This N That

Hurricane Irene

This weekend could be interesting for you along the East Coast.  If you are in the path of this baby, best already be prepared.  Reports are that store shelves and gas pumps are emptying fast.  Stock up for an extended stay without electricity.  Food and a way to prepare it, hygiene necessities, any meds/supplies for anyone in your family who has special needs (elderly, babies, handicapped, etc.), clothing and bedding, etc.  These are things to have on hand for any emergency, so hopefully you didn’t have to fight the crowds and pay premium for necessities to wait this storm out.

And if you’re in an evacuation zone, you may just plan on a nice extended stay with grandma or something while this hurricane works its way through.  I’m smack in the middle of the dry west, so no hurricanes here, but feel free to comment or share your experiences with Irene.

Garden

I got my first zucchini out of the garden this last week.  They kind of surprised me and I probably could have gotten them out a few days earlier.  A bit big, but not too big, so some went in our camping stew and some just got fried up.  If you’re up to your ears in zucchini, check this book out: The Classic Zucchini Cookbook: 225 Recipes for All Kinds of Squash

Chickens

The new chickens are starting to lay, and the two year olds are producing still as well.  We’re going through chicken food way too fast, so we let them out to free range.  Unfortunately we didn’t protect the garden and the beet greens were history in a hurry.  Maybe the beets will have enough root strength to put on new greens and live or maybe they’ll die.  Other than the garden casualties, the free range chickens worked pretty darn well.  They all want to come home to the coop at night and the neighbor dogs didn’t bother them, so we’ll be looking at a way to do this more often next summer and save on some feed costs.  We’ll just have to protect the garden somehow first!  In the meantime, we’re planning on getting rid of a few of the flock to cut down on the egg production around here.  We just can’t get rid of eggs from 20 laying hens as fast as they can produce them!

Exercise

I’m hoping to get into a regular routine of exercise now that the kids are back in school.  Since the baby was born the kids have all been home and I’ve been pretty lacking in motivation to do too much more than keep up with everybody and their activities and friends.  Now I’m expecting a bit of time each day maybe during baby happy time or baby nap time that I can get some exercise in.  We’ll see how it goes.  Before getting pregnant I was having some good fun with these online tap dance classes.  Might get back to that.  It’s important to be in as good of physical shape as possible.  Partly it makes you feel good and partly because if there is an emergency, you want to be able to be part of the solution and not one of those having a heart attack while pushing someone’s car or digging someone out of rubble.  Seriously.

Vacation

I know standard vacation season is ending, but we’re just getting started around here.  We usually just drive to grandma’s or a nearby national park or something for vacation, but this year my baby sister is getting married, so we’re all (yes, all 6 of us) going to fly down to Louisiana for the wedding at the end of September.  We’ll be on the same flight as my mom, brother, other sister and their spouses/kids.  This should be interesting.  Hopefully hurricane season will stay quiet while we’re there!

Have a great weekend and stay safe!

Keep preparing!
Angela