Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1171)
Hello Everyone!
A lazy day, Turkey makes me snooze, More napping less inflammation & The chickens prefer brown rice!
Alright, I got the espresso brewed and sat down to begin the writing routine right on time this evening... but did not begin spelling things out until just now a whopping thirty minutes later. I guess that it could be said that I am in slow motion... which all in all is par for the course as far as today goes.
Last night after I got done with my posting routine, I wound up eating way too much food... which is something that seems to happen each time that I go on a supply run... and that I generally try to curb doing given how tight my rationing routine is. With all the recent physical activity that I have been doing... I was admittedly much hungrier than usual... and threw caution to the wind and ate until I felt quite full.
The thing is though, that the little store that I shop at did not have any sliced ham (sandwich meat) this time... so I got the only kind they had that was not some super over-processed trash... which happened to be turkey. In general I avoid getting turkey because it tends to make me quite sleepy... even if I only eat a small amount of it.
Basically, the tryptophan in the turkey has a rather strong effect upon me... and that probably has a lot to do with my weird physiology more than anything else. Although I could probably elaborate on all that... I best not get into it lest I go down some seriously complicated rabbit holes about melatonin, seratonin and all those other neurotransmitters... that contribute to cognition in one way or another.
Suffice it to say, that once I finally fell asleep for the night I zonked out rather hard... and even when I awoke this morning I never quite reached the point where I felt truly awake. That is not to say that I did not get up, brew some espresso and get some stuff done... but whoa I was in quite the mental fog whilst doing it all.
I did do my best to do my Hive engagement routine as well... but all I managed to achieve was to read some stuff... and make a single measly comment before losing interest. As I have said before that particular routine is really hit or miss... and today was assuredly what I would call a 'miss' when it comes to that stuff.
Later in the day my hemorrhoids flared up and I decided to take a nap to reduce the inflammation... instead of doing all the work that it would take to get the socks out of the tub, pump the water out... and get it filled with enough hot water to take a sitz bath. Initially I slept for my usual thirty-odd minutes to reduce the inflammation... but once I woke up I let myself drift back off to sleep again... and slept most of the remainder of the day away.
Eventually, I got up with about an hour of daylight left to do all my routine chores... and whoa it was challenging to get myself outside and start doing them. Heck, even now I still feel like I am half asleep... and will hopefully be able fall asleep earlier than I have been lately... and get my sleep cycle back on track fully.
On a different note. I have been meaning to mention that I have been buying one dollar bags of brown rice (and sometimes larger bags of white rice if there is no brown rice) and have been feeding it to the chickens. I really do not know what it is about the brown rice that they like so much... but they seem to enjoy it much more than the white rice.
Of course I have also been giving them some dog food (when I have plenty of it) but overall I have been trying to save money by feeding them the rice... along with the marginal amount of food scraps that I produce. All in all it seems to be working out well... but I will need to switch them back to some actual chicken feed once they begin laying eggs again in the late spring.
Having recently discovered that feed store that has live poultry... I really want to expand the chicken coop and also keep an eye out for some ducks when they have them available there. Since I do not have a good place indoors to raise small birds at... I am thinking to wait until things warm up outdoors before I get any new birds... and hopefully expand the coop in such a way that it can accommodate raising them to 'adolescence' inside of it.
Well, I think that is about it for this entry. I hope that everyone is doing well and not taking themselves too seriously. Ta ta for now.
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😁I like the photo! Emily is cute!
Didn't know turkey could make a person want to sleep, might be worth trying. I also agree with your chickens, brown rice is way better than white. Clever birds 😅
She is such a cutie indeed.
Haha! Yeah, give the turkey a try. I never thought of it as a sleep aid but it sure does the trick! 🤠
Willing to try pretty much anything that might work! 😅
This is not medical advice but try melatonin capsules. It works well but make sure you understand the hazards with it and such. Basically the tryptophan in the turkey helps the body make more melatonin so you could skip the turkey altogether.
Thanks! I'll do some research! Has to be better than being half awake while sleeping all the time. 😅
Yeah, I have been doing a good bit of that lately where I am half awake while asleep. It wears on me after a while. The only downside that I found with the melatonin (back when I used to use it) was that it made my dreams even more vivid than they usually are.
Yeah... it gets to be too much, makes the nights feel strange and long.
😁I like vivid dreams! Almost always have a good (though often weird) time.
It must be eating the turkey at Thanksgiving that makes some people want to take a nap after the meal.
Yeah it is because of how much turkey they eat!
Glad to hear that you have more food now! Although I totally understand that the local stores tend not to have the best options. Living life hungry is no fun though! And as for the rice I think that brown rice has more flavor and tends to be more filling. People say that white rice is more digestible than brown but brown has much more fiber. One thing that always helped was soaking the rice/seeds/whatever grains the night before. It was much more filling for the chickens and I believe more digestible. Of course, I don't have chickens anymore but did for most of my life until relatively recently. Anyway, best of luck to you and all those chores. There is always tomorrow to get those things done.
Thanks! Yeah, the going hungry (and food insecurity in general) is a rough one but all things considered I navigate it rather well. A few decades of practice will do that!
That is interesting about the brown rice having more fiber. I am unsure on soaking it though because I do not want it to sour in their wooden troughs and also maybe cause molds to grow.
I did take a mental note to do it for grains/beans/seeds for my own consumption after reading that post of yours the other day.
Haha! Yep there is always tomorrow and as you know the chores never end!