Comfort Foods

Most of us have memories centered around a special dish or food that we enjoyed when we were growing up. A special dessert your grandmother used to make, a supper dish that was a family favorite, even something special your mom used to make for you when you'd been under the weather. Comfort foods. As good for the soul as they are for the tummy! Baked Macaroni and Cheese is one of those dishes for me. I worked full time the whole time my kids were growing up and I am ashamed to admit when I served them Macaroni and Cheese, it almost always came from a box. They loved it, but they didn't know any different. If I had started them out on Macaroni and Cheese the way my mom made it and then introduced them to Kraft Shells N Cheese in a box, they would have thought I have complained loudly. There is just no comparison.

Since both CHEESE and PASTA (any shape will do) are pretty high on Yeoldfurt's list of favorite foods, this dish is one of his favorites. When my mother made this, she didn't put meat in it because she generally served it as a side dish to meat, and she started with a thick White Sauce made from scratch, then melted cubes of cheddar cheese into it. I've added meat to it as a matter of convenience (one dish meals mean less work and less clean up!) and I usually melt some of the spicy Mexican Cheese version of Velveeta for the sauce ...also as a matter of convenience. If I didn't have a full time job that kept me away from home 10 hours of the day, I would make my cheese sauce from scratch too, but even with Velveeta, it's still really good.

There was one thing my mom did as a garnish that I have never done for Yeoldfurt. She would beat an egg with about two tablespoons of water and a little salt & pepper to make an egg wash. She would set that aside in a pie plate. Then she would put about a cup of crushed saltine crackers as a coating in a separate pie plate. In the meantime, she was melting a cube of butter in a small skillet. She would slice one good sized tomato in five slices (there were five of us), dip the slices in the egg wash, dredge them in the crackers and then fry them in the melted butter until they were golden brown on both sides. Just before she put her macaroni and cheese in the oven to bake, she would put these fried tomatoes on top as a garnish. It was a pretty garnish and oh so good!

When Yeoldfurt was leaving for work today, he mentioned that he'd like some Macaroni and Cheese for tomorrow's supper and I told him about the fried tomato garnish my mom used to do. His eyes lit up so we'll find out tomorrow night if he likes it as much as he thinks he will.

As I said, my Macaroni and Cheese is based on the way my mom made it, but tweaked to accommodate our busier lifestyle and Yeoldfurt's penchant for spicy. Yeoldfurt asked me to share the recipe, so here you go:

Meaty Macaroni & Cheese

2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni

4 slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled

(save the drippings!)

1/2 cup diced fresh onion

2 cups sausage links, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 lb Mexican Velveeta, cubed and melted

1 cup milk (add 1/4 cup at a time, mix well after each addition)

4 Tbsps butter

Fried Tomato Garnish (optional)

1 large firm tomato, evenly sliced

1 egg plus two tablespoons water, well beaten

1 cup Saltine cracker crumbs

Salt/Pepper to taste

1 cube butter, melted

This is what it will look like assembled & ready to bake:

Spray sides and bottom of a 9x13 deep baking dish with nonstick cooking spray, set aside. Cook pasta, drain and set aside. Cook bacon slices in oven at 375 degrees until crisp, approximately 20 minutes. Set bacon on paper towel to drain and pour drippings into a medium sized skillet. Add sausage and diced onion in skillet over medium heat until sausage is slightly seared and onions are translucent. Melt cheese cubes and 4 tablespoons of butter in the microwave, add 1/2 cup milk and blend well. Put cooled pasta in the 9x13 baking dish. Add sausage and onions and mix well. Pour melted cheese over top and stir to coat all of the pasta. Set aside while you make the fried tomatoes.

