2023 - OCTOBER - What Did You Do To Prep This Week/Month?

Well, finally. A day early!

Went to town today with the neighbors to do our weekly grocery shopping. No yard sales. However, it is time to start stocking up for winter. I started with the animals - dog food, cat food, and treats.

Just FYI - not sure about your Walmart, but ours was selling the Sager Creek 10 lbs. bag of chicken leg quarters for $3.50 a bag. I bought 4 bags - I cook and shred this chicken for the dogs to have 2/3 of a cup each for supper. Each bag makes 12 meals for them. That is 29 cents a meal. They love it, and it's better for them, too. They are free-choice eaters, they also get a cup of kibble each every day.

I had to buy a new printer. The old one won't feed paper anymore. That's OK, bought the same one so I can use the same printer cartridges. I don't really print enough to warrant a more expensive printer, besides, Husband has one.

Still working on photos, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. I've emptied two Rubbermaid totes and organized them into the photo box briefcases by year.

Well, 4 of the grandkids sold all the sweet corn, after I took out for fertilizer, corn seed and diesel fuel, each made 4 figures. I make them put 50% in the bank and they can spend the rest on whatever they want.

Turned over most of the fields for winter planting, already put the cow dung on them. Going to plant winter wheat after I get the field corn cut and stored, I'll be doing that in about 2 weeks.

Archery season came in last saturday, nobody in the family got one yet, but a nice 10 point was missed by the granddaughter that's a nurse. She'll get one, she's not a quitter and a good hunter.

Gardens all done, planted the garlic yesterday, 250 cloves, that should give me around 70 lbs next year. Planted 120 cloves down at camp and that should give me 20 lbs.

The firewood is all in for the winter, let it snow and get cold , I'll just hibernate the rest of winter.

The neighbors decided we needed to have a neighborhood yard sale so Husband and I pulled a bunch of stuff out we wanted to get rid of, including some of the stuff I bought for the family reunion. We sold almost everything and gave away some of the little stuff. Made some money and put it in the emergency fund. And cleared out things taking up room in the garage and the house.

The temps are starting to go lower, we did have a frost warning one evening. I brought all the plants up to the front porch and put them under a blanket until I make room in the house for them. Last year I kept them in the bonus room, but some died when Husband got sick because I didn't have time to care for them. So I'm putting some of them in the house this time. I bought a sofa table and set it by the east windows so they get some sun each day.

I'm still working on organizing our photos - it's been fun looking back but it's getting tedious...but I'll finish it and then on to the next project.

Not much going on around here as far as preps except getting ready for winter.

We've started stockpiling ice melt, water softener salt, and pet dry food. I like to stockpile the "heavy" stuff because on days when we go to town, and come out of the store to snow and ice (that wasn't there before we went in) - it is so much easier to load light groceries and not have to worry about slipping with a heavy bag of this or that.

We still have several cords of wood from last year, so I'll probably only get another cord or so.

Husband did buy a smoker, and in addition to cooking pork loins, ribs, pizza, and chicken, he's making beef jerky. He also found a sausage recipe and we tried our hands at making sausage. Turned out pretty good but he doesn't like the taste of one spice, so the next batch will have that spice eliminated. We have several pounds of jerky and sausage in the freezer now.

I got a meat grinder attachment and a noodle attachment for my KitchenAid a few years ago and we never really had the opportunity to use either. We have been using both and they really do come in handy. It's a learning process to get the noodles thin enough, but the meat grinder did just fine.

I do have a manual meat grinder, but we've not tested it out since the KitchenAid one is faster.

The photo project is now sorted and organized. I threw away 6 Walmart bags of doubles, blurries, and pictures that carried no relevance (distant landscapes, mediocre sunsets that I couldn't determine a place, a squirrel in a tree, etc). Next up - start digitizing the ones of significance (not everything, just ones with family/friends in them). I've had fun digitizing a little bit and sending photos online to various family members when I ran across them. They liked it too. Some they'd never seen.

Now I need to swing into sewing things - I want to participate in at least one craft fair this year. We shall see what happens.

My butcher came and got two of the steers I'm having butchered/selling. I'll have one or two more in a couple of weeks.

Been rainy and chilly for a couple of weeks and now it's 70 outside until next week when the cold returns. Been having a fire off and on instead of using the oil furnace.

The oldest granddaughter finally got a buck (archery), she's happier then a dog eating red meat. She cut about 95% of it up, she has trouble getting the back strap off, so I showed her again.

Just getting ready for the nasty winter weather that'll be heading our way.

Don't forget to set the clocks back next Saturday.

Nephew came to visit to try for a deer on our property...and he succeeded. He and Husband field-dressed it, and then we butchered it together. We ground some up into burger. Then Nephew cut several chunks, we removed the fat, and then sliced. Husband took the slices and smoked jerky for him. We had Nephew keep all the meat as our neighbors are pretty generous with us. So he also kept the back strap and tenderloin. I estimate we got about 40 pounds of meat.

The niece and nephew-in-law dropped by to pick up a few tools from my Dad, and stopped by our house to pick up a few things we gave to them, also. Definitely increased our storage place.

Husband is mulching leaves back into the lawn to remediate the soil 2-3 times a week.

Husband is also getting somewhat concerned about world affairs. He's taken my photos and saved them to an external hard drive and a couple thumb drives. He also has a hard drive full of survival type stuff on an external drive. We have a decent laptop we don't use, so he made a faraday cage and stored the drives and the computer in it. More drives are in the safe deposit box at the bank.

Husband is also reorganizing the get home bags, he updates them every year, and then they go in the cars for the winter.

I have started my annual Christmas sewing, had a friend long arm quilt 2 quilts, and I finished the binding on both. Now I'm doing a bunch of small projects for various people around here.

A few nights this past 2 weeks we've had to turn on the heater in the well house, and we got faucet protectors for our outside faucets, which we've never done before. But last year, one faucet must have had water in it, as we had a busted pipe we didn't discover until Spring.

We have people coming for the holidays, so food and fun are in order for those times.

Otherwise, we're prepped and are hunkering down for the winter and praying it will be mild.