Down on the homestead - Oct 23 - Oct 30

**forestdale** · 10-23-2005, 03:43 PM

Good morning homesteaders.

The sun is rising here and it will be a sunny morning but there's rain predicted for this afternoon and for the next few days. JOY!

My plan today is to do the laundry and hopefully get it all dried on the line before the rain starts. I also have to sweep the front verandah and bake bread, then I'll be writing all day.

Mamaw, I like the sound of all those apples you're processing. How great to have them in your cupboards for later in the year. I hope all goes smoothly for the birth of your new grandchild.

Emily, those boys of yours do what my boys did....eat all the bread! lol I think it's a healthy snack for growing kids and much better than chips or candy.

Kim and Julie, I hope you're both safe and secure at home and that the hurricane passes quickly.

I'll be back later to check in but now I'm off to start on my Monday chores.

Have a good week, ladies!

**Mom23boys** · 10-23-2005, 04:03 PM

Hello to all!

Kim and Julie, I hope you and your families stay safe.

Rhonda, enjoy the rain.

We woke up early this morning to take the boys to breakfast out. It was a nice treat. The enjoyed it. Richard followed us to town in his car and then brought his brothers back home with him after breakfast so that DH and I could go do the grocery shopping. The boys didn't want to tag along, which I don't blame them.

DH has a meeting this afternoon with the fire dept. After the meeting he is suppose to put some steaks on the grill for dinner.

I received a phone call from my sister. I always enjoy talking to her. I am so glad she called. She is suppose to come up Thursday to watch Chris play football. She lives about 1-1/2 hours away near our mom.

**forestdale** · 10-23-2005, 04:12 PM

Hello Michelle!

I'm please you had a nice phone call with your sister. Enjoy those steaks.

**baxjul** · 10-23-2005, 04:15 PM

Rhonda, enjoy the rain.

Michelle, enjoy the football game.

We are just waiting out the storm, and watching the second one coming our way. I'm working on my crocheting today, and catching up on my reading.

Have a great Sunday!

**forestdale** · 10-23-2005, 04:17 PM

So pleased you checked in and that you're ok, Julie. Sounds like a relaxing day for you. Enjoy.

**QuilterMom** · 10-23-2005, 05:19 PM

We've just finished up our preparations and I'm exhausted. We still need to run the dishwasher and get in showers tonight in case we lose electricity. Other than that we'll just be hanging out inside. The breeze is starting to pick up a bit, but we won't get any real effects until during the wee morning hours. The forecast is for it to be completely out of my area by 7pm tomorrow night.

Julie, everything I've seen about t.s. Alpha (and it may be a t.d. now - it had gone down to that earlier today) is for it to take a northeast turn and not effect any land at all. It looks like it will actually meet up with Wilma in the Atlantic late tomorrow evening.

**forestdale** · 10-23-2005, 05:34 PM

Good to hear from you, Kim. I hope you can rest now. Take care.

**baxjul** · 10-23-2005, 05:47 PM

Kim, Good! I hope Alpha meets Wilma - they'll make a nice pair! We are just starting to get the outer rain bands now. The winds are only blowing around 20 mph right now, expected to pick up during the night. Taking a shower now, in case the electric goes during the night. Good luck to you!!!

**AmyBoz** · 10-23-2005, 05:55 PM

I'll be thinking of all of you in the path of the storms.

Today was pretty low key. Julia stayed home with me to recoup a little more, while Rob took Patrick to church. Then we all went to my fil's for bagels with the extended family. (Of course, this is what Julia was recoup-ing for

) Kids played with their cousins and we chatted with the adults.

Then we had to drop something off to my Dad at the church. He's teaching a class this afternoon and I had some of his materials. Then to my parents house where my Mom had a few projects for Robert while my Dad was out of the house. (Otherwise, he insists he can do it himself and it never gets done.)

Patrick and I dropped Julia and Rob off at home and went to ShopRite to do the shopping for the week ($43.44...$20 of which was diapers!) and now the kids are playing basketball in the playroom, Rob is watching the Giants, and I am alternating between visiting the village, grading essays, and doing laundry.

The house was 56 degrees, so we turned the heat on. We set it for 63, but I think we may have to lower it...it's pretty warm right now. We basically wanted to warm it up for bedtime, but then we turn it off while we actually sleep. If we have the heat on while we sleep, we all wake up stuffy and sick.

I also cleaned out the foyer this afternoon. It was stressing me out when I walked in the door. Everything needed to go to its place and stay there! The closet is RIGHT THERE...I'm not sure why all of our coats were laying on the bench.

**Strawberry** · 10-23-2005, 08:09 PM

Kim & Julie - praying for your safety

I've been working on my Christmas gifts and getting alot done. I'm hoping to be finished by mid November or the end of the month at the latest.

We got more bad news yesterday. The room that I use to store all my canning has been leaking for awhile and now it's very bad. The ceiling has rotted. We have to fix this before winter or structural damage will occur. I have to move all my canned goods out, the whole sundeck will need to be torn down, and the cold room will have to be ripped out and then a new room built. I am afraid to ask dh how much this will cost but on the other hand if we don't do this the cost will be greater. Under the deck is a storage area and that will all have to be taken out too. I'm sure we won't build our new deck until spring because of time restaints as well as cost.

I'm not happy about this as the timing is all wrong but what can you do. We'll try to make the best of it and not think about the credit card being used. Dh is out with ds#1 right now figuring out the cost.

