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Barachot weh shalom, mishpacha!
It’s been over a year since I’ve posted anything on this blog but those of you who like the facebook page know that we’ve been quite active!
But if you haven’t been over there —
We bought a small ranch! We’ve had it for a year, and we still have our house in the city, but the entire goal is to homestead. so that’s where we’re headed. Witness a flyover of our land, here. We camp there often, probably monthly, we love to shoot so we’ve built our own range out there.
We have CHICKENS! My co had chickens before she was living with us, and our husband can build anything, so when she asked him to build a chicken coop, he did it in about a week and it’s a beautiful, sturdy structure. So he and her went and purchased chickens and a rooster, all but three too young to lay. The rooster has only recently begun crowing, just BARELY, but I think he’s rather proud of himself.
Each chicken has about 3 names, including the rooster (sometimes he’s Johnny Bravo, sometimes he’s Jack or Jake, sometimes he’s Brian, rofl, sometimes he’s Boonk-Gang lol just depends on who’s talking to him and what the context is lol).
They’re easier than I thought they’d be at this time, so don’t fault me if I come back later and say something crazy happened with them. They are currently “free range” — we let them into the garden (We have a GARDEN! Also my co’s doing — and mind you, these are all things I wanted to do but didn’t have much of an idea on how to start. I’d been so busy before she got here that researching such things was an impossibility, I couldn’t even lend my mind in that direction). They go wherever they want in the backyard, really. The dog is used to them, now. She sometimes walks around sniffing the ones that allow her to, and if you’re not careful she’ll eat their food (Why, puppy-dog, why??).
As I mentioned, we have a GARDEN, we did it for the first time this past spring 2017, and it lasted to the end of summer. Everything did mostly well although there were two situations that were LESSONS to us — the lettuce “bolted” because Texas gets hot pretty fast once it decides that’s what it’s going to do, and the lettuce loved it so much that it bolted and became bitter and inedible. And the squash that was beautiful and healthy began to get attacked by squash borers, these nightmarish grubs that are left by their moth-mommies to hatch near the roots of your plants. They dig into the roots and hide inside the root of the plant, eating away until they’re large enough to cocoon and re-hatch and fly away, disgusting beasts. We and the children fought them daily for about two weeks until we decided to just take the squash that we’d grown and let that section go. We don’t WANT to use chemicals on our gardens AT ALL, so we then had to research what to do about those monsters. We’ve got some diatomaceous earth as a few parties suggested, so we’ll give that a try next time. The squash was very agreeable in our portion of Texas and it’s bright and sometimes unforgiving sunlight.
The watermelons did SOO well that they went outside the garden’s fence and gave birth out there as well, for a while in the summer we had a watermelon a week — the last 5 we were tired of eating watermelon, so we took them to the land and used them for target practice.
We also grew peppers, greenbeans, lima beans, potatoes, onions, some herbs, garlic, spinach, asparagus and strawberries. The strawberries did NOT do well — back to the drawing board on THAT, we couldn’t get them to do ANYTHING at all. We’ll try again because the children love them.
The garden and the chickens are in the city. This is like a testing-station for us — when we do it out on The Land, it’ll be on a much larger scale. The land already has blackberry bushes hiding ALL OVER THE PLACE, and one pear tree hidden on the edge of some of the wooded parts. The children found it, confirmed it with me (I’d seen it; I grew up with pear and peach trees) and then they robbed it of all the fruit they could, for a treat.
Let’s see, what else! Oh! We’ve created a NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL!! I still have my Dreamgyrl360 channel, and I’ll always have it, and I still plan to post there on occasion, as I’ve always done. But the channel is called “The Co-Wives” and it’s MOSTLY just us doing our thing, as it were, living our lives, but RECENTLY in the past month we’ve kind of created a little Q&A series. TONIGHT is the LAST NIGHT of the Q&A series, and as requested by one of our followers, we are going to TRY to go live BOTH on YOUTUBE *and* on FACEBOOK, so everyone who wants to, can ask questions and we’ll do our bests to answer. It usually lasts an hour or two, and then we’re done! So hopefully you’ll be able to join us on some form of social media!
