January Happenings

We are into our second week of January, and have warmed up a tad.  It has been in the 40s at night instead of the high 20s and 30s.  Yesterday, we received about 3 inches of much-needed rain.  The pond is filled to the tippy top again, and my garden is going good still.  Cabbage sure takes a long time to grow. The plans are healthy and green, but aren't growing very fast.  We will be having some warm days (in the 70s) this weekend, so hopefully that will spur some growth around here.  The grass needs to grow, the trees need to leaf out, and the garden needs to start producing some veggies!

We started back into schoolwork this week, after a two week Christmas break.  The girls are less than excited.  Our home school co-op will be starting up in about a month, and I need to get my class planning complete.  I would love to stay home this semester and not attend, but I will grit my teeth and endure the 8 weeks of classes.

The pantry is done! Insulation, wall boards and trim up, and PAINTED! Yeah!  I can now get another shelving unit in there, organize and inventory my supplies, and really SEE where I need to work.  The long term storage items (#10 cans of dried goods from the LDS cannery) will be stacked in the now empty, container bedroom.  The container, now shaded by the house, is cooler inside (even in Summer).  I hope by having my food storage on the North Wall, in the shade, things will be kept in good shape. The bedroom will be our bulk storage location, as well as, my sewing room.  Once I have finished cleaning and organizing the pantry, I'll move back to the container to get things sorted, remove the loft bed, and get the sewing table, fabric and notions set up.  Cannot wait!  I haven't been able to sit and sew in over four years since moving to the "cabin-tainer".

Items to store in the container:

Cases of canning jars
Buckets
Rubber Maid totes with clothing store (according to size) - I don't throw out all the clothes, I might need them someday.  I keep the best, and get rid of the rest.
LDS food storage

Also, making plans for a root cellar type of set up for between the house and the container.  It is shaded ALL the time, and gets quite cold in there..We just need to fence off the bottom, and put gates on either end (to keep the goats and pigs out), and we can store root vegetables in the area.  A shed roof will be nice, but I won't push my luck right now :) PH is getting stressed out with the housing construction, and is fixing the well pipes today.  We stacked hay bales around the well head/pump to keep pipes from freezing.  It works! But....the livestock likes the hay, which is covered by a tarp, but they managed to stomp all through there and keep breaking the pipes.  A well house is on the list now.  Poor PH, he was M-A-D last night, and muttering expletives on what he wanted to do to goats.  So, we didn't have water last night.  Why is it, that you never drink water, but when the water isn't working, you feel like you are going to die from dehydration?