When you start frying the tomatoes, you want to set up an assembly line because they will cook very quickly. Melt the butter in the same skillet you used when you cooked the sausage and diced onion. Crack a raw egg into a shallow dish, add two tablespoons of cold water, and beat well. Add salt & pepper to taste. Crush the saltines and put them in shallow dish ...a pie plate works well. You need to have a couple of layers of paper towel on a plate next to the skillet to drain the fried tomatoes when they're done. Once everything is ready, set up your assembly line ...tomato slices, the egg wash, the pie plate of saltine crumbs, the melted butter in the skillet and the paper towel to drain ...in that order. The tomatoes will only take a few minutes to cook once you get started, so now would be a good time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After all the tomatoes are fried and drained, arrange them on top of the macaroni and cheese.  What the heck, if you're feeling decadent, pour the melted butter from the fried tomatoes over the top too.  Everything is better with butter, right?  If that feels a little too decadent, you're just kidding yourself ...it's not like this recipe would ever make it into the Heart Healthy magazines!  Now sprinkle the crumbled bacon evenly over the top and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before serving. A nice tossed salad and some fresh or canned fruit for dessert and you have a complete, well-balanced meal.

If you want to make this ahead, you can cover it with plastic wrap and it will keep for several days in the refrigerator, or can be frozen for several months. If you plan to freeze it but want to use the fried tomato garnish, I would freeze it without the fried tomatoes and make them fresh before you bake it.

Where to Begin

I don't think that either Yeoldfurt or I consider ourselves experts necessarily on prepping or long-term food storage. But since we started down this path a couple of years ago, we've learned a thing or two ...most of it the hard way. We've also accomplished a thing or two during that time. So since the real purpose of this blog is to share information, I'm going to try to share what we've learned. This post is my first installment on that effort.

Food and water are the most basic of necessities. Stockpiling these necessities is not a new concept but, in light of our floundering economy and rising costs, it is fast becoming a very popular one. There is so much to take into consideration when you decide to embrace this lifestyle. How many people are you planning to take care of ...for how long in a worst case scenario? Are you preparing for temporary hard times, or a full blown collapse of this economy? No one has a crystal ball and no can really prepare for every single contingency. You just have to take an objective look at your own situation, your own needs, and your own limitations and then do the best you can.

You will need space for your long-term storage. How many people you intend to take care of and for how long will determine how much space you need. Underestimating the space can be a serious pitfall. So calculate carefully and then round up on your estimations. I had a boss once that used to say, 'It always takes a third longer than you expect.' He was talking about estimating labor costs when bidding a contract, but I've found that 'a third longer' is a pretty good rule of thumb. So when you round up, round up by a third. It's much easier to find out you didn't need quite as much of a particular prep item, or didn't need quite as much storage space overall than it is to find out you needed much more.

There are two basic things you need to know before you can determine how much you need in terms of preps or storage space. You need to know how many people you are planning to support and for how long. Obviously you know how many people live in your household, but do you have extended family that you will accommodate if they show up on your doorstep? If so, it's much better to plan for them and have them not show up than to not plan for them and run short in a crisis. So decide how many people you want to accommodate in a worst case scenario. Next decide how many months worth you want to store. We decided on 12 months. The LDS church has always advocated a 12 month supply. It's long-term enough for you to get through most temporary personal crises and short-term enough to be manageable in terms of rotation. But I have known families who just keep a month or two ahead and other families that have literally years worth of staples. Decide what YOU are preparing for and plan accordingly.

Now that you know how many people you expect to accommodate and how long you expect to accommodate them in a worst case scenario, you can start your itemized list of what you will be storing. It can be mind-boggling at first. Somehow the hardest things to estimate for 12 month supply are the very things that are the most fundamentally essential to our daily life. Toilet paper is a good example. It's something we ALL use daily and would all miss dearly if it wasn't there. Yeoldfurt and I jokingly refer to it as 'rolled gold.' I say jokingly, but we take it very seriously. Off the top of your head, if you were new to prepping, would you KNOW how much toilet paper you would need per person for a 12 month supply? Before last year, I wouldn't have. For most people, their initial estimate would tend to be high because their estimate would be influenced by their keen desire not to be caught short. But investing more than you need of one item at some point robs you of the ability to invest enough in some other need. So it's important to be as realistic as possible in your estimation of quantities for all things. Breaking everything down into a one week or even a one day supply will simplify the task.

