Your pissy monolith neighbors being mad at you for knocking on their door? It is creative revenge. 😁

Run a cafe with a bakery, Bill, run a cafe with a bakery.....just do it! 😁

Oh good grief! 😯😠

Sneezy, she is soooo beautiful! I love ducks. Their personalities are so fun.

I need to confess that we have been getting eye rolls from the neighbors. We decided not to mow for a couple of weeks because we have young bumble and honey bees on the property. Dandelion nectar is really important to them when they are young so we didn't want to knock off the dandelion heads. All the "lawn people" are annoyed. Sigh. Oh well. I have apple trees that benefit from those pollinators, and when the milkweed pops up, I am leaving it for the butterflies. They will be unhappy again.

Oh ugh. Why can't the rain cooperate and just go where it is needed? Fickle rain!

I am no expert, but can I make a suggestion. My aunt had some success with liquid vitamin D drops when my cousin went through a really bad health crisis, and eating was a major issue. They are tasteless, but concentrated and available on Amazon. She just used the eye dropper and put several on his tongue each day.

We need it too. Not having a drought, but yet, not as much seasonal rain as normal. So it is very dusty. We had a fast downpours very hard, last night but it only lasted about twenty minutes. That just isn't enough. Thankfully the wind dropped a lot afterward, and the DNR is reporting that the wildfire in Montmorency and Cheboygan County is 60% contained. We have been very concerned about that.

I am so sorry! That is really hard. I feel for you.

LOL, Spam! I know so many people who spam on the shelf just in case, and then have said, "Why on earth did I buy spam?" Don't be tempted!

Thanks! Great tip. This could be the way to go. Dd and so will do some research and discuss it. She is such a crunchy mom, foodie, and excellent cook that if she thinks this a solution, we will get it! She will use it. I am a terrible kitchen elf, and there is just no way I would grind my own and make bread. I told Mark that if I had to do that, I would never eat bread, pasta, etc. again in this life! I am just not a kitchen person. BUT, I love the father of my grandsons like my own, and I would do it for him!

Girlfriend! I am here for it! I have been waiting, living vicariously through you. Git.er.done. 😁😁😁 Photos must be uploaded immediately for the consumption of those of us salivating over your project.

Yes. This. It isn't like there is a year's worth of food for ten people in the house. For us, it is about acknowledging the fact that in the winter, we have terrible, horrible no good road situations, and long storms lasting many days. I hate going out in that. I hate having to think about grocery shopping or running out of personal care items, and then having to slip and slide to town. My son in law has food allergies and some things he needs are hit and miss at times. So Dd keeps them in the pantry. No, there are not twenty boxes of GF pasta on the shelf. But there are four, 11 oz boxes in the pantry. Therefore if the next time she shops, it isn't available, no worries. I do though feel like a well stocked pantry may be a more urgent thing for people to have in the future if they have the storage and time. Between shipping disruptions, the war, and climate change, and now avian flu (something like 40 million poultry culled and that will keep growing), I think grocery stores will continue to have odd outages and issues. Some folks can easily adjust for what is available. With my son in law's many food allergies, that just isn't possible so we have decided to stock the pantry. But Dd and I both feel morally, we are just not going to hoard like desperate people because it takes food away from others. One thing I do like about a well stocked pantry is that when the neighbor across the street who is so kind and helpful to my mom was down from knee surgery, I did not have to traverse blizzard roads to make nice meals to take to him. Poor dude is a widower and never cooked. Totally dependent on his wife. It never occurred to him to grocery shop before his surgery, and put up food that could be easily prepared, thawed and warmed. He told me he would have been a rather hungry patient if mom and I had not fed him. Happy to do it. But the only way that happened for three weeks this winter that had two, four day blizzards in that span, was that my pantry and freezer were full.

LOL, I don't have her list in front of me (there are several that she uses), but I think GF buckwheat was one. There are several brands, but many still come with a wheat allergy warning due to being processed not only in the same facility as wheat but also on the same machinery. She makes a buckewheat crepe (Gallette) that is really yummy, and fills it with diced chicken and stiry fry veggies for him. She did find a place to order it from, and they have it in stock, and are shipping it to her. So phew! His diet is so limited. My poor son in law can't have mammal meat, seafood, night shades, dairy, or wheat. There hasn't been a lot of variety in his diet, but he likes Mediterranean and Middle Eastern spices and thankfully, garlic, gumeric, curcumin, and ginger are fine. If we can't get his flours, I will absolutely make a list and ask you if they are available near you! I am not above begging, and will pay handsomely for the assistance.

Thanks. I will check into that too. I know Dd does some sort of stir fry thing with bok choi and beer family loves it. I have never tried, and supply is hit or miss in supermarkets here so it just hasn't been on my horizons so to speak. I have never heard of Yod Fah.

Farmers have it bad! All the policies the AG department has benefit the big corporations, the middle man distributors, and they get paid pittance for the actual product. I feel like until there is an overhaul in the AG Dept, things will get worse not better. It is just crazy that the distributor who puts eggs in cartons gets way more money than the farmer that produces those eggs, same with milk bottlers, etc. Really tired of corporations running the country.

