09:16 – It was 55.5F (13C) when I took Colin out at 0715 this morning.
I got the taxes finished and in the mail yesterday. All four of them: federal and state income, NC sales tax, and NC corporate annual report and filing fee. I was even two weeks early on the NC sales tax return, which wasn’t due until 4/30.
Barbara stopped up at Bonnie’s house the other day. Gene and Janice were up there clearing things out. Gene gave Barbara a bag of Bonnie’s potatoes, which Barbara intends to plant in the garden plot just to see how they do. She may also plant some sweet potatoes, along with the other root crops we’d already planned to plant: turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, and so on.
The goal isn’t bulk food production. Our garden plot is only something like 500 square feet (50 square meters). All we’re doing at this point is learning what works and what doesn’t. Getting some fresh produce out of it is just a side benefit. We’re also planning to plant small test stands of a couple grains–probably amaranth, barley, and nude oats–and some sunflowers, which produce both seed protein and oil. For now, those are for the birds and small animals.
Besides finishing the taxes yesterday, I got in the last of the current group of bulk orders for science kit components. Once those arrive, we’ll have everything we need other than the chemicals to make up several hundred more science kits. We’ll get those done over the next two or three months in preparation for the autumn rush.
We’re taking a break from intensive prepping for now. We’re in pretty good shape on food, water, power, medical, comms, security, and so on. I’ll still have Barbara pick up another couple 50-pound bags each of sugar and flour at Costco when she goes down to Winston next week. That’s mainly to replace routine use, but also to continue gradually building our stocks of dry staples.
Just as we were running out of things to watch on streaming and DVD, a new crop has shown up. I have new seasons of Heartland, Murdoch Mysteries, and a couple of other series we follow ready to burn to DVD, and a bunch of other series has either just shown up on Netflix and Amazon streaming, or is about to. We just started the recent BBC version of Father Brown the other night. Five seasons and 65 episodes worth. I commented to Barbara that I was surprised. It goes almost without saying that recent BBC series are going to be diverse and politically-correct, but so far this series has no diversity and might have been made in the 60’s or 70’s.
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