Product Review: Wise Foods Grab and Go Entree

I went to a gun show a while back and there was a booth there that was selling Wise Foods Grab and Go Buckets.  Since all of our food storage is ingredients, home dehydrated or home canned foods along with the ability to resupply my food storage with our garden, orchard and live stock I had no commercially prepared freeze dried anything.  So we bought 2 of the grab and go buckets of entrees to supplement our food storage.  My oldest daughter decided to try out one of the Entrees just to make sure it was fit to eat.  It was and tasted pretty good just the way it was.  Then with a few redneck additions she had a decent meal.

The meal was "Pasta Alfredo"

This is what it looked like dry.  She opened the package, removed the oxygen absorber and poured it into a bowl.  Then she heated 4 cups of water to boiling and added it according to the package directions.  It was a bit bland so in went some diced ham.

Now mind you when I got these meals my step-daughter who is 13 immediately said "EEEWWWW, I'm not eating that!!!"
So Becky brought over a bowl of the prepared pasta and it went into the fridge.  When Step-daughter saw said bowl in the fridge she immediately wanted it.  I did not tell her what it was until after she went on and on about how good it was!!!
Hubby also had tried it and said it was good.  The taste was much similar to that of Hamburger Helper.  This food definitely passed the picky teenager "EEEWWWWW" Test!!!!

So I guess a few more buckets are in order for the pantry!!

Link for Grab and Go Entree Bucket

Thanksgiving Wishes

I want to wish all of my readers a very Happy Thanksgiving. May your table be blessed with food, friendship and love. Today is a day to be thankful for all your blessings and it is also a day that you may release any frustration you may have built up. Here are ways to release that frustration:

1. You may BEAT Mr. Egg or you can send him to hell to be "devilled"

2. You may string up Mr. Gobbler

3. You may WHIP Ms. Cream

4. You may take a Rolling pin to Little Ms Pastry Crust

Have fun, Enjoy the day. And now Little Ms. Pastry crust has had it. She is definately getting the rolling pin treatment from me!!!

We have babies!!!! Bunnies that is!!!

One of our does just gave birth last night... She had been working on her nest since yesterday morning so I knew it was imminent... I went out last night and could see the fur moving in the nest...

What a cozy nest!!!

This morning when I went out there I gave her some good scratches behind her ears and then pulled back the fur:

See the pink spot in the hole of fur?

Phone on zoom, not a great picture.

There are 6 of them.  3 pink ones and 3 black ones like their daddy.

This is her first litter so I hope all goes well.  Every time I have been out there she has not been in the nest with them.  I put her in the nest to get the top picture...

Building a combost bin for free

If there is one thing every farm has plenty of that is MANURE!!!  Up until now we had no one place to put it so when we cleaned out a stall it just went... Where ever the kid who was in charge decided it should go.  Now we have a compost bin and that is THE PLACE for them to dump their wheel barrows.

Cost 6 nails... a few pennies
Pallets and skids Free
Bailing wire... Free (it came off the bales of alfalfa)

I have several pallets and skids sitting around that I had gotten for free when some people down the road built a house.

2 of the skids were 10 feet long by 4 feet tall and the two pallets I used were about 4feet by 4 feet.

Our garden has a pen made from field fencing at either end of it.  One end has our growing pigs in it the other is for if I have to separate out a goat for some reason.  In between the two pens we have almost half an acre that is going to be our new garden this next spring.  Last year our garden flooded horribly and had to be replanted 3 times so this year I decided it was going on higher ground with no chance of flooding from the road.

The first step was to put one of the skids up against the fence in the corner.  I nailed it to the corner post and then bailing wired it to the T-post.  I then added a pallet on each end which I nailed to the skid.  The front skid I cut so that it was only about 2 feet tall and then nailed it to the pallets.

Now I have a place in the garden for garden compost like weeds and a place to put the manure from the barn and pens.

Update on Star, Our adopted 30+ year old horse

ROTTEN!!!

About 7 months ago we adopted a horse.  The people told us she was about 20 years old.  She was super skinny with all her bones sticking out and you could count every rib from 10 feet away.  I noticed she was dropping her grain and having trouble eating so I got the dentist out here.  That was 6 months ago.  The dentist fixed her teeth.  She said they were in really bad shape and one even fell out in her hand.  She told me that Star was 30+ years old.
I have been feeding her lots of grain and weight gain powder plus alfalfa and all the grass she can eat.  She is now much fatter and VERY barn sour....

November 2012 looking better

Before you could see every vertebra, every rib and all of the bones in her hips.

