoroughly enjoy watching over and over (ahem: Jane Austen) and donated the rest.

• Don also took a dump run. We have no garbage service around here, and during the icy weather we couldn't take the farm truck on the road (too dangerous). Now the accumulated garbage is gone, leaving a feeling of "Aaaahhh."

So that's been our roundup over the last two weeks. What has everyone else done, big or small, to increase self-sufficiency?

Nice surprises

One of the pleasant side-effects of my ongoing purging efforts in the house is finding books we own but had forgotten about. Such is the case with this thin anonymous black album.

Turns out to be a book called "Young Bess," about Queen Elizabeth I's younger years, no doubt purchased at some long-ago library sale.

It was printed in 1945 and, as the inside page gravely informs me, it was printed "in full compliance with the government's regulations for conserving paper and other essential materials."

Regardless, it's turning into a fascinating read. I've always been enamored of English Medieval and Renaissance history anyway, so this rainy day finds me holed up with a good book, a nice surprise.

Friday Roundup

Here's our weekly "Friday" Roundup (okay, I know it's Sunday) in which we list whatever we did during the week, big or small, that inched us toward increased self-sufficiency or self-reliance. Keeping in mind it's still very snowy (limiting what we can accomplish outdoors), here's what we did:

• Don chaired the community crab feed, held on Saturday. It was a ton of work (largely because he had such short notice) but it went well.

There were moments he had to grit his teeth and remember "community" is the third leg of preparedness's three-legged stool. Nonetheless he was impressed by how many people pitched in to help, including donating items to the auction held after the dinner. Despite the workload and the short notice, it's times like this when we realize how fortunate we are to live in a community that's responsive, engaged, and civic-minded.

• We discussed future plans. We talked about taking a road trip to meet readers, see parts of the country, and learn what preparedness efforts others are doing; we talked about doing podcasts (suggestions for topics are always welcome); we talked about writing options and opportunities. Goals are good!

• I continued my sorting, organizing, and purging, including some papers from my very young childhood.

In sorting through some childish drawings, I came across this startling example:

Under my name is the teacher's handwriting, which says "The capsule landed in the water." Since there's a "7" on the capsule, I can only assume this is from the Apollo 7 capsule which splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on October 22, 1968. I would have just turned six years old at that time. How glad I am my mother tucked this drawing away!

That's about it for us. What did everyone else do this week?

Who IS this Marie Kondo, anyway?

Since I've been "spring" (winter) cleaning the house and eradicating the unnecessary, I stumbled across someone named Marie Kondo, a tiny and exquisitely beautiful Japanese woman who apparently has become some sort of de-cluttering guru.

She's written some books which have become international sensations, such as The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up -- and yet I'd never heard of her before.

The New York Times had a fairly comprehensive article on her from last year, and endless other information is available.

Who IS this lady? Has anyone read her books or utilized her methods? In other words, what makes her different?

Forgive our messy house

I looked around at our messy house the other day and had one of those moments of despair all women experience once in awhile, to wit: "Why can't this place stay clean?"

Almost immediately I stopped that destructive train of thought, because I realized what the messiness represented: living.

The evidence?

Here are two bee suits, draped over a chair. It's because we've been working the bees a lot.

Two buckets of corn from last year's crop, which I finally got around to shelling (since this year's crop is coming up). We'll be grinding this into corn meal.

A pile of dishes and a bucket of eggs. The dishes are what I use for our neighborhood potlucks; the eggs, obviously, are the most recent hen fruit.

The chaos of construction as we make a production run of tankards for a customer.

A bucket of whole wheat flour, waiting to get moved back to the barn where we store it (hence the dirt). I brought this in to fill my indoor containers of flour. I use whole wheat for baking bread, which I do two or three times a week (yes, I cheat and use a bread machine, my faithful companion of the last twenty years).

A stack of half-inch oak, waiting to be turned into tankard bases.

A stacked of washed dishes. The kitchen is constantly in use.

I've always heard there is a difference between a house and a home. A home is a living breathing thing, always in flux to meet the needs of its family.

Now compare these photos to sample upper-end houses, where (apparently) the family meets the need of the structure instead of the other way round.

These interiors are extremely beautiful, of course. But does anyone actually live in them? Put their feet up on the coffee table? Bake some homemade macaroni and cheese in the oven? Brush the dog on the floor? Create crafts on the kitchen table? Have toys and books lying around because they were being played with or read? Nah.

As the old song goes, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."