When we were just starting out, Yeoldfurt found a list online somewhere and built our list from that using Excel spreadsheet software. If you're building the list on the computer, any software will do ...but I highly recommend using a spreadsheet so you can easily sort. Most wordprocessing softwares will sort also if you set them up correctly, but it's not as user friendly. If you have spreadsheet software, that's definitely the best way to go.

Every item on Yeoldfurt's initial list was in alphabetical order. I decided early on that I needed to reorganize it into categories if I was going to be able to use it week to week. I also found that it included a lot of things that we didn't really use. Every family is different and has different needs. I'm the shopper and the cook in our household, so the list had to make sense to ME if I was going to be able to use it efficiently. Every person is different. Every family is different. You have to make sure the list fits your situation.

These are the eight categories that I used to organize our list:

Beverages & Related Condiments
Canned/Dried Goods
Cereals/Grains/Pastas/Stuffing
Cleaning Products/Chemicals
Condiments/Sauces/Salad Dressings
Cooking/Staples & Mixes
Personal Hygiene
Paper/Plastics/Foil

An inventory list is only useful if it's kept current. When I pull something out of storage, I write it down on my grocery list for the following week. Then a day or two before I plan to shop, I add any items from the inventory list that we're short of goal on. When I get home from shopping, I update the quantities on the spreadsheet. It's really very easy once you get in the habit.

A Little Levity

At the request of my friend, Modern Day Redneck, I have been working on a serious post about how to calculate quantities in your preps.   I tend to get wrapped up ...and then tangled up ...in details when I try to be serious, so I thought a little levity in the meantime was in order. 

I can't take credit for the following but it sure fits the bill.  I received it from my sister in Colorado and who knows how many hands it passed through before landing in her inbox.   So take it for what it's worth and enjoy a laugh break on me. 

NOT A GOOD IDEA TO ROPE A DEER
(Author unknown, probably for good reason)

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.  The first step in this adventure was getting a deer.  I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when I'm around, it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head to keep it calm. Then I would hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder, then hid down at the end of my rope.  The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back.  They were not having any of it.  After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up - three of them.  I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope.  The deer just stood there and stared at me.  I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.  

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.  I took a step toward it, it took a step away.  Then I put a little tension on the rope.   Just a little.  That's when my education in deer wrangling began. 

The first thing I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.  That deer EXPLODED!

The second thing I learned is that, pound for pound, a deer is a lot stronger than a cow or a colt.  I could handle a cow or a colt in that weight range on the end of a rope and still retain some dignity.  A deer, however?  No chance!

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled.  There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it.  As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.  The only upside is that they do not seem to have as much stamina as a cow or a colt.  A brief 10 minutes into the struggle, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet again when I finally managed to stand up.  It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the gash in my head.  At this point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison.  I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of my rope!

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely go off and die slowly and painfully somewhere.  At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer.  At the moment, I hated that deer and I would venture to guess the feeling was mutual.  But despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various rocks, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny bit of the responsibility for the situation this deer and I were in.  I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder ...a little trap I had cleverly set beforehand ...kind of like a squeeze chute.  I got it to back in there and I began moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite?!?  

They do!  I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the little fella grabbed hold of my wrist.  Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse.  When a horse bites you, they come at you fast, bite and then let go.  When a deer bites you, they bite hard and hang on ...and then they proceed to shake their head like a pit bull.  Trust me, it hurts!  

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly.  I tried screaming and shaking instead.  My method was ineffective.  It seemed like the deer had a hold of me, biting down and shaking for several minutes but it was probably only several seconds.  But I, being so much smarter than a deer, tricked it. While I distracted it with letting it try to rip the tendons from my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled the rope loose.  

That is when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.  

Deer will strike at you with their front feet.  They rear right up on their hind legs and strike at you right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are amazingly sharp.  I learned a long time ago that, when an animal is striking at you and you don't think you can get away easily, the best thing to do is to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move toward the animal.  With cows and horse, this tends to make them back away a little, giving you a chance to escape.  Deer are different.  