November 2012 much fatter

These pictures where taken from about 3 feet away from her.  You can see the difference, The picture's below was when we first got her and I was about 10 feet away.

Day one

When we first got Star

I like the ones now better.  See how you can see the bones in the pictures just above but in the pictures I took today in the top of the post she looks MUCH better.

Now I just have a horse that is so spoiled she wants no part of being ridden.  I was scared to put a saddle on her and put any weight on her when she was skinny so we didn't try to ride her and now she refuses to move...  Except to the barn or the feeder!!!

Anybody out there have any ideas on how to un-sour a horse???

Is a Hard Winter on the Horizon?

I told my husband last summer with the drought and the heat so bad that I feared a HARD winter... Now my animals are looking really shaggy.  Our horse has fur that is almost an inch long.  My goats are growing thick under coats also.  The persimmons are showing spoons which means we will have to dig out of snow and the almanac also is calling for an extra snowy winter here.

We have frequent power outages here from ice.  So I invested in some solar lights.  We have extra lamp oil and candles.

I just built a barrel wood stove for the barn so if I lose power at least we can all go to the barn and stay warm.

What do you folks think?  Are we in for a cold, cold winter?  Has anyone looked at a persimmon seed? What do you think your area will be like???

I guess I better get busy and get the last of the "Before it gets too cold to be outside" stuff done...

Update on State Petitions to secede and a petition to impeach Obama

Here is an update on all the Hoopla at the White House "We the people website".

As of 6am Central time there were petitions for 45 of our 50 states to secede.  Combined they have 674,433 signatures.  There are 5 of the New England states and Hawaii that is not listed. Since it is easier to list the states NOT listed on the site with petitions here they are:
Connecticut
Hawaii
Massachusetts
Maryland
Vermont

I am keeping up with all of this for curiosities sake... I am not going to sit here and tell any one they need to sign a petition or tell them not to sign the petitions.  But we do have the right given to us by the first amendment to petition our government. They have 30 days to amass signatures and they are only into this by less than a week.  I am curious as to how far this will go before the White House decides to unplug their web server....

There is also another petition to peacefully allow all the states that have requested secession to form a new nation together here it is:  http://wh.gov/9upF


On the other front the two petitions wishing to strip citizenship and exile all who sign have 21,333 signatures.  Those are the people that have never heard of the First Amendment.  I am not quite sure where they plan on exiling this many people to... Alaska maybe??? That would be the closest thing to our version of Siberia where communist Russia used to exile their people that spoke up to...  I have always been fascinated by Alaska so maybe I will get to go... LOL

You can also read all of the petitions at: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions

There is also a petition to impeach Obama and it lists several reasons you can read this one here:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-request-obama-be-impeached-following-reasons/cpk4V6zK

All I have to say once again is WOW!!!!!  People are speaking up. 

Update on petitions at Whitehouse

There are currently 40 states that are listed and all together there are over 528,000 signatures.  You can see them all here https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions

There are also 2 petitions asking the president to exile, remove citizenship or "deport" everyone who signs the petitions.  They have about  8000 signatures combined.  I guess those people have not heard about that little thing called the First Amendment and the right to freedom of speech.  To me this is a very peaceful demonstration.  Like I have said you can not get any more peaceful than a bunch of electronic signatures on an electronic petition.

I do not believe there is going to be any secession.  I believe this is only a message to the president that the people want the country to go back to the ways of the constitution. 

Preserve our rights as our forefathers had intended them to be!

Petitons on White House site to secede...Why the people have done it... What I think...

The count of petitions people have submitted for the different states is up to 31 out of 50 states. It has now hit main stream media and was on our local news last night. I believe that these people do not truly want to secede but only want their voices heard about the recent blatant infringement upon rights.  Now there is even a petition to exile and strip citizenship of every person who signs the petitions.  What these people do not realize is that every single petition is a voice.  It is our first amendment right of Freedom of Speech being utilized to send a message to the president.  This was the way many thought that maybe they could get a point across. 

Since over half of the states are present I believe they (the citizens) do not want to necessarily secede but they do want a NEW government...

The people are not happy.  Many of our rights have been trampled in recent years.  Whether it is the TSA violating privacy.  People being arrested for peaceful demonstrations (the occupy movement). Taxation without permission of the people (jsut raise taxes).  Or gun control.

Can anyone even remember why we left dear old England and King George?  Many of the reasons are present here and now again.  Yes that cup of tea is being taxed!!!

Our Government needs reform.  We need to be reformed back to our constitution.  Smaller government.  Less red tape.  Decrease federal spending. 