Below are the videos we’ve done in the SERIES — there are other videos on the channel and it’d be great if you watched them, too, AND liked and subscribed!
You’re welcome to suggest things for us to discuss, because sometimes we can’t think of a single topic lol. So enjoy!! It’s a quiet and peaceful morning of watching chickens outside on a cloudy day, where it rained all yesterday evening as well as into the night… shalom!
…it’s been a while.
Life is CRAZY sometimes, you know?
So — let’s move on. Blah blah blah, been busy with the store, and my husband’s business is up and running and is largely successful.
But I wanted to talk prepping, because this weekend we’ve been following the prepping videos put together by “The Obsidian Media Network” on Youtube (The Voice of the Everyday Brother). We were specifically interested in the videos where the subject was the sister. The videos were deep in their opinion and ideals and were ultimately a proper assessment of the state of black women today in relation to prepping.
So I may have said it before — we prep. For years there, we were prepping at a high level. When we opened the store we slowed down because it took up our time and other resources.
We were “prepping on a budget” — meaning first I bought a bulk-load of stuff, and then after that, I kept it to a little of this, a little of that, tacked on to my grocery budget. I’d try to get canned meats and canned vegetables, seasonings, dry goods, water, water purification methods, medial supplies, etc. I’ve become adept at it, thanks to the books I’ve read and the videos I’ve watched (Youtube University lol LEARN ALL THINGS lol).
Our children have grown up in a prepping household. They know how to help when it comes time to check preps — to go through it all and assess what may need to be replaced or whether or not we need to buy more or double of a thing. As they get older, they help mommy and they kind of enjoy it.
We have guns. There was a time when we’d happily go shoot them — that was our date night, then go eat or something. Even now if I’m bored or thinking, I may practice loading my clips (I have small, narrow fingers, little woman hands and so some clips, it’s hard for me to load; it’s something I have to work on and so that’s something I can work on while I’m figuring out my next business move — it’s mindless hand-busying practice. It’s perfect). Our eldest was taken shooting. She has a rifle, she knows how to load it, and how to aim and shoot with it. As the others come of age, we will do the same with them.
At one point we REALLY wanted a boat and we just wanted to live on that boat? And we’re not talking about a lake boat — we’re talking about an ocean-based boat, here.
So we’d read all that interested us about boating and ocean living.
We came across an article in a magazine about a NYC couple who bought a boat, and started sailing the world and the lessons THEY learned.
The main lesson they learned was the NEED for each other. When they were living in the city with it’s modern life and whatnot, there was a want to be together but not necessarily the NEED for each other. When they got out there on the ocean, they found that they needed each other and really, they needed each other in traditional, male-female roles. Eventually they got to calling what had to be done on and around the boat, “blue tasks” and “pink tasks” — that’s how evident it was to them that there was a need for men to do men things and there was a need for women to do women things and how the two complimented each other.
When you’re living on a boat, it seemed to us that you are in survivalist mode. Imagine — this is NOT a cruise ship where other people are maintaining the ship and making sure you get what you want and need, with tons of room and amenities.
This boat may be 50′ long. You and your partner are the crew. You have to fix something if it breaks. You and your partner have to procure and prepare the food. You and your partner have to keep things clean. If someone gets sick, one of you will have to either take care of the person or you will have to take over the other person’s tasks. There will be no one to call out to when it’s just y’all out there. No neighbor to depend on.
This is kind of how we live our lives, after reading that article. It made us realize that we are a team here, and we needed to act like one. If anything happens — and studies show that 40% of Americans will find themselves in some dire, SHTF situation like a flood, or tornado, earthquake, or some man-made tragedy — we need to be as self-sufficient and self-sustaining as the family on that boat.
It’s part of prepping, to learn to be that way.
You MUST find people you can depend on.
…that’s all I wanted to say today. Maybe I’ll say more on prepping another time.
Coarse: A Blog 