I do hope everyone is having a beautiful, calm Sunday. We’re getting a bit of a break between yesterday and tomorrow’s wind storms, which is a huge blessing. My nerves probably couldn’t handle three solid days of that incessant howling!

You just can’t really block it out, either, and even if I could it still makes me nervous just knowing the sort of damage that all that wind is causing around the valley.

All those poor trampolines and Easter wreaths! 😄

Seriously though, these wind storms always rip up trees, blow down fences and buildings and do a lot of damage and right now the last thing any of us needs is to worry about that sort of thing. We’ve got enough going on just trying to keep gas in the car and food on the table and it doesn’t look like things are going to get better any time soon.

In fact, I watched this video uploaded a few days ago by the funny and brutally honest Patara over at Appalachia’s Homestead channel:

It was great but in the comments was this:

Grain Farmer here, the decision on our grain crops was made in January. What you speak of is so true . None of our corn or soybeans will go to market we are keeping everything we grow for our family and our cattle . We are farming for ourselves this year.

So, yeah.

This is serious, folks, and we can’t pray or wish or imagine or meditate our way out of what’s coming. We can’t ignore or pretend or envision a different reality and manifest it and we can’t run away from it, either.

Ignore the signs at your own peril. Kind of like these windstorms. We get plenty of warning they’re coming and act accordingly.

As I kept checking out the windows to see if the wind was knocking our stuff down (it wasn’t thankfully but it did do a number on the neighbor’s carport), I noticed that my seedlings are already sprouting!

Including that one little marigold in the bottom corner there. I said a little heartfelt prayer of gratitude and hoped that was a sign of what’s to come for our growing season.

Later, as I sat in the living room working on my cross stitch, I tried to put everything out of my mind and turned on reruns of Little House on the Prairie. (Yes, I am that person. I love LHOP and Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy and all those old shows!)

One episode I watched was the one where Johnny Cash pretends to be a preacher and gets all the Walnut Grove townsfolk to donate stuff to help the needy in a different town that had a bad fire sweep through their farms.

Johnny Cash was always one of my favorites and I just love him in this role (even though it’s hilarious that Reverend Alden’s clothes magically grew to fit him).

Everyone, well, just about everyone, pitched right in and gave what they could and JC’s character plans to steal it all but if you’ve seen the episode you know that he ends up doing the right thing.

Sorry for the spoiler alert there if you haven’t seen it yet. 😄

But it made me wonder if people around here would do the right thing? If things get really bad, that is. Which they just might real soon.

I’d like to think I live in a selfless community and just from what I’ve seen here over the years and the way our neighbors are so friendly and giving during good times, I’m pretty sure they’d be every bit the same during bad times. Maybe even moreso. In fact, I am pretty positive we’d all come together quickly and make sure that no one went without if we had to.

I have to stop here and say that’s one thing about the LDS community; they are extremely giving even to those of us who aren’t members of their church. When my sister’s house burned down a few years ago, they immediately made sure she had everything she needed and never questioned her affiliation.

Food, blankets, clothing and even cash.

They are SUCH great neighbors, to be honest, and I am so happy living among them although it’s a bit annoying when they ignore my NO SOLICITING sign and come trying to convert me despite me politely telling them over and over again that I’m not interested.

Still, they are super nice about it and much less annoying than the guy trying to sell me overpriced solar panels for my house or repaving for my driveway who ignores it, too! 🙄

It’s not like I can call his boss and complain because they probably tell them to ignore NO SOLICITING signs because I’m sure market research shows that some people open up their wallets anyway.

Ugh.

Since they aren’t going to stop bugging me, I ordered this sign to go on my front door just to humiliate them for ignoring my first sign!

I can’t wait until it gets here!

Anyway, I’d like to think most communities are this way (giving and caring but also full of rude door-to-door salesmen) and that we’re not unique or special. Although, to be honest, we have lived in a few places where I don’t think people would come together at all in bad times because they sure the heck weren’t friendly or giving in good times!

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Which is partly why we moved to Idaho to begin with! That and the potatoes…

We love potatoes. 😄

It really made me think, though, what can we do to make sure if things get bad, and I mean really bad and folks are hurting, to help ease their burden? We aren’t wealthy, so it would have to be something besides money. I can’t drive, so it would have to be something I can do right here from home.

Then it hit me. We can try to grow and raise enough food here to feed our family and maybe a little extra for someone else, just in case.

That way we aren’t competing with them for hand outs if it comes to that and we can feel good about having extra to give. It just feels like the right thing to do given the situation at hand.

We have plenty of seeds, so that’s not a problem. We have plenty of room to grow a lot of food, maybe not as much as some, but we can definitely add more garden beds. Also, we’ll have a lot of chickens and eggs this year, some of which we’ll be hatching out to make even more chickens (who will lay more eggs).

Two of Fred’s girls are sitting on nests right now, in fact.

I would be happy to share extra eggs or even give someone their own starter flock if things got really bad. I wouldn’t charge them anything, either, because again, that just seems like the right thing to do given the circumstances.

Now I’m not saying you should do the same, but if you haven’t thought about what you can do in order to help ease someone in your communities burden because either they haven’t been able to prepare or thought all of this was nonsensical conspiracy theory stuff, I highly encourage you to think about it. We can all offer something, even if it’s just comfort, to our friends, family and neighbors.

After all, we’re all in this together and no one is getting out alive in the end so why not try to make it a little better for everyone?

Even those who (we feel) may or may not deserve it?

We had talked about getting rid of the quail and pheasant and just focusing on chickens but after serious reconsideration I think we’ll keep the quail and hatch out a lot more again this year like we did last year because for one, they don’t eat a lot, and two, one quail equals a meal for one hungry person and we can raise a lot of them in a short time.

Dozens and dozens of them.

They are very prolific! And tasty.

We’re butchering most of the pheasant in a couple of weeks but we decided we are keeping a rooster and two hens, for the same reason. They don’t eat a ton or take up too much space and they lay a lot of eggs that we can hatch out quickly.

Each pheasant equals a meal for us or another hungry family.

We sold off most of the ducks because while they are delicious, they just eat too much, but we did keep two hens who are laying eggs. In the chicken’s nesting boxes, actually…

And while they won’t hatch out, their eggs are still food.

Later, if the price of feed allows, we’ll get another male and hatch out ducklings but for now we’ll just focus on growing vegetables and raising chickens, quail and pheasant.

That’s the least we can do.

And, if I get my way, we’ll also raise some trout or tilapia because I’d really love to farm my own fish! I’m not holding my breath on that idea, though. The hubs has pretty much shot down backyard fish farming since we have such good fishing nearby (but still wants to grow our own potatoes!).

Again, if you haven’t thought of these things, maybe it’s time to do that. Yes, God helps those that help themselves, but it is our duty as believers to do the right thing and help the less fortunate. Unfortunately, there may be more than we think. I’m afraid a lot of people are going to be taken off guard because they just don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear or choose willful ignorance to what’s happening in the world right now.

But they’re still our brothers and sisters in this big, human family, right?

Okay, enough preaching, off to work. 😄

Happy Sunday, everyone.