Feather your Nest Friday, 3 July, 2020.

This week has been cold and wet!  We now have had enough rain that water is laying in the paddocks and some places become wetlands. This is good!

Some of the ways I managed to get ahead and build up the pantry and garden were:

If the rain stopped I ran outside and did all I could.  I managed to add some wheelbarrows of hay into my raised garden beds in these times.

We had a working bee on the cottage.  It is painted outside now!!  Soon I will put up some before and after photos.   I made up morning tea and lunches.

To do the stuff I can't manage I hired three local young men.  They seemed to feel it was great fun and had a good day.  One of them had a spray painting set up so the outside of the house and the shed were painted so quickly.  It looked dumpy. Now it looks fresh and new.

I have cupboards to clean and a wooden floor to restore as it was covered in a nasty glue.  But we are really getting there on this project!

I continued to work on my pantry.   Over the last few weeks I have organised, re homed, added shelving and anything I can.  I turned some household cupboards into a pantry extension.  This week I added a little shelf in a blank space.  It is just right for all the cake decorating bits and pieces.  So now I also have a free basket for something else.   It will be cute as the girls will be able to stand on the steps and pick their sprinkles! 

The little shelf was from the cheap shop. Many things for my pantry have been from the op shop (thrift store) or the cheap shop.   Also I use free food grade buckets.  Many restaurants and cafes throw these away!

I made up some baked rice custard.  I worked out if I do it in smaller containers and fill them up with my cups... there is less hot water to splash around.  So this is how I do it now.

I like cinnamon as you can tell.  This is a great way to use up eggs, milk and left over cooked rice!  

I participated in The Working Pantry challenge for the week.  It was simply to add an extra or extras of anything we were buying.   So these were my extras.

I put as much into it as I could as getting ahead with my pantry is a big focus right now.   

I did find a few good deals at the stores including marked down apples and pears. 

There are a couple of ladies I look to for wisdom.  Most people are aware of their local situation.  Some people are aware of their countries situation.  Not many people are aware of the world situation.  I get strong feelings about what I need to be doing.   And I am glad that when a few years ago I felt to begin to stock up and LEARN that I did put it into action.   As 2019 went along I felt it with great urgency.  Several of these ladies told me they felt a great urgency to prepare around Christmas and New Year.  Well, they weren't wrong!  Now I am so thankful I had so much confirmation to get on with it.   Because of this we even added generators,  freezers, chickens... I can't even list all we have been doing.  Oh, lol, I should mention we actually felt to move out of the city and to the farm and we did that!  

So I was discussing with my trusted friends and older ladies the subject of where are we now and want to do next?!

One of my most trusted long term friends lives in California.  She wrote to me early in the week and she told me something that shocked me.  She said people she knows there feel that the first half of 2020 was "The CALM before the storm"   This is from the person I think most highly of.  mmm

I discussed this with another friend who said she believes this could be true.  So I prayed and prayed about this.  We can't know the future but we need to be watchful, prudent and do what is needed.  This is part of why the Proverbs 31 woman is not afraid of the future!    Apart from faith she has wisdom and action.  For a whole evening I prayed and though on it.

The next day I went into town.  I needed to go to the post office and I got there and the doors were shut!!   An old man was waiting and he told me it would re open in ten minutes.  He said "the world is upside down now, you know."  I said "yes I know!" 

I decided to wait.   He turned to me and said "I lived through the Great Depression you know, I've seen it all before."   This hit me like a bolt given my prayers the night before.   So we talked.  He said that he lived through the depression, actually in an area of our state where my Grandmothers family lived.  He said he believed we are going into a depression and he said "there will be no food you know."   I asked him how on earth do you know when you have gone from a recession to a depression?   Like where is that line?  He said "oh you know.  It is not a gradual thing.  It is a day.  One day you get up and everything is shut.  Everyone knows.  It is like a collapse."  And so I used this ten minutes to ask him everything I could think of remembering last night I had prayed for answers. 

As the Post Office re opened I thanked him so much for talking to me and sharing his knowledge and experience.  He was just lovely.  

Later I thought !!! I prayed for guidance. I got this!!

Still I doubt myself and wonder did God line him up for me to get the message through my thick head?

The next night I turned on the TV for the news.   There was our Prime Minister.  He looked pretty sombre.  He was making announcements and he said how the world is looking increasingly like the world looked in the 1930s.   He repeated the 1930's two or three times.  So here we go again.  

So by now I accept and believe that I can't get away from the same answer over and over.

If you are younger go read up on the 1930's.  

Our neighbouring state has a major outbreak of the virus and they seem to have gone from bad to worse.   This is all too close for comfort and Lucy has 5 days to go to "baby day!"   I feel it is a race against the clock.

When we have some information coming in, life seems upside down,  the news stations are not reliable and even try and inflame situations,  everyone has an opinion...  we just want things to go back to normal... it is very easy to get battle fatigue and switch off.  But I encourage you to be awake and watchful and to pray.   If I can find it I am going to re post a story from Mel who shared how her Grandmother listened to her mother in law and prepared.  It is the most wonderful story that is very motivating.  What we do now makes a difference. What we do now affects several generations! (at least!) 

How did your week go?  Were you able to add to your pantry or garden and build up your home?

What are you seeing in your state or town?  I am about to go into our town so I will soon find out.  I know restrictions are back on what you can buy.  

Please pray that Lucy and Kato's baby can arrive safely in a covid free hospital. xxx

I found Mel's family story.  I hope this blesses you. 

One story that I have shared with Annabel and would like to pass on to you. It sits with me because I needed to learn this lesson. I have often found it hard to take advice, on some fronts. As I have grown older I am eager to learn from others but as a young Mother I was prideful and did not always listen to others seeking not advice but wallowing in my ignorance. 

This is why I am so amazed by the actions taken by my grandmother when she was a young woman. As I have mentioned before both my grandparents were very frugal and did not spend unnecessarily. Despite their limited income they did put away for the rainy day. So as a young woman and new mother my Grandmother no doubt was caught up in daily life and not overly interested in current events but her Mother and Father in law had lived through WW1 and no doubt feared what was coming in the early 1930’s. My great Grandfather was an ANZAC and my great Grandmother had been home with young children on her own. 

When they feared the coming war my great Grandmother advised my Grandmother on what had become in short supply during WW1 and what to stock up on. Namely soap and other toiletries, sugar, fabric, wool, first aid goods and luxury items such as stockings etc. Now with plenty of other things to spend their money on my Grandparents took this advice. My mother tells me all their clothes were taken out of their drawers and a layer of cakes of soap was laid down and then their clothes put back on top. This happened in every room (this also deters moths). Then my grandmother bought a barrel of sugar and old jumpers second hand from the markets to unpick. She also stocked up on cottons and went into overdrive in canning her home grown goods.

There were other things they did like finish off everything needed doing in the house and prepare their garden. It is great to grow fruit trees but we all know they often take a few years to take off. Vegetable garden was increased and Golden syrup stocked up on. As well my Grandmother had a stockpile of sheets and towels. Now we know how helpful extra sheets used for fabric or bandages or many other uses can be but at her age it would not have been my first thought.

During the war my mother and her sister were always clean. Soap was grated to wash clothes, and for bathing. My Grandmother made pulled candy and all the local kids got a few pieces on their birthday during the war and when sugar was rationed. My grandmother was able to feed and clothe her family simply because she listened and took in this advice which I must say I might have shrugged off in her position. Six years is a long time to struggle thro ugh without many basics and also rationing went on for a while after simply because many things were in such short supply.

Today I read:
Proverbs 19:20
Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.