In the course of a millisecond, I could tell my plan wasn't working so I devised a different plan.  I screamed like a girl and tried to turn and run.  The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that rears up to strike at you is because there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head.  Deer may not be so different from horses in that regard.  Besides being twice as strong and three times as evil as any outlaw bronc, this deer had wicked accurate aim.  The second I turned to run, it hit me square in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now when a deer knocks you down, it does not leave.  I suspect it does not recognize that you are no longer a threat.  But instead of knocking you down and taking off, they paw at your back and jump up and down on you while you lay there crying like a little girl and trying to shield your head.  

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.  So now I know why when people go deer hunting, they don't bring a rope.  They bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.  All of these events are true, so help me God.

The letter was signed, simply "An Educated Rancher"

I guess this story was especially humorous to me because I happened to witness a similar incident in our very own driveway involving a rope, Yeoldfurt and a neighbor's stray emu chick. Seriously, I kid you not! No blood was shed, either by Yeoldfurt or the emu ...though the latter did have a few feathers ruffled before it was all over. But that's a story for another day.

Hope, for a Change

There is such a glut of bad news around the world and still so much wrong in this country.  But our personal situation has improved so dramatically over the past few months that I can't help but feel a little optimistic as we approach the New Year.  It's been so long since I felt anything even remotely resembling optimism that I'm reveling in it.  That doesn't mean I think we should slow down on prepping.  Quite the opposite.  I'm more committed than ever to being prepared in every way possible ... for whatever may come. 

We had barely begun our prepper lifestyle in 2008 when our personal situation took a nosedive.  Tragedy seemed to be followed by one crisis after another.  Little did we know at the time, it would be a full sixteen months before things would turn around for us.  If we had not been prepping in earnest for those few months before the first crisis, we would not have come through as well as we have.   But even during the long hard months, we added substantially to our skills and knowledge.  During all but two or three of those months, we continually added to our preps as well.  Last month, we finally reached our goal of a full 12-month supply of food and personal necessities. Now if we can just keep it organized!  So this is my list for 2011. 

First, my Challenge Goals ...things I hope to accomplish, believe I can accomplish, but know I will have to dog myself to get them all done.

PURGE
This will be my biggest challenge goal for the coming year.  I want to purge, purge, purge, and then purge some more.  I have accumulated a lot of STUFF over the years that has just followed me from place to place but never gets used or appreciated.  These are things that are useful, just not being used.  I keep them because they are sentimental ...they were my mother's or my grandmother's or my dad's ...all of whom are no longer in this world.  I still have two sisters and as I sort through these things, I will give them first dibs on anything they want.  What they don't want, I will find new homes for or give to charity.  It is ridiculous and selfish to hang onto that much stuff if you are never going to use it. My mother, my grandmother and my dad would all heartily approve. 

GET ORGANIZED
Once I whittle things down, I want to get what I keep ORGANIZED.  I have a wonderful insulated, air conditioned storage shed that's subdivided into four rooms.  All of the doorways between the rooms are open but the visual separation of the walls lends organization to the space and gives me plenty of room for shelves.  The smallest of the rooms is approximately 10x10 and the slab in this room is about 8 inches lower than the other rooms.  We call it the Step Down and it's where we have our food stores.  Between the air conditioner and the insulation, everything stays dark and cool year 'round.  It's as close to 'root cellar' conditions as you can get in central Texas, and is ideal for long-term food storage.  The rest of the space is approximately 20x20, divided into three rooms.  Those three rooms are half to three-quarter full now, but everything is just piled in there in no apparent order.  The only reason I  have any clue as to what's in there is because I had to shuffle things around when we prepared the Step Down  for food storage earlier this year.  The food storage room looks great.  Now it's time to organize the rest of the space. 

MINIMIZE (me)
On a personal level, I want to shed some weight this coming year.  Besides the obvious health benefits, I have the motivation of a closet full of clothes that I used to be able to wear!   I started working on this back in June and am nearing the halfway mark.  I've lost enough to feel motivated and encouraged to continue.  And now that the two big EATING and COOKING holidays are behind us ...I'm hoping the last half of this goal will be easier than the first half! 

So much for my Challenge Goals, now for my Standard Goals.  These are the ones that will pretty much stay on the list year after year in one form or another because ...well,  because we are preppers.   That's what we do. 

