Last night in the evening dark, as I was pushing my wheelbarrel from the houseyard to the barnyard, with my hand cranked flashlight clipped on to show the way, my breath and Marty’s milk bucket steam was just slightly showing in the cool crisp evening, the star’s where filling the sky, so pretty.. listening to the slosh, slosh of the three filled water buckets, when I got to the barn, I pulled the string to turn on our solar powered inside barn light, and started my  evening farm chores, happy pushing sheep all begging for their evening feeding, a head swinging dancing cow in her spot, grunts coming from the back of the barn, where miss piggy is hard at work digging up another pen that is being cleaned out, she will have to wait a bit for me to come round the barn with her evening feed and water, little Marty (I dropped the S on the name he came with) is up and just like Girl has moved to his spot where his bucket of fresh warm milk will be placed for him, he does his bathroom on the right side of his big box stall, his bed is on the left side by the hay feeder, and his feeding area is on the left side but on the far right, if you let them and give them the room to do so, they try and be clean.

Last night I looked and had a moment of huh, the barn sure has changed since we got it, when we moved here it had power that ran the whole length of the barn, just flip the switch and lights turned on from one end to the other, no solar lights.. It has the deep drilled well and it had a auto water pump on it, with lines set up to provide auto water to the different stalls an area’s of the barn, which we had taken out and replaced with a hand pump.  The big barn was our first building that we took off-grid, we are slowly taking other parts and buildings off-grid as its possable, it all adds in extra daily work..

Which ties in nicely with my food storage update this week, While the rooster is away, the hen will play 😛

So I have had one day where I had everything cold from storage, no heating allowed, I really don’t like not having something warm to drink, even if its just warm water. I figured out that for a number of things, I perferred to let it get to room temp (which is still fairly cold in my house) before eating if you are using no heat, and in the case of one jar of canned goods, I wrapped it in wool, and stuffed it in my shirt, over which went my sweater, and then the house jacket, and let my body heat warm it up for an hour, it was down right half way warm, this is a clever way to for sure take the chill off of food.

One day, I only let myself use heat once, and I was only allowed one pot, I used my thermo’s to make tea and keep it warm, I used my teapot hay box to make soup and keep it warm for lunch, I used my shuttle chef to cook my veggies and meat dish in it, it was still warm to eat seven hours later. This one worked better then I expected, it turns out I am fairly well prepared for cooking a day’s worth of food in one shot and then keeping it warm in different ways though typical eating hours.

My third day of play was limiting my water, I let myself have one gallon of water for my own personal use, that included washing up, drinking water, cooking water etc, (this didn’t count for house use and or critter use) just for my own personal use. I didn’t have any real issue with only using one gallon of water for my day, however I will own up that some of my canned goods or my fresh goods had juice or had fluids in them, which I didn’t count or reduce my gallon of water from.

Today’s challange is to make it a zero mile day, everything I eat or drink needs to have come directly from the farm itself.. So I am having plain herbal tea with homegrown steva in it for sweetness. I have fried eggs on hashbrowns in duck fat for breakfast, I will post later on what I figured out for lunch, supper and snacks..

Update: Lunch was butternut squash soup with homemade chicken broth, and homegrown herbs for spices, Supper was ground lamb with stewed tomatos served over the a bed of yellow sqaush, with fresh grated horseradish added in for some heat. Drinks have been water, grape juice, and elderberry hot tea, as well as apple mint tea. Snacks tonight will be dried apple peices and rhubarb fruit roll ups.

So how was your week of eating out of the pantry? Did you have at least one meal this week that was 100 mile only? Did you have a meal that was all from your pantry? Did you challange yourself in making a whole meal from scratch?  Tell me about it!