Get a half-face P100 mask that's used for things like welding or painting. Any of the COVID style surgical masks will be useless. Something like this... they're really pretty cheap.
@Nettdata Thanks, just what I need. You know anything about authenticity issues on masks and filters bought on Amazon (due to high demand/covid)? Thought I read something about that awhile back. I cannot get one at HD. Any idea of how long these filters last? Or will I know it when it starts to fail. Online says 2 weeks but it won't be used continuously.
I buy that stuff from a local safety store or reputable supplier like ULine. How long it lasts really depends on what you’re using it for and for how long. No way I’ve ever changed my filters sooner than a month of use. I also buy a box of 10 filters at a time as they are half decently discounted in volume. I’ve also found that supplies are fine now for that stuff, for the most part.
Sooooo Ive had some bone stock I made in the fridge for a week or so, not fat covering, think it'd still be good to pressure can? In one of the more homesteady things Ive done in a while Ive had a couple pounds of deer fat in my freezer for a few years I was going to turn into candles or soap or something. I made some of it into bird feeder suet with bird feed and got a bird feeder to hold it. Not been touched in the last few weeks Ive had it out. I dont know if a watched feeder attracts no birds but I want to see some plumage god damnit.
The flight pen for my ornamental pheasants is more than 20 years old, and it's showing. I really don't want to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it at this stage, so I've contemplated selling the birds. This morning I found one dead, and long story short, found tracks indicating a weasel got in the pen somehow. I'm not 100% sure how but I see where it got under the building. I went around and in the freezing cold double checked things to keep it from happening again. But really this was the last straw for me. Honestly, it's a miracle I only lost one. I listed the birds on Craigslist and plan to tear the flight pen down this Spring. I'll replace it with additional blueberry bushes since the ones on the outside of the pen are loving the acidic soil already. And, it's right near my garden area so it will work aesthetically. My wife has talked me out of selling them for a while now, but I told her there comes a time you have to know when to start scaling back or you start having issues because you can't keep up. I think that time is close enough on the horizon to pull the trigger on this part of our little operation.
Sorry for your loss. I hope the rest stay safe until you can sell them. I know the feeling of finding a dead animal in the morning. Yeah, the maintenance costs scare me when it comes to having a sure nuff full scale homestead. Even something as simple as keeping fences around a pasture can be astronomical to replace. People think poultry are cheap to keep and while I think they are easy, getting their pens and coops set up properly can be expensive or labor intensive, or both. So, maybe none of you can answer this because I'm not sure anyone else keeps standard ducks. But look what I found in the coop - up a ramp - this morning. Already asked my husband. He didn't put it there. WTF? Did somebody really roll this thing inside? It is mostly round, but it's slightly smaller than a baseball. My ducks are all 3-5lbs each.
I think losing a bird now and then is the cost of doing business when keeping poultry so close to the woods and the creek. And wouldn’t you know it, while boxing them up this evening the older cock got away from us and fucked off to parts unknown. We looked all over and no luck. Screw it, the neighbor that finds him can keep him if they catch him. In other news, WTF is with the rock? Maybe they were carrying it around because...well I have no idea why.
The more I think about the rock, the more improbable it seems. I'm kind of creeped out at the thought of someone sneaking into our locked backyard to toss that in. I'm thinking it is time for a camera least in that area.
Ugh. This morning I let my hay supplier know I needed to get more from them. She told me I should buy extra because they took on a new customer and she wanted to make sure I’d have enough til they can cut again. Later she texted me to say her husband said they didn’t have enough to sell to me. So now I’m scrambling to find hay. I have 10 bales but need 20-30 more to hold me til 1st cut. And last year was a really dry year, so everyone is hurting for hay, the prices doubled. At first I wasn’t upset, but I’ve bought exclusively from them for 2 1/2 years, them being neighbors and all, but now I’m left in the lurch. So I’m now slightly pissed.
Hay crisis solved, I found another farmer nearby who had some to sell, though 1.50 more than I usually pay. But I couldn’t be fussy, and now I’ve got two local suppliers. They told me they have other farms calling to buy from them but they’re leery about selling too much. No one knows what the hay season will be like this year. But since they know me I’m good. I only lost one nights sleep over it, so all’s well that ends well.