RECONFIGURE RAISED BED GARDEN
It's currently arranged as one 16x16 bed with 'walk boards (1x12's) dividing it into eight sections.  Yeoldfurt wants to dismantle it and set it up as four separate beds with wider walkways between them.  He has some wonderful salvage goods from his work that will be used to line the walkways.  We are discussing ways to build them up (deeper) as well.  They are currently 8 inches deep, and I would like to get them to 12 or even 16 inches deep.  More 'leg room' for the veggies but also not as far to bend down for me!   Always thinkin'....

Our first year with the raised beds was 2009 and we had a nice harvest in spite of a delay in planting and all the emotional turmoil we had that year.  We had high hopes for the harvest in 2010, but were somewhat disappointed in the outcome.  The crops that did great the year before were so-so this year and the only thing that did really spectacular was the cucumbers.  I now have almost 40 pints of pickles from one 3x7 bed.  The weeds, the ants, and the grasshoppers were all a constant battle last year. We are hoping to improve the odds in our favor by reconfiguring the beds and improving accessibility while minimizing backstrain.  Yeoldfurt has been talking about a mobile dripline watering system and we also have a possible solution for the ants and weeds that is cheap, eco-friendly and recyclable. 

IMPROVE CHICKEN COOP
I'm still in the thinking stages about this one so Yeoldfurt might raise an eyebrow when he reads about it here.  My ideas are usually born half-baked and go through a gazillion or so gyrations before they finally evolve into a real plan.  I'm used to the way I think, so it doesn't bother me to start out with Plan A and finally end up doing Plan Q.  It's a woman's perrogative to change her mind, right?  It's another one of those Venus things.  But I've learned it's best to think on them for a long time before I approach Yeoldfurt.  The first few years of marriage taught me pretty quick that he stresses out way too much on these kinds of mental journeys.  So I try not to even mention my ideas to him until I'm a good ways into the alphabet and am pretty sure I'm done changing my mind about things. 

My ideas for the coop are not labor intensive or expensive, and nothing I can't do all by myself if Yeoldfurt wants to turn me loose on it.  I think we're both happy with the structure and design of the existing coop.  But we have had two chicken snakes stealing eggs so far this year.  There may have been more, we just didn't happen to catch them.  We know how they got into the coop and Yeoldfurt has taken some steps to rectify that.  But since I'm the one that's squeamish about snakes and really not wanting to deal with that again, I've got a few more ideas on the subject.  I also want to fix a 'nursery' in one end of the coop.  There's a section at one end that the previous owners here used to raise parakeets.  It's about 4x4 with a walk-through door leading into the main coop.  We have a free-standing broodbox that we bought as a kit from Tractor Supply (half price because the box was damaged ...only paid $25) and I want to modify it to mount to the wall in the small room in the coop.  Being a relatively small area, if I cover the walls with insulating material, it would be easy to keep warm as a nursery area for young chicks.  Just some ideas.  I also want to break up the floor in the coop, bring in new sand and just generally clean things up.  See?  Nothing real major! 

DEBT
Get rid of it.  That's the goal. We don't have any other than the mortgage and we want to get rid of that as soon as possible.  We have a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with a decent rate, but I would have loved to have refinanced when rates were at their lowest last summer.  We pay extra every month and are on track to pay off the 30 year mortgage in less than 20 years ...but being able to refinance at an even lower rate would have made the pay off that much quicker.  Now that Yeoldfurt is employed again, we will talk to a local bank (locally owned and on the 'good bank' list) about refinancing.  Even if we only drop a fraction of a percent on the interest rate, it will be worth it to get away from the BIG BANK. 

INCREASE
I'm happy with where our food stores are now.  A 12-month supply is as much as I want to try to keep track of to ensure nothing gets wasted.  But I would like to add to our cash reserves and increase any nonperishable non-foodstuffs ...oh, say ammo and reloading supplies, for instance?  Now I know Yeoldfurt's eyes will light up at that!   Ha! 

