6-12 January, 2012 - Snowmobiles, Canning and Dehydrating

It's been a busy week.  It warmed up the first part of the week which turned the packed snow on the road to eight-inches of sno-cone type mush.  We could barely get in and out in four-wheel-drive.  Our daughter needed to get into town twice this week but is without a vehicle so we took her in for her appointments and she rode home with her husband after he got off work.  On the way home after the last apppointment her husband threw a chain on his truck trying to get up the hill.  The truck slid backwards and got wedged in a snowdrift so me and the neighbors had to get him out.  I ended up using the come-along and a 25 foot cable to pull him over and onto the road before we could go backwards.  Then the battery was dead on his truck so I had to go home to get my jumper cables which were in the Cherokee.  I brought Scott back out with us but then we had a hard time getting the chain back on his pickup.  We ended up being there about an hour before heading home again.  He left his truck there and I gave him a ride out to it the next morning ... at four AM.  At least I got a couple of hours of good writing time in before anyone else got up in the morning.  A neighbor plowed the road and it got cold again so the road is passable now with a 2wd and tire chains.   What fun ... not!

We have had some beautiful weather this week though.  There was one day the sun was shining almost all day long.  The days are getting noticeably longer now which is great.  We can get more done.

Scot was out on one of the warm days we had.  He'd been standing under the solar panels and the water was dripping on his coat.  He has another airplane to play with.  This one shoots plastic "missiles" out of the front.  We seem to spend a lot of time looking for them now!

Scott's supervising while Susan cuts up some pumpkins.  She'll boil them on the wood stove in the big pan and then can them (and make pumpkin bars).

She's also getting stuff together for our trip to Nevada this year.  These are dried "pizza makings," (onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and olives).  The olives are from a can but the rest is home-grown or foraged (mushrooms).

She also canned some mozzarella and cheddar cheeses.

This is the mozzarella after canning.  All of the jars sealed.

Another daughter and SIL came up to visit with their kids so I took the kids out on the snowmobile.  This is Andrew who is 6.

This is Anna suited up and ready to go.  She's 3.

Susan is dehydrating Cream Cheese for our trip.

Once it's sliced she spreads it on drying racks and ...

... puts them on the brackets above the wood stove.  That's breakfast (pancakes) cooking on the stove.

 

I moved my reloading bench into the cabin because I'm tired of doing it in the shack.  I worry about condensation in the winter when I heat it up from 10 to 60 degrees.  I'm also working on my next book, the beginner's guide to reloading, so I need to actually reload some ammo to take pictures of the process.

Susan's most recent book, Food Storage; Bug-out Buckets, Specialty Buckets and Transition Buckets for Preppers is doing well on Amazon Kindle (it's also available in print). Check it out at:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Food-Storage-Specialty-Transition-ebook/dp/B00AS0UYDU/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358111248&sr=1-14&keywords=susan+gregersen