Just an easy kind of day

Emery and I had an easy kind of day. I slept a bit later than usual, then went out to do chores and noticed the crows were hanging around, more of them than the couple that hang out in the woods that border our land. I love crows, they are my favorite bird, having raised a couple, they are dear to me. Smart birds and full of personality. I was glad to see more of them, another sure sign that autumn is close at hand. I reminded myself to stick my crow caller by the back door so I can call a few close and feed them.
In the afternoon, Emery and I went antique shopping, came home empty handed, but that is the nature of such shopping, sometimes you find just what you are needing and other times, nothing fits your needs. We stopped for lunch at Taco Bell, gazed into each others faces as if no one else existed...still after 3 decades.
Tonight we puttered around after chores. Emery mended a fence that had come loose from the fence post and I checked on the garden. The eggplants are full of blossoms and small purple delights. The banana peppers look great and tomatoes are once again setting bloom.

I feel so blessed to live this life, for so many reasons. As I have watched the folks on the news dealing with no electricity, no food in their houses and struggling to exist without all the modern conveniences, due to Ikes visit to Texas, I thought about how knowing how to live the "old fashioned way" is a kind of freedom. We can live on what we have here for quite some time, might not be always easy, but we have the know how of how to deal without electricity and such. Emery lived a great part of his life just like "Little House on the Prairie", and its given him know how for lots of things that seem lost to the modern world. Living on a farm, without electricity and running water taught him lots. He has even done a c-section on a goat in our barn without any problems!

Our house is always stocked with many months worth of food, maybe even enough for a year. Canning jars filled, 5 gallon buckets of noodles and flours. Beans too and dried fruit. There are always plenty of eggs each day for us to use and a woodstove to cook them on. Most of the time we have had milking animals to depend on too. There is a washboard and tub, for laundry and since all we use is a clothesline for drying clothes, nothing would change there. We keep lots of water on hand and have a way of collecting rain water if need be. I think at any given time the only meat we have in our freezer would be a pound of hamburger and a couple chicken breasts. So not much of a loss there. If something were to happen in winter, we would stay cozy and warm. Each room in our house has a kerosene lamp, and the barn too. We keep plenty of fuel on hand at all times. Bundles of hand-dipped candles always hang off the peg rack, ready to be used. We have a large fire pit we can put the dutch oven in, which I know how to use, so baking could go on as normal. I tease Emery about his surplus lumber pile, and his buckets of nails and such, but it sure would be nice in an emergency situation to have that all on hand, and all his old fashioned tools too. Not ones that require fuel or electricity.

We don't live this way because something might go wrong and we might NEED to live this way, we live this way because we like to, but I can feel confident that we could handle many difficult situations if the need ever arose. I pray it never does. I was talking with my girls about this very subject when Ike was coming to Texas and although they both live with all the modern convenience's, and don't live like we do, they agreed that its kinda nice knowing all this stuff from their childhood and youth. They both keep lots of food on hand, that is something my family has done for generations. We joke that its in our genes !!!

We did talk about how it might not be a bad idea to keep a generator and some fuel on hand, just to maintain a refrigerator.

On another subject, Mei-Ling has her MRI tomorrow....hoping and praying it will show an improvement.