Ducks4you for 2022

[heirloomgal]

WOW!

Stone Milled Flour | Organic Wheat Flour - Janie's Mill

Janie's Mill grows and stone-mills organic grains to provide wholesome, delicious, high-quality flours and grits to discerning bakers. Contact us for more details!

www.janiesmill.com

Only 90 minutes from me!!
Gotta check 'em out.

Speaking of grains, I may try rice this season. Maybe even in an old kiddie pool.

 

[Zeedman]

**Ducks pity party. You're invited**

I regret that I must attend by proxy.

 

[ducks4you]

I regret that I must attend by proxy.

My seconds will call.

 

[ducks4you]

So, I managed to:
1) be on time at DD's house yesterday morning, 7:30...ish
2) prep all documents for my PM closing, and organize
3) changing of the guard, DH switched places with me at lunchtime, and there to answer the electrician's questions
BETTER than we mere women
(Really, he Does know more than me about wiring.)
4) In town shopping, killing time before my late afternoon house closing an hour away, thus saving gas money by making my trips do double duty
5) Got to closing early, both sellers and buyers were signing, and I was asked to screencapture all ID's and 8 other documents before they signed the package, and it was ok'd
6) Dropped documents at FedEx before 6:30PM cutoff, so I didn't have to make any extra trip to town today
7) Make dinner on time with DH and DD's
God is good!

 

[ducks4you]

So...trying to help DD, who has become at Least a flower gardener. She lives a few hours away, but she is driving down Friday evening to join Basement Cleanup, Part Duex.
She is bringing a nice wine.
I have looked into growing systems but everything has gotten pricey, like >$100.00. Last Saturday, when the other 2 DD's were cleaning out their bins, (stored there since 2014) from the fuel room, which still has fuel oil storage tanks, they found my third under-the-counter light, that matches the other two I have on my shelving unit gro place. I am giving DD my 2nd gro light with feet bc I no longer need it. I went shopping for this for me:

Hydrofarm Jump Start Seedling Heat Mat - MT10006 | Blain's Farm & Fleet

Get your Hydrofarm Jump Start Seedling Heat Mat - MT10006 at Blain's Farm & Fleet. Buy online, choose delivery or in-store pickup. Great prices on Seed Starting.

www.farmandfleet.com

They were out.
So I bought two of these, one for DD, another for me. She wants to put it on a table in their basement, away from getting knocked into. Yeah, I have stuff like this, but it's a matter of timing. I don't HAVE the time this week to get seeds going AND clean and bleach my older stuff. I can run a weak bleach solution on this 72 cell with a dome pretty quickly, but to thoroughly clean my other stuff?
Today I have to finish my mileage for taxes. Tonight we have our monthly city counsel meeting. Although I am paying the kid across the st to Clean stalls this week and next, I still have to fill the water tank, put hay in the manger, and bed the stalls and feed the horses. I could use 3 of me, but I might just get 2 of my lazy version.
It's possible, but so is time travel.
DH has offered to pay for the stall cleaning, so I can't complain.

 

[ducks4you]

I have, in previous years, dehydrated my sweet peppers and jalepanoes. DD (the chef) told me that the dehydrated sweet peppers from 2020 were dead-ish. I took 1/2 a handfull, eyeballed, poured and NOT handled, of 2020 dehydrated jalepanoes, from the storage jar to pulverize in the old coffee bean grinder last Saturday, for our big batch of chili. The dust just about knocked me over! I couldn't believe how strong the heat still IS, and I certainly don't need to grow any jalepanoes this year, unless I plan to give them away!!
I used a funnel to pour the jalepano dust into a small glass storage jar and I let my DD add it to the chili to taste.

 

[ducks4you]

What a weekend!! DD from across the state came Friday, spent the night with her sisters, kept them up late chatting and sister-partying, then they ALL came over Saturday morning. I had my marching orders: bacon, scrambled eggs and pancakes for breakfast. I had cooked down 2 pork shoulders overnight so that we could eat pork bbq for lunch, dinner, and snacky-smores, and I was ordered to make a yellow cake and provide strawberries and ½ and ½.
Meanwhile, they marched to the basement (after proper digestion and visiting around the table by all and DH) and proceeded with 2022 basement cleanup, part duex.
I expected a straightened up basement.
I expected trash.
I DIDN’T expect a super cleaned up and smell nice cement basement floor and reorganization.
I was truly blown away.
Everything was scrubbed up, like you would scrub up your kitchen before Easter.
Eldest DD has found an odor eater that truly works.
Not to make you gag—although They did—but there has been an accumulation of mouse crap, cat crap and, yes, Eva, on the basement floor. Not to say that I leave big piles of same, but the dust and grime collect around anything left.
It is True that cement cleans up well, but that’s only bc most cleaners will never ruin the surface. There was a LOT of scrubbing that went on outside of my sight.
I was only called down to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to keep or throw away.
There are 12 large garbage bags full of the latter. Just not enough room in my trash barrel to put them out this week. They are all on an 18 inch high (like the height of a dining room chair)3 ft deep ledge to the south of the steps up to the back door.
After they are all gone, I will be moving my basement gardening supplies to this ledge.
The basement Looked like we were hoarders. To defend myself, I do not frivolously throw usable things away.
I cannot tell you HOW MUCH it helped to have fresh eyes seeing the true value of stuff that should have been trashed years ago.

 

[ducks4you]

Sunday, it was time to move the bank boxes and repurposed 10 ream paper boxes to the garage. They were filled with ALL of the closed law files from DH’s office and from August, 2016, when the office moved to a smaller suite, where there wasn’t room for the 7 two drawer filing cabinets. We had made the executive decision Then to store them at home…in the garage…
I paid the guys who put up hay in my loft every year to get these boxes out of the garage and down to the basement, and they stayed…
NONE were refiled in the 7 two drawer cabinets until…um…yesterday.

 

[ducks4you]

So, here we are, 7 years later. Better late than never.
DH decided that general 2013 closed and later didn’t need to be kept, and he decided that one murder case needed to be saved, and two other old cases. I am so glad I didn’t have to make a decision on what needs to be saved. There is general rule that >7 or 8 years you can destroy your legal case files, but certain files need to be saved. DH just had a call from a new asst AG, who will be concluding two 2008 files with him sometime this year.
Our closed files, filing system is easy.
First file to be closed this year is: 22-01
Second is 22-02, and so on.
2008-01 is one of the two closed files that is now reopened. The other is, I think, 2008-08
You can’t simply shred or burn them bc of an expiration date.

 

[ducks4you]

I started a fire in my firepit Friday with the boxes from basement cleanup, part un. DD’s added to it Saturday. I added 6 boxes of closed files AND a couple of downed pine limbs from some recent storms to the firepit. I cleaned it out last week. When it stops burning—yes, it is Still going as I write—it will be full to the brim of paper ash.
There was a breeze, but the beauty of a firepit with a heat liner, made of “Belgian Tumblers” and surrounded by cement pavers AND the dirt still damp, is that ashes that have blown off have nothing to use to catch fire. Pretty safe burning.
Any actual Gardening this weekend? YES!! 2 of the drowned sugar snap peas sprouted by my kitchen window!