What Did You Prep This Week

Thanks, susannah755
We are still in the thick of it, future son-in-law has just left to go pick up the u-haul, then the next couple hours will be organized chaos.
My daughter has been the organizing force behind this, but she's down to her last nerve, didn't get to sleep until 2:30 am last night.
Immigrating to the USA has so much paperwork involved. All the moving boxes have to be labelled, thankfully just in general terms, and a list provided for crossing the border. She was using her smart phone to put it on a spreadsheet. Her own list has a more detailed description of what's in the boxes.

Tomorrow I start my reorganization of the condo. Yeah!!

I got the Thrive fruit variety pack from Costco. With the kids I have to always have fruit on hand. Costco has got good selection for emergency food.

This week I dehydrated 5 pounds of carrots and some apples.
Today I bought 10 pounds of onions to see how they do in the dehydrator. Next week I'll try to make a soup with them to see how nicely they rehydrate.

I also had a good karma moment and was "repaid" for previous acts of kindness, with 20 dozen 500 ml canning jars! 😀

The same people are also moving and giving away their chickens. So we are working on a chicken coop which has to be done before the weekend, when we pick up 4 hens. 😎

I wish we had a Costco close by. 🙁

Got my garbage cans and seed potatoes today! 🙂 Will have one container each of Kennebec, Superior and Russets 🙂
grown right outside our front door, the neighbourhood will be none the wiser (sneaky but for a good cause)

I got the costco stuff from costco,ca. delivered to my door! yay!

JACKPOT; dollar days at sobeys.....

Bought 2 knives at TSC. small 3 inch Gerber folding knives $7.50 ea., Alcohol swabs, and partial masks at Value village.

This week,

New shovel, Meat or Veggie Slicer, Seeds, running shoes, Leather halter for the draft cow along with a packing T for her, Foot trimmer knife, Crossbow bolts, heavy garden plastic 200 feet, can't remember if I posted it last week or not but picked up 3 1 one gallon glass fermenting (wine or vinager) jugs with fitted tops. New digging pitchfork, it works in the barn but also will do for root veggie digging. Planted in the gardens this week.

silver

10 cans CN soup

20 2 litre pop bottles of water

5 jars maple syrup(shortage this year)

6 cans fruit

barley

popcorn

nuts mixture

5 deoderant

n95 masks and surgical masks(H1N1 has mutated in India...it can now survive in warm climates)

tons more

all of the items have been put away in their hiddy hiddy spots(yes I know that is not a word but it is in me Englamish dictionary of preppers)..hiddy spots a place where hopefully no one will look for your preps in SHTF...like a hidden wall or behind dresser drawers...yes females do know how to hand a saw and hammer and power drill..pics available for anyone who would like to see what a hiddy hiddy spot is)

We got a load of straw bales in for our garden. Going to try growing in them this year. We have no soil so usually spend a fortune for dirt, which is just wrong. 😛

We received 4 chickens. Cost hubby 2 whole days to change a child's playhouse into a chicken coop. We bought feed, but the people giving us the chickens gave us a bag and a bucket full. We had to use my spare prepping buckets for chicken feed. I'll be off to the bakery tomorrow for more. And we have had our first 2 eggs. Granddaughter is beside herself with glee.

I canned carrots in an orange sauce (9 jars) and did up 8 jars of roasted veggie pasta sauce. 🙂

Today: 675mL bottles of Pantene ProV were on sale for $5.99 (Reg $11.99) at Shoppers Drug Mart. Some bottles had $4 off coupons so, I bought 12 bottles of 2 in 1 and then 6 of Shampoo and 6 of conditioner.
Total REG cost: $287.76
Total SALE cost: $143.76
MY COST: $47.76

I am a very happy woman now. I usually do not buy it because it is so expensive and then to find this deal just walking through to the pharmacy... WOWZA! And yes, I have washed my hair tonight... twice! lol
The 2in1 bottles are in our long term stock. The others we will go through eventually. My friend was able to get 4 bottles for $3.98 because she had 2 buy one get one free coupons too.

well done Mamaizzy!

We got a load of straw bales in for our garden. Going to try growing in them this year. We have no soil so usually spend a fortune for dirt, which is just wrong. 😛

We received 4 chickens. Cost hubby 2 whole days to change a child's playhouse into a chicken coop. We bought feed, but the people giving us the chickens gave us a bag and a bucket full. We had to use my spare prepping buckets for chicken feed. I'll be off to the bakery tomorrow for more. And we have had our first 2 eggs. Granddaughter is beside herself with glee.

I canned carrots in an orange sauce (9 jars) and did up 8 jars of roasted veggie pasta sauce. 🙂

HI Blue Girl

I always do some straw growing each year, its got a interesting learning curve to it.. Did you get the smaller bales (60 to 80 pds) or did you get the large bales 800 pds or so placed where you want them? The reason I am asking is because the size makes a fair amount of difference on how many years you can plant the same bale? I have been able to get up to three years worth of planting in a big bale, where I have not got one proper year with the small and then a half way planting on the small.

If you want to get more then one year out of the bales, don't follow the books recommendtion that you break them apart in the fall, of course you will need to loosen them if you are doing anything like carrots/potato's to get it all out, I don't know how you are planning on doing it, but we set them side by side with full twine on them on the outside to hold and then retwine a loose twine around the twice and cut the hard twine, it gives more room to breath and allow you to have the ability to then push dips into the tops, which are then filled with good dirt and we tend to mostly direct start in them, try and water only as much as required at the roots of the plants, don't soak the rest of the bale as it will compost much faster then you would think if you just water the whole bale at a time (I learned this the hard way).

As you said you have no dirt, do consider careful placement of where you want these bales, as if you put them in a good place and then use them and compost them in place with a bit of work, you could then box around them and make them into soil for a raised bed. I did that with a large bale one year, he had weighin them, so I know they were coming in around 850 pds of straw and I used it and then rotted it in place, with a mix of the dirt and then I mixed in so compost on the second and third years, then water really good, added more dirt on top, and several handfully of worms in the mix and let it rot down, by the next spring, we just put 2 by 10 around it and kept allowing it to go down and we have a filled 10 inch raised bed which I light fill back up each spring with use.

Picked up about 170 bricks for free (I love Kijiji) for an outdoor fireplace project...
Wow, the projects keep adding up!
Now to find the grill, a steel plate and some stovepipe.

hey Denob,
look up 16 brick rocket stove. I will be making one this week myself, might also make 2 other rocket stoves as well, since I can 🙂