NEW SKILLS / KNOWLEDGE
You can never have enough of either of these things, in my opinion.  Last year, we learned to make our own laundry soap.  This year, I hope to add shampoo, conditioner and liquid body wash to our soap making repertoire.  We still have a dozen or so dead trees from last year's drought that need to be felled and Yeoldfurt has promised to let me give it a whirl.  Not that cutting a tree down is rocket science, but having it land where you want it ...or not land where you don't want it requires some knowledge and skill and I think it would be something useful for me to learn.  But I'm pretty sure he'll want me to practice on the ones farthest from the house and fences though ...yeah, I'm pretty sure.

So that's it, my formal list for the coming year.  I decided to post it partly to help me think it through and partly in hopes it will keep me honest.  I've never been much more than haphazard about New Year's Resolutions ...either setting them or following up when I do set them.  But maybe if I get serious about setting some goals ...publicly committing to my goals ...just maybe I'll be more serious about the 'following up' part as well. 

So for 2011, let's prepare for the worst but hope for the best.  May we all have a blessed New Year! 

And Now for the REST of the Story

We had the big pasture fertilized and seeded with rye on Tuesday.  It's a big deal because it means the horses will have to be kept off the pasture until the rye is well-established, probably some time in January.  The other reason this is a big deal is that we haven't been able to afford any pasture maintenance/improvement while Yeoldfurt was out of work for so long.  Now that he's working again, we are really looking forward to being able to have  'greener pastures' ...literally. While the seed and fertilizer do their thing, we have to confine the horses to the smaller areas.  We normally confine them to a small paddock every evening and then give them access to an adjacent small paddock during the day.  They have a round bale of hay available to them at all times, night or day, but they love the big pasture so this will be a long six weeks for them.

Yesterday was the first day.  You'd think we could get through ONE DAY without a hiccup.  But when I got home, the first thing I noticed as I came down the driveway was a big buckskin butt standing by the garage.  Not good.  As I drove past the garage to check on the chickens, the dog did her usual thing and raced down the yard to follow the truck.  That was normal, but the Paint horse that was running along with her wasn't.  Oh, boy.  I knew I had seen at least a couple of horses in the front paddock when I first turned in the driveway but was beginning to wonder how of them might be in the backyard.  Turns out there were only two, Lucy and Lyric.  Lucy is Yeoldfurt's buckskin mare.  She's half-mustang and all shenanigans.  Don't let her big doe eyes and long lashes fool you, she's always got mischief on her mind!  The other culprit was Lyric.  She's a Paint mare out of my horse.   Lyric is the youngest in the herd and, wouldn't you know, she picks Lucy to emulate. 

I had just come from my office job and wasn't exactly dressed for wrangling, so I went in the house, changed clothes and came back out to check the fence.  It's chain link with a hot wire along the rail.  Looks like they had walked it down in the corner.  The hot wire was on the ground which meant that none of the fence was 'hot' anymore.  Oh goodie.  Lucy had walked down that section of fence one other time ....which was one of the MAIN reasons we invested in the electric fence.  This time the rail was broken, the post was bent and the chain link was canted at a 45 degree angle to the ground at that corner.  I was relieved to find that neither horse was cut or injured.  That would have been icing on the cake  ...vet bills on top of the cost of repairing the fence.  Satisfied that they were both unscathed, I proceeded to give them a verbal tongue lashing that might have even impressed Busted Knuckles.  Well, maybe not ...but it was sure a rant coming from me!  It reduced my stress level a notch or two but made no visible impression on Lucy and Lyric. 

The setting sun waits for no one so I decided to go on and feed the other horses and make the two hoodlums wait.  Pecking order is a big deal with horses so they weren't too happy about that.  When I got the other four in their stalls, I decided to use the lunge whip to drive them back to where they belonged.  But remember the old 'mama is gonna spank the kid so the kid runs around and around the dining room table so mama can't catch him' routine?  Try playing this game with two 1000-pound 'kids' running laps around a brick house while 'mama' flails at thin air for ten minutes.  About the third lap, the thought occurred to me that if Dr Phil were here watching, his comment would likely be, "So ...how's that workin' for ya?"  We're pretty far off the road, but I am sure my antics would have been amusing to the neighbors too.  I decided to try a different tact.  It was time to re-strategize. 
 

