river days, some food...and yes, i buckled and bought a bucket of freeze dried food!

here's a beautiful sunset that we enjoyed a few nights ago...amazing eh?

and then a river day that looked like this - it was wonderful. we downed tools after working all morning, caulking and sealing all of the screw holes in the greenhouse to make it as airtight as possible.

 
here's some yummy steak and a greek salad for supper - it was delicious!

next up - a bit of a ramble. i have never been into stockpiling MRE's or freeze-dried food. i stockpile whole foods and for those of you who know what i mean, you will understand. we can freeze and dehydrate whole foods...and that is what we stockpile. we cook almost everything from scratch...and little things like balogna sandwiches will eventually run out in the event of some cosmic-scale collapse! so we will simply do without and make blueberry jam sandwiches - know what i mean? that is how we approach our prepping.

however, my friend denob, the prepared Canadian put up such an interesting post on the Canadian Preppers Network about a month back...and it really got me thinking. maybe it is because he is doing such a good job running both the network and the forum. maybe it's because i trust his judgement. maybe it's because he takes such a scientific approach, using his kids and family as the scientific testers - bahahahah! oh he's funny - he is! but i trust his opinion and he is never afraid to share it! he got the Chef's Banquet Ark Bucket from Briden Solutions, a Canadian company, and he put it to the test. you can read more about his scientific tests of the bucket here. anyway, i was convinced. did we need 335 freeze dried meals in our preps. yes, i think it was finally time to incorporate them in our preps.

so we ordered the bucket. got it in about a week and a half. for those concerned with OPSEC, the bucket arrived in a plain brown box with absolutely nothing identifying what was in the box. NOT like the Safecastle and MountainHouse boxes which i have read come with blaring advertisements on the box as to the contents!!!

here is our bucket.

here are all of the freeze-dried meals guaranteed to last 20yrs...however, i have read that they last much longer.

here is what the bucket contains. if you can't read it, go to the CPN for a link to the Ark bucket.

remember our crappy little closet with the water heater in it?

well, you will remember that our house is a cottage with an addition stuck on the side. remember we have 2 attics and that when the addition was stuck on they didn't even remove the siding from the first cottage? anyway, all of that to say...when jambaloney first started trying to find a way into the second, or first attic, i can't say which- he found this little hidey-hole behind the gyprock in that crappy little closet. can you say SCORE?!?!?!?  oh i know you can! have a peak!

i removed a bunch of our preps so that you could see the shelves and whatnot that he put in. this little hidey-hole, when covered stores ALOT of preps. when all of our preps are in it, it is full to the max and because i am tiny, i am the one who goes up there to document and add new preps. well that is where the Briden Ark bucket lives...along with all of our other preps. this is just one of our preps storing areas. but i wanted to show you that there are many places to find in your home for hiding preps and i also wanted to tell you that, yes, i buckled and bought a bucket of freeze-dried preps. again, i trust denob/thePreparedCanadian...and that's why we bought the bucket...at a very good price i might add. 335 meals. on top of our several years worth of preps, i think i can stop worrying for a while.

it's been a beautiful couple of days. we've been spending afternoons suntanning on the front deck or down at the river. have a look-see:

we had a bit of a celebration yesterday afternoon - getting all of the screws in the greenhouse caulked, sealed and painted...a bit of a milestone...it will make the greenhouse airtight for the winter. so for our afternoon celebration, we had a big-*ssed BLT, some dark ale and some wine.

we took our celebration meal out on the front deck, naked as the day is long, baked in the sun, and enjoyed each other's company.

that above is what i looked at while i ate my sandwich.

and there's nothing like some chicken wraps for supper - yummeh!

we spent this afternoon at the river...hopefully i fried myself to a crisp. i need to bake the tan in so i can be sorta' brown until the middle of november, ya know?

i read and snacked on pita chips while jambaloney suntanned. then the hill-billy boat launch started calling to him so he went and worked on it some more.

it's been a really good couple of days. we have a really looooong weekend coming up this weekend - it is Canadian Thanksgiving...our favourite holiday! and we are booked from friday through to monday. how awesome eh?