For over a week I’ve heard stories of a large, very heavy box waiting at my mail drop. Today Ian returned from his travels, lugging along said box.
Canned meat! Roughly a lifetime’s supply of tuna, plus chicken in broth and a couple of cans of that Costco house-brand roast beef that I love. AND (clearly the donor knows me) two cans of unground Trader Joe coffee. AND (possibly the donor knows me too well) a whole bunch of deodorant, which I’m gonna go ahead and not regard as a social comment.
Thank you very much! BTW I’m glad you taped that box well, because USPS damn near destroyed it.
Something else food-related happened today. A couple of days ago I started on my last full pail of bread flour, …
…which is a little concerning because, duh, it’s my last full pail of flour. Of course I can buy it in smaller lots easily so actually running out of flour isn’t a major concern but flour is a commodity I like to keep around in at least 100# quantity and I’ve been letting it slide because money’s been tight. Also the flour that’s available locally isn’t all that great, but my usual out-of-town supply dried up.
But I’ve found a new supply of superior flour which will cost me 0 dollars, and from the oddest place. My neighbor L also enjoys baking, especially since she has now moved into her new movie-star kitchen which she and D built with their own four hands.
(OT Aside: We have calculated that D&L’s kitchen could easily contain two of my entire cabins, counting their pantry but not my cabin’s height. Hey, they always wanted a big kitchen, okay?)
Anyway, L has also been vocally concerned about the poor quality of the flour available locally. But she found that one of the two local dollar stores, of all places, sells triple-sifted Gold Medal for the same price as the crappy Bluebird at the regular market. AND L is a dedicated bargain shopper: She won’t go near the dollar store where (like me) she does a lot of her grocery shopping unless it’s Saturday when their coupons are good, PLUS she adds insult to the injury with her senior discount. SO, since she wants to hit the store up for a big buy plus I want about 100 pounds of the stuff, she’s working a deal with the manager for the mother of all discounts on roughly half a pallet of flour, because that’s one of the few advantages of living near a small, dying town. And it’ll cost me no money because they loved it when I paid for their surplus flooring in labor and they want to do it again.
A third piece of news from the gulch, less pleasant, is that Patty the laying hen, one of my two remaining Rhode Island Reds, has died. For once this one wasn’t a big surprise because she has clearly been sick for the past couple of days. Selma still seems fine, but I’m going to keep her isolated for another few days before making the next big chicken shake-up.
In a way this kind of simplifies things. I want to move the four RIR pullets to the Fortress of Attitude where they belong, but Selma tried to kill them last time and I couldn’t figure out how to section off the chicken yard in a practical way. But since I’m down to one older chicken, now I can move the small temporary coop into the yard and put Selma into it, giving the four other birds the run of the place.
Welcome to the Fortress of Attitude