I'm off to drown my sorrows in a cup of hot chocolate

**Valerie in WA** · 10-24-2005, 01:12 PM

I hope those of you in Wilma's path are doing well. I haven't checked the news yet this morning.

Tina, I'm sorry to year about your leak. There never is a good time for these thing, is there?

Michelle, we went to a high school football game on Friday (don't know anyone playing - just for fun), and I really enjoyed it. I don't like football on tv, but being there in real life and breathing fresh air is much better!

Rhonda, whenever you want some rain, just let me know; I'll be happy to send some your way.

I didn't make my yogurt on Friday; so I'll do that today or tomorrow. I actually broke down and bought a quart last night for the kids. With my failed attempts, they've been without yogurt for a couple of weeks. I'm also going to use the purchased yogurt to start my yogurt. I've been using granulated 'yogurt starter.'

I'm going to continue to work on making Christmas presents.

My 6yo dd has a couple of sewing projects that she needs help working on.

We'll do a bit of school, and both girls have gymnastics this afternoon.

I need to get up into my attic this week. As I've decluttered over the last three months, I've put things up there. Now, I need to go thru the attic and sort out: garbage, donate & sell.

Once I've sorted the stuff in the attic, I'm going to see if I can fit my umbrella-style clothes line in the attic. It's just too wet here to line dry in the winter. I might get one or two days a month that are suitable for outdoor line drying. Besides that not being enough, they may happen to fall on my work days, when I can't take advantage.

**QuilterMom** · 10-24-2005, 02:32 PM

I'm surprised I am able to get online! My connection is spotty though. We're still getting tropical storm force gusts. The hurricane winds hit around 11am this morning and stuck around for a couple of hours. That got pretty scary, but I think mostly because I could see what was going on. We didn't board up any windows or doors this time that are under our porches.

We've had a ton of rain. Local (from Orlando - technically not local for me) news is reporting we've had 8 inches of rain, but we've had much, much more. Most of our property is flooded. We have worse flooding now than we did with hurricane Jeanne last year (and Jeanne was a direct hit!). We also have damage this time to the roof. It's leaking around our chimney and the wall on the left side of our fireplace is soaked. We were going to redo it anyway, but not any time soon. Now we have to deal with it immediately or we'll have mold issues.

We have lots of palm fronds and tree limbs down all over the place. Our electricity has gone off at least 12 times (we've lost count), but hasn't stayed off long. Hopefully now that the worst winds are out of here it won't go off for good.

**Mom23boys** · 10-24-2005, 06:15 PM

Amy, WOW! You did great with spending only $43.44 for the week!

Tina, sorry to hear about your storage room. I hope your DH is able to fix it.

Valerie, being at a football game in person is much better than watching it on tv. Hope you get your Christmas presents done.

Kim, glad to see you are ok. Sorry to hear of the damage it left behind for you to deal with.

Our weather went from hot to cold overnight! I have to say this is the craziest weather season ever. You never know how to dress for the day. At least we are able to turn off the a/c.

Dakota has football practice tonight and then we are suppose to hang around for a parent meeting.

I need to pick up Chris from his football practice as well. DH has a fire chief's meeting out of town and won't be able to help.

**homesteadmamma** · 10-24-2005, 06:58 PM

It's been a long day. I'm so tired of family member who is a "leech" and taking my mom for all she is worth. One of these days all ____ is going to break loose and he is going to hear from me. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

We had a really nice weekend. Yesterday we went to our oldest dd's farm and didn't get home until 11 p.m. I took some deer steak and cooked supper for her. We helped her feed the horses and checked out her barn with her. The kids loved it.

Today I managed to get bread baked and a couple of loads of laundry done. I'm reading a new "homesteading" type book and I'm getting the itch to move to a farm, at least an acreage where we could have a larger garden, a few chickens that we could name after some members here

and some fruit trees. I know it's not feasible until next fall, however a girl can always dream and plan again.

Tonight I need to clean the post office, then home to continue reading.

Hope everyone is having a nice Mon.

**forestdale** · 10-24-2005, 07:48 PM

Good morning homesteaders.

CJ, I've come to realise that dreams take time. This realisation was not easy for me to digest - I'm the Queen of Impatience. I look forward to hearing more about your dreams and plans and if I know anything about you, it's that you'll achieve whatever you set your mind on. BTW, Carol, Carolyn, Carol-Ann and Carry are all percfectly excellent names for hens.

I'm researching HM cleaners this week so I'm smelling of tea tree oil today. lol I've just cleaned my shower to perfection using only baking soda, terry cloth, water and tea tree oil. It's never looked as good.

Later I have to made bread and enough dough for the week. The great dough experiment is going well. The dough is fine in the freezer but it needs a long time to thaw out and longer to rise. I had one hiccough with it. I went to my friend's house on Sunday and left some dough out for too long. I'd defrosted it the night before and had taken it out of the fridge and left it on the kitchen bench to warm through. I should have baked it before I left but didn't have time. When I took it out of its plastic bag later that afternoon, it nearly took my head off with the smell of alcohol!

The dough had fermented in the bag so I had to throw it out.

It was organic wholegrain flour so I guess it didn't need long to ferment. Lesson learned - there is a fine line between having cold dough and bread vodka.

I'll be writing during most of my spare moments today.

Kim and Julie, I hope you are both ok. Kim, tee tree oil mixed with water and sprayed in all your mildew prone areas will be a big help.

Valerie, what a great idea for you clothes line.