And here, people are being paid by farm subsidy to NOT farm. No joke. There is literally income to be made to keep farm land and not farm it. A lot of these policies are going to be detrimental going forward.

All I can say is if Bill opened a restaurant in Cali, I would travel all the way from Michigan just to eat his food!!! 😁

I just ordered some Mylar food storage bags and oxygen absorbers. The price of the alternative pasta and flour that my son in law and I need is going up rapidly, and availability had been very hit and miss. We have ordered a LOT online, and I am transferring to the Mylar bags with o.a.s because from what I have read, this is the best option for long term storage. Thankfully the Bama house has an absolute ton of storage space.

I read it too, and was shocked. I knew we had issues with lower yield due to climate conditions. But, I didn't know the actual numbers which are worse than I expected.

Thanks for the tip! I have never worked with bok choi. It sounds like I need to give it a whirl.

Sadly, this is happening here too. I am so worried about the one and only food bank/pantry in the county. They don't have much to give anymore. We told all the boys if they want to go to grad school at UAH or get jobs in Huntsville, they are welcome to live at the mountain house. Dd and hubby said "the more, the merrier" because lots of adults sharing expenses will make it easier for everyone to survive and hopefully get ahead. We will see how it plays out. I am worried about resource wars, even just ugliness between states. There have been rumblings about the bread basket states wanting a LOT of Great Lakes water this year, but this will devastate the ecology, and long term, make everything worse, create more warming, more droughts, you name it. We have a wildfire going in Montmorency and Cheboygan counties right now, and this is very early in the season for that. I honestly think we could see governors and state legislatures get ugly with each other about this. I hate feeling doom and gloom. But my always enthusiastically, optimistic husband is even worried which is a bad sign. So Dd and I are putting away rice and dry beans in plastic, sealed buckets for winter and plan to be sure to use it. We are both going to freeze a lot of produce. If things keep getting financially tighter, we at least know that herbed rice and beans with steamed vegetables and some frozen fruit can be on the menu regularly.

I am happy to report we finally have good weather. Yesterday I planted tomatillos, romas, and cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper plants, eggplant, and broccoli in the raised bed gardens. I have garlic growing by the back door and two, adorable volunteer pumpkin plants from kicking the decorative pumpkins off the back step last fall when the weather got bad, and NOT bothering to take them to the garbage, LOL. I have two "houseplants" currently on my shady back step, sweet basil, and oregano. The apple trees look okay, and the grapevine had gone completely bananas. At the Alabama house, dd has green beans, strawberries, tomatoes, sunflowers, garlic, basil, scallions, blueberries, grapes, plums, and salad greens going. The strawberry patch isn't really big and are everbearers so she and the family just grab them ripe of the vine and snack on the them. They went to a you pick strawberry place about ten days ago and picked a five gallon bucket. They ate some fresh, and the rest she froze sliced for pie or as freezer jam. She made a jam with pectin to thicken but no sweetener other than a little white grape juice. She makes homemade GF bread, son in law is allergic to wheat, and they have enjoyed toast and jam in the mornings. She finally had to halt that so she would have enough left to enjoy throughout the winter. She is going to make a plum freezer jam as well IF she gets enough plums. The trees didn't come through the late frost as well as the blueberries and grapes which she was able to cover with tarps. I also made four hanging baskets of petunias and pansies which are now hanging on my shepherd hook at the back door, and they are making me feel happy as well. I would like to do more, but this house/yard/property is not worth the money or effort. I will order more broccoli plus a half bushel of green beans, a bushel of romas, a bushel of sweet corn, a half bushel of Brussels sprouts, and lot of spinach from my favorite Mennonite farmer, and as they say, "put up the harvest" this September.

I did make a huge improvement here with food waste. It was by accident. Our refrigerator went up, and we needed a new one. Since we will be leaving this house in four years and the house will not sell for anything near what we have invested in it, we thought about what kind of appliance to buy that we would want to take with us since it would not worth leaving it behind. We wanted a small refrigerator for our basement "bachelor pad" in the retirement house since the upstairs kitchen has a mammoth refrigerator. So we bought an 11 cubic ft fridge. We have a chest freezer, and since it is often just Mark and I now with adult boys coming and going randomly, I only cook for two most of the time. It has one small crisper drawer. With condiments, butter, A half gallon of milk, sour cream, and cheese in it, I am limited in how much "stock up" of vegetables and fruits I can do. This has been fantastic. If we buy it, it gets eaten right away. Since there is a small supermarket just a few minutes from my mother in law's house, I often just have Mark pick up the fresh veggies I want to cook with or for salad on the day of. He goes right by the store on his way home from his mom's so no car fuel is wasted doing this. We rarely have anything go bad or not get eaten in a timely manner. I hope we can keep this habit when we move and not be tempted to over stock that huge fridge. He of my game plans with that since Alabama has three growing seasons is to have several raised beds and keep tomatoes, salad greens, bell peppers, and broccoli going as much as possible because those are the things we use a ton of, and we are 30 minutes from a supermarket or farmer's market. I worry very much about food insecurity in the world. Wars for resources have been so common throughout human history. I think we may be on the cusp of multiple food and water wars.

Yes, I think the "domestic supply of infants" line from the opinion kind of says it all.