Bread and Buckets

I've been buying buckets from a local bakery, washing them and then filling them with flour, sugar, rice, etc.  I need to stop by and get some more for cornmeal, and more flour.  All of my dry goods are in the freezer to keep the  bugs out of the bags, so once I have the buckets, I'll transfer them, and free up space in the freezer for meat.

I neglected to fill my sugar cansisters before dumping all of the remaining bag of sugar into the bucket.  I had to break out my handy dandy bucket opener to fill the jar today.  And guess what?!  The sugar bucket was on the bottom of the stack.  Which meant I had to move 75 lbs of dry goods to reach it (sigh).

I've been taking orders for bread.  My special this week is 2 - 12 inch loaves of bread and a jar of jelly (your choice of strawberry, grape, prickly pear and now apple). 

PD#1 turns 14 tomorrow.  I cannot believe it.  My little girl is growing so fast..  It's kind of scary. 

We've been busy here, doing our normal preparations.  I know I am not a hard core prep blogger, but that is because we live it every day, and am not just putting things by "just in case".  Our "just in case" is here.  The economy is so bad, and money so tight, that I don't go to the grocery store except every other month IF that...Tonight for dinner we had rice, with ground beef, canned corn, homemade bread, homemade apple crisp with vanilla pudding, and iced tea.  All from everything here in the pantry/freezer.  It feels pretty good to be able to cook without running to the store, but I am running out of things too.  I haven't been to the grocery store to REALLY stock up in awhile.  I need to go through the pantry and make a note of what I am missing and then bite the bullet and go get it.  I do know T.P. is on the list, down to 30 rolls...not good for PH.  He likes t.p.  It's a no go on getting him to use the flannel wipes. 

Two walls are up on the house, with the other two scheduled to be done this weekend.  Then comes the interior walls, the loft structure and the roof.  We really need the roof, because this week (after a full year of NO rain) it decides to rain.  This does not  bode well for the plywood decking and wall framing.  I am sitting here waiting for a big storm cell to come through.  The rain is much needed and appreciated (thanks Lord!) but the wood doesn't like it so much.

Had to run out and close up the wash house and take the wash off the line, as well as, cover the baby chicks in their chicken tractor.  I hope they keep dry.  We need to move them to the barn tomorrow.  I am worried about them drowning in the storm, or taking a chill/draft.

Areas we prepped this week:  dehydrated the rest of the 20lbs of apples and have about 5 quarts of dried apples.  Filled 3 buckets with dried goods, practiced shooting (dove season is here ya know!) - the goats run FAST when you walk out of the house with a 12 gauge!