I am a US citizen and am proud of that.  I do not need or want a president to apologize for that fact.  We are supposed to be one nation under GOD.  Why should we apologize for being Americans, or for being Christian, or whatever religion you choose.  That is our choice and it is a right.

I do not want a civil war, But I do want the president to remember our constitution that he swore to uphold.  Remember the declaration of independence and why we are what we are. 

Yes I signed many of the petitions (that was the only way I could get those links for my posts).
I know that a little petition by the citizens will never cause any state to be released from the union.

I believe that this is nothing more than a peaceful demonstration in an attempt to get him to listen to the people.  And really... How much more peaceful can you get than electronic signatures on an electronic petition????

And with that I am saying no more about all of this.  Back to my homestead... I HATE politics!!!

Multiple states wanting to leave the US peacefully... The Bible Belt speaks and then some

Okay... WOW... That is about all I can say about all of this.  There are multiple petitions now for multiple states to withdraw and create their own new government.  Louisiana started it and now there are 20 in total...  Is this a sign of what is to come????  I have a foreboding feeling about all of this....  I do hope the president can see that his peasants are not happy....  Many of the states listed were confederate states to begin with and pretty much the entire Bible Belt is spoken for here, only a few are missing.  There could be many more since you have to get the first 150 signatures before the petition will even show up on the White House web site.  I have no interest in seeing a civil war here on our ground, But I do hope that all of these petitions will get the Commander in Chief's attention and tell him there are a LOT of unhappy people out here.  Maybe he will LISTEN to his people and try to unite the nation once again. 
We were once a great nation united by the people and for the people.  We are now a divided nation that is by the government and for the government. 

UPDATE:
Oklahoma http://wh.gov/9mK7 and Arizona  http://wh.gov/9mNz Have also entered onto the petition page.  That raises the count to 22 states.  Now I do not believe for one minute that anything is going to actually come of this except papers flying (Or at least I truly hope not).  But it truly is my hope that with this much attention maybe the Obama administration will stop and truly consider the reasons behind all of this.  This is almost half of our continental states.  Maybe the voices will be heard and attention paid to them....

Here are links to all of the states so far:

Alabama http://wh.gov/99bb

Arkansas  http://wh.gov/9m8y

Colorado  http://wh.gov/9EzG

Florida  http://wh.gov/9PBH

Georgia  http://wh.gov/9EJi  and  http://wh.gov/9EWM

Indiana  http://wh.gov/9EqT

Kentucky  http://wh.gov/9PBH

Louisiana  ...http://wh.gov/93Z9

Michigan  http://wh.gov/9mbx

Mississippi  http://wh.gov/9NPu

Missouri  http://wh.gov/9Pr4  and http://wh.gov/9Qsi

Montana  http://wh.gov/9Pn3

North Carolina http://wh.gov/95Xm

North Dakota  http://wh.gov/9miG

New Jersey   http://wh.gov/9ETS

New York  http://wh.gov/9maC

Oregon  http://wh.gov/9PG6

South Carolina  http://wh.gov/9E0O  and http://wh.gov/9EYc

Tennessee  http://wh.gov/9mxP

Texas http://wh.gov/98n0

Louisiana... Trying to leave the union??? Interesting...

Okay has anyone out there read the latest on the WND??? It seems as though the day after our election someone decided to write a petition to the White House to allow the state of LA to secede from the union and start their own new government.  You can see the article here... http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/louisiana-residents-petition-to-secede/
If you read the comments it seems as though there are alot of other people in other states that seem to agree...
And you can read the petition here...http://wh.gov/93Z9

 My husband is from Louisiana and he said "leave it to the Cajuns to start it".  I do not believe it will ever happen not without a bunch of blood shed and I do hope none of this comes to that.  We have had one civil war I hope to not ever see one here in my lifetime or my childrens.

But in case you are interested in reading it the links are there for you...

I found it interesting reading...  The entire bible belt wanted Romney and the East and West coasts wanted Obama.  But usually the mid section of our country is much more conservative than the coasts. 

Just for the sake of pointing out something.  I saw a lot of posts on blogs saying the same thing soon after Katrina.  It didn't happen then and I don't see it happening now.  Usually it is just people yapping their mouths.  This is the first time I have ever seen someone actually try to DO something.

I believe that the bigwigs in the state would never actually want it to happen.  And one little state against the machine of the US is not a fair match anyway.  They would lose...

But at least the people have voiced their concern over our current administrations policies.  As of now we still have freedom of speech.  I just hope and pray it stays that way.