Welcome to this week’s homestead update.
This week was an extremely busy week, at least it was between work and the kid’s activities. I mentioned last week that there was some illness in the house. Everyone is over whatever it was. My daughter and I were the lucky ones this time. We never got sick. Continue reading
I’m just posting a short update today, not a full length post.
So, I got home from work about 2 hours late on Friday. I got stuck working late. So I ate dinner and checked my e-mail. Within a couple of minutes, I started to feel bad. I went into the bedroom to lay down for a couple of minutes. That ended up being 2 days.
I’m not sure what I had, but I was extremely tired. I had chills, but no fever. I had a stomach ache, but no nausea. I also had aching joints. I laid around all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday before I started feeling better.
My son and daughter had the same thing last week, and my wife had a brief bout from Saturday until Sunday.
Needless to say, I didn’t get much done on the homestead. So my thoughts about posting about cooking on Mondays is not going to happen this week. Maybe later in the week, but it isn’t happening today.
The one thing that did happen this weekend is that the awning for the camper is completely sown. I just need to wait until we get some warmer temperatures so I can mount it on the camper. I need to wait for the warmer temperatures so the windows don’t get damaged when I crank it up.
I made another decision about the blog. In my view of things, the camper and camping trips are homestead related because they help me work on some skills like fire building and keeping in shape with hiking. It also allows me to really relax. I sleep really well when we are camping, I think it is because there is very little stress when we are camping.
Anyhow, I’ve decided to include a couple of camping related posts in my blog. Don’t worry, it will only be a couple. I have several modifications that I need to make on the camper. These will be of interest to some of the folks that read the blog, mainly because that while they are on a camper, they are useful for other things as well. For instance, I need a way to see how much water is in the fresh water tank. This would be perfect for checking how much water is in a rain catchment system.
That’s all I have for today. I think later in the week I’ll write-up a Lehman’s wish list post.
Since winter is beginning this week, my family will likely start to catch colds and maybe even the flu. I don’t like to use medicine for little things. It isn’t that I never use medicine, I just prefer to allow my body’s immune system to get a work-out so it gets stronger. If it gets bad, I will take over the counter medicine to ease the symptoms.
But here are a couple of old-time home remedies that I’ve used in the past. These have all worked to help me feel better. The bold type will show what I used the “remedy” to treat.
Sore throat & nasal congestion
Put in a cup and add very hot water. Stir and sip.
This is my favorite treatment. The steam from the apple cider vinegar seems to clear my sinuses. But the main use for this is the sore throat. I’ve looked this up and a lot of people say that the honey is what helps by coating the throat. Honey also has an anti-bacterial action, so that could also be what helps. But for me, the cayenne is was really helps. When I drink this, I can feel that cayenne in the back of my throat. It seems to increase blood flow, so maybe that’s what is happening. I guess there’s probably a shot of vitamin C in the lemon juice also, but I don’t think that would do much.
But a word of warning, the apple cider vinegar really stinks up the place. People will smell it all over the house.
Nasal congestion or chest congestion
Boil about 5 cups of water. Set the bowl on a table and add the water to it. Have a seat and lean over the bowl. Drape the towel over your head and the bowl. The goal is to allow very little of the steam to escape from under the towel. Breath the steam for 15 or 20 minutes. Breathe in through your nose for congested sinuses. Breathe through your mouth if the congestion is in your chest.
It is only 15 or 20 minutes, but it gets really boring under that towel. I try to listen to my MP3 player while I’m under there. It is a great time to learn something from a good podcast. For homestead and prepper related stuff, give a listen to The Survival Podcast, The Self Sufficient Gardener and The Self-Sufficient Homestead podcasts. Or if you are in the mood for something a bit more political, have a listen to Bad Quaker.
Headache
There are many treatments for headaches. I usually do not get really bad headaches, but even a slight headache can ruin the day.
Drink a Coke. For me, the caffeine really helps ease the pain. There’s a reason that it is in Excedrin pain medicine, it works. I drink very little soda, but I make sure that we have a couple of cans of Coke in the house just for this. I guess Pepsi would work as well, but I’m not a fan of Pepsi.
Lie down in a dark room with a cool, damp rag across the forehead. For me, this works when my headache was caused by eye strain or some stress. If I take a short nap, it works even better.
Rub the webbing between the thumb and index finger. This is an area that is used in acupuncture or acupressure. You want to feel the pressure, but it shouldn’t hurt. A couple of minutes of this and my headache is usually gone. Who knows, it could just be a placebo effect.
I haven’t tried this one, but know several people who swear by peppermint oil. Smear a little bit between your upper lip and nose. Others will smear some of the oil over the area that the ache is in. I imagine this works about the same way as Head On works, opening up the blood vessels.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. But I plan on making use of these traditional treatments more than I have in the past. As I come across things that work for me, I’ll post about them.
After sleeping in this morning, I started to feel much better. I still have some stuffiness.
One thing that I do when I’m trying to recover from a cold is take a herbal remedy. This consists of a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, honey and lemon juice and a dash of cayenne. Put this in a mug and fill it with hot water. The vinegar helps clear the sinuses and the cayenne soothes the throat. I think that the lemon juice adds some vitamin C and the honey makes it drinkable.
Anyway, I decided it was time to get some work done.
Out to the garden I went. I was able to cut about a dozen okra pods. The family really likes these sliced up, drug through corn meal and fried up. But I think my wife has gotten tired of them. She hasn’t wanted them for a little while. So for the past couple weeks I’ve been blanching and freezing them. I don’t slice them, I just take off the tip and the stem. Blanch them for 3 minutes, dry them and freeze them.
Next was on to the green beans. They are growing pretty well. There are quite a few little beans growing there and lots of flowers. But over the years, I’ve had big problems with Mexican bean beetles. Since I don’t like to use chemicals on my garden, I usually hand pick them. Over the past months, I must have been making progress since I didn’t really have that many to pick. At least compared to previous pickings. There were only a half dozen or so patches of eggs, but I did pull dozens of beetles and quite a few larvae off the plants. Here’s hoping that I’ve reduced the population enough that I won’t have big problems with them next year.
After finishing that, I hoed up one of the beds that used to have lima beans in it. I pulled the lima beans last week and lots of weeds grew in that bed. It is amazing how quickly weeds can get a foot hold. But I got the bed cleared out. I planted half of it with a Fall mesculin mix. Next week I’ll plant the other half of the bed.
Back in the Spring I built a cold frame. I think that this Winter I’ll put that cold frame over part of the greens bed to try to keep some greens growing the entire Winter. A couple of the other beds have fittings that I can put poles in so I can mount plastic over it like a green house. I guess that will be an experiment that I’ll have to do this Winter.
Well, day number 2 and another post.
Unfortunately there won’t be a homestead related post today. I have a cold and it has knocked me down a bit. I ended up taking a 2 hour nap this afternoon. I was feeling bad enough that I didn’t do anything with the homestead.
But I did work on the web page. Yesterday I put a under construction page up. This morning, I built a simple site on SiteBuilder. I uploaded it and then made additional changes. When I went to upload the new page, I received a 500 Internal Server Error. I went into chat with Host Gator and they fixed it within about 5 minutes. Apparently it is a known issue with SiteBuilder.
Maybe just talk about what I want to do with the site.
Apparently when you put a blog link on the page with SiteBuilder, it creates a page. So I’ll need to pull down the files and replace the link to the new page with a link to my blog. Same with Andrew’s blog. I also need to improve the write ups. I just have very basic info on the page.