So next I tried the "I promise you're not in trouble if you just come here" routine.  That worked on Lucy.  Nothing really scares her ...not even me.  Probably especially not me!   But Lyric acted like I was a three-headed monster every time I got within ten feet of her.  She wasn't really scared, just enjoying the game.  Tail in the air, snorting, and charging off for another lap around the house.

All the other horses, including Lucy, were stalled by now so as a final resort, I decided to appeal to Lyric's hungry self.  Of course, I had no real intention of rewarding her with FOOD at this point but she didn't know that.  When she wasn't looking, I put a few handfuls of acorns in one of the empty feed pans.  Then I turned my back to her and shook and rattled that pan so she would think there was feed in there.  Ha!  Worked like a charm.  She followed me through the gate and into her stall and I latched her gate.  Then I told them both they could FORGET SUPPER TONIGHT.  They looked at me for a few seconds, blinked and dropped their heads to munch on the MILLIONS of acorns at their feet.  Their two stalls happen to be under one of the bigger oak trees and we've had a bumper crop of acorns this year.  The horses LOVE them.  It's like gummi bears falling from the trees as far as they're concerned.  So much for me punishing them.

I feel sorry for the four horses that behaved themselves and stayed on the appropriate side of the fence yesterday now because Lucy has ruined the fence for the time being.  All of the six horses are confined now to only the side yard until they can go out on the big pasture again.  It will be at least four weeks if not six.  Lucy and Lyric will never make the connection that THEY ruined it for the whole herd.  But I'm pretty sure the other four know who's responsible!

For Devious Deeds

 

These two hooved hoodlums were caught trespassing in the backyard, having wantonly vandalized and destroyed a section of fence.  Full story this evening.   I have to go to work now ...to pay for the repairs to the fence. 

The Devil is in the Details

Yeoldfurt and I are 'list people' in just about every aspect of our lives.  We have Grocery lists, To Do lists, and Wish lists so something as important as food storage, of course, had to have a list too.  Yeoldfurt set up our original inventory list on a spreadsheet almost two years ago.  He gave every item its own row with five columns.  The first column gives a detailed description of the item and units of measure (i.e., pinto beans / lbs or tea bags / total).  The second column is the amount of that item we estimate we would use in one year's time.  The third column is the quantity we have on-hand of that item, and the fourth column is the difference between the two.  The fourth column is the one we refer to most when we make our shopping list.  The last column is the date that item was updated.  He alphabetized the whole list by the first column.  Alphabetized by item has worked okay.  But since I'm usually the shopper and almost always the cook, I thought it would be more user-friendly for me if I categorized the items similar to the way a grocery store is set up and Yeoldfurt let me do my thing.  So I revamped his spreadsheet, putting each item into a  category ...similar to the way the aisles are categorized in a grocery store ...then alphabetized the items within that category.  I like this set up much better.

Since our food storage is in a separate building on our property and I'm usually making my grocery list late at night or in the pre-dawn hours, it's important to me that I can trust our inventory list.  So when we moved all of our food storage to the new location a few weeks ago, I did a complete count after everything was set up and now am totally confident that our inventory list is accurate.  It's a great feeling to really know what you have and what you still need to get more of. 

This weekend, we are going to make a run to Sam's and complete our inventory ...or try.  Hopefully we won't break the bank.  We are up to goal on more than half of the items on the list and not too far short on others.  So I'm hopeful.  Knowing a twelve month supply of food and all essentials are safely in storage would sure be a great way to start the new year. 

They say the devil is in the details, so if you have food stored, I urge you to keep it well organized and maintain an accurate, up to date inventory.  Once the crisis is upon you, it's too late to get organized.  You can try ...you probably would try ...but you won't be clear-headed and you won't make decisions as well as you would if you weren't under stress.  Whether you're faced with a personal set back like the loss of an income or a much bigger crisis like regional interruptions of goods and services, the better you are organized and prepared, the better you will fare.