That's the hay game, man. People with horses and cattle be like crackheads as winter comes to an end. "You got any of that good hay left, the stuff without the briars in it, man?" It was getting worse every year when we had one horse to feed.
I came across someone who had to get rid of her horses and is selling second cut for 2.00 a bale, that's more than half the price people are advertising around here. I'm gonna get as much of that as i can tomorrow. Of course I'm expecting her to either say she already sold it or the price suddenly doubled. We'll see. And I aint saying shit to anyone about it til I see how much she has and I can store.
To continue the discussion elsewhere on this site, ( I can't recall where ): Preppers: Crazy Doomsday cultists or just people who want to be able to do for themselves in case of a catastrophe? I'd say there's two distinctly different groups. There's the guys with their bunkers who have three of everything, and a complete armory. Night vision, tactical gear including body armor, etc. I'd like to think these people are a rarity, a caricature portrayed on TV, but I know they're not. This hard core level never made a lot of sense to me for reasons I'll explain in a bit. Then there's the folks who keep a few weeks of food stored at all times, know how to forage, hunt, garden, etc., and know what to do with that 30# of flour they have in the closet if they need it. I'd say that's where I fall, even though I love the post-apoc genre of books. I just wouldn't want to live that way, unlike the above group who jerk off at the thought of a volcano in Wyoming exploding or whatever they believe in. Interestingly ( and sadly, I wouldn't wish this on anyone ) an author I follow who is a really hard core survivalist/ prepper just had a fire at his place a while back. He lost a LOT of his preps and gear. Which is the problem I have with going over the top like a lot of people do. WTF are you gonna do when you really need it and something like that happens? I'll take knowledge and resourcefulness over a stockpile of food and ammo any day.
Wait, 2 dollars? Is that all? What are the prices you normally pay on 1st cut etc hay? I thought it was significantly more.
What I've seen on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace has been $5. I got lucky and found a farmer selling 1st cut for $4 and picked up 30 bales to to get me through til my supplier can get more cut. So to get 2nd cut for $2.00 is an amazing opportunity right now. I'm gonna load up every space I can with it.
OMFG did I hit the hillbilly lottery today. I went to the next town over to buy that hay someone was selling. I figured I'd take as much as I could store and then let someone else have what was left. When I got there she told me she was fussy about her hay and showed me what she had. She offered to break open a bale so I could check it out. "No that's okay, I can smell the quality." I don't know if she knows I was serious or not. It looked like 40-50 bales, and I told her I'd take the lot. I'd stack it in my living room if needs be, it's that good of hay. Worst case scenario, I was gonna call a neighbor and tell them I had a truckload to sell them ( at a profit of course ). Instead, my barn if full of 60 bales of seriously high quality second cut from last year. And I got it for 2.00 A FREAKIN BALE!!!!! Yeah you read that right. She paid 5.50 a bale but wanted it gone, so she only charged me a fraction. She noted that her supplier just raised his price to 9.00 a bale. DAMN! Additionally, she had 28 bales of TSC shavings. Now, they're fine shavings and I usually prefer coarse. But for, again, 2.00 A FREAKIN BALE!!!! I wasn't going to pass it up. I made 5 trips back and forth for both hay and shavings and it was well worth it! I figure I spent $180 and got about $500 worth of stuff, easily. Then when that was all done, I shoveled out the chicken coop which was gag worthy. I already told the wife, barring any other world crises, we're cutting back on the amount of chickens we have and hopefully the amount of shit I have to shovel in the Spring. 2.00 A FREAKIN BALE!!! I buried that shit in the back for Winter, moving the first cut I just bought to the front. This started out as a monumentally shitty week for me, and being completely filthy, covered in hay chaff and God knows what else was just what I needed.
Duck rape has been real bad around here lately. One of the girls, the favorite, has a long scab on the back of her head from it. I listed one for sale but if he doesn't sell we are having roast duck for dinner next week. I separated them today and was hoping the drakes would do some weeding for me but they are standing as close to the hens as they can. At least they aren't shutting on my patio.