The Survival Pantry and Other Stories
Well, yesterday didn't look like it was going to be a very, long day; when it started out. In fact, it looked like it would be something very rare here in Ireland...i.e. sunny, warm and relaxing. A bit of a problem since our water heater and our house heater are on the blink; so we have to burn turf in the solid fuel stove. But manageable, especially if you don't have to be in the kitchen much.
One of my friends, aka The Fox, had been visiting from Dublin for a couple of weeks. She and her husband share a tiny room in a Dublin group house, and she often comes to visit when he's got a heavy work schedule. It beats sitting in her room, twiddling her thumbs, come to Kilmurry House instead. Well, since she knew she was goning back home today, yesterday we decided to put the contents remaining food storage sacks, from our last co-op order, into the left-over industrial buckets that her husband had saved from work. We thought it would take us about 25 minutes and then we could go do something fun, like make Viking clothing or reading a book outside. We didn't remember:
...first rule at Kilmurry House, never assume that anything is going to be what it looks like, or go the way you plan it.
First discovery, one of the Cats (aka Freya the Feral) has gotten into the pantry and decided that it really needed to be "marked" by her special scent. And while this may be appealing to small kitties, we bigger animals really did not appreciate the perfume that wafted when we removed the first of the large storage containers (big plastic rubbish bins). It proved even worse, when we could not locate the source of the problem. So we decided to continue and hope we would discover the source later, besides in just 25 minutes we could wash things down? Right....?
Er...a..we.. no...first container was a large bag of Canadian Hard Wheat. Which looked fine and we started filling up first one bucket and then another. As we were about to put the lid on the first one, The Fox points at the second one and says...
"Look! We have Friends..."
Sure enough, little tiny black crawly things were slowly making there way out of the bucket. Fox says (in a U.S. Southern accent)
"Hey, I bet y'all came here from Canada, didn't ya?"...oh my, it was going to be a long 25 minutes.
Further inspection determines that all the wheat has a few bugs, but not very many. They must have started hatching with the "heat wave" (i.e. the weather hit the upper 60's this week). OK, fast action should save the day...we can put it all the big chest freezer....right? Er...a.. what about all the wool yarn and fabric that are currently stuff in the freezer (along with some actual food) because of the wool moths that got into everything last Spring...we were going to fumigate in May remember...why its only..August...AUGUST, "Oh, my goodness its the MONTH of AUGUST!" And we still having fumigated. Come to think of it, this could explain part of the pantry problem as well.
Now an aside for North American readers, why you are asking at this point, didn't we just call the nice man from "Critter Destruction Company" and get it over with. Well you see, here in Ireland, its a bit complicated. Like many other of life's tasks that Americans often take for granted, getting bugs out of your home is not all that simple. First of all, you will find there are no home fumigation companies...why? Because it is not legal for a private premises to be professionally fumigated. In fact, I suspect you are really not supposed to fumigate at all. Which leaves you with two choices, bugs from hell or do what everyone else in Ireland seems to learn before birth...i.e...figure a way around the system. Which we did, by finding ways to fumigate ourselves. But its a lot of work and involves things like moving all the indoor cats into shelter and being gone from the house for at least six hours. Followed by the men-folk running about with masks and gloves quickly sorting things out. This operation lasts for a least six months, and then has to be repeated. Which, doesn't always happen....and the result this year was moths, followed by bugs.
By the way, if you are wondering, in the old days people used to have wool carpets and clothing, but they took everything outside and sunned it (or washed it) every Spring. People with larger houses (like ours) had either extended families or servants to help with this. Modern Irish houses have polyester wall to wall carpets and curtains. Plus a lot of clothing is synthetic as well. A few wool items are easy to mothball, but a spinner and weavers horde of fibers, plus large amounts of leather used by other family members is really hard to keep completely shut away. Not to mention wool blankets, clothing and other stuff.
So, to come back to yesterday, we realized that not only did we have about 10 to 12 large white buckets worth of food storage that needed freezing (and quickly) we also had a rather large number of bags of stuff that would have to be dealt with first....
we have now passed 25 minutes and are working on our first hour of work.
The Fox (who is very strong and I am not) offers to go re-bag everything in the freezer, since we know the bags the woolens were stored in have split open. This is why they are still in the freezer, because not only do we still have moths in the house, we also had not had time to re-bag the items in question. So there they had sat, throughout the Summer, waiting for the right time to be re-bagged in plastic. Which would keep them some what safe from the moths, as long as we fumigated in a few weeks later. Well, we realized, now might not be a good time, but it was going to be THE Time.
As, The Fox is going out to re-bag the freezer horde, I pick up the next bucket, intending to start loading in more grain. Bad move....it seems that the "guaranteed to be cleaned out" buckets, was about as believable as "the check is in the mail"..only less so. Thankfully, they had not sat as long as the first set of free buckets we had received, those "guaranteed clean buckets" had rotted on the back porch conservatory and had only been located when we thought something had died outside. I should point out that this is not the fault of Fox's husband, he gets the buckets from a distributor who, you gets it, "guarantees that they are cleaned out..."OK, so I now stop putting grain in buckets and go to the sink to wash buckets. Next question, where is the bleach? Bleach, what bleach...you mean it wasn't on the shopping list? "ARRRRRRR!"
OK, calm down and find that their is some lime scale cleaner under the sink that contains bleach. The Fox knows this because it had ruined her good skirt the day before...I begin to wonder if that was around the time the planets had begun to mis-align themselves..? So, I being the process of becoming totally wet, because the previous owner of our house had decided to locate the sink, five inches back from the front of the brick work it was placed in (more on the south-western brickwork-complete-with-wagon-wheel-circa-1972-kitchen, we inherited, in another post). As Disaster Cat if 4'8" tall, there is no way I can wash large objects without wearing the water sometime during the process. But as the kitchen stove is now working (and providing the hot water) the temperature in the kitchen is probably getting close to 85 degrees or more. Which meant holding a private wet-t-shirt contest was not so bad. I distracted myself by hoping my husband would walk in the room any minute. Which he did, just after I'd finished and changed clothing...
Which brings up the next chapter of our adventure. The Fox, being still outside trying bag of the freezer, I decided to go put on shorts and a clean t-shirt. Which meant I could also pet the Norwegian Forest Cats, that live in the bedroom. Quickly dressing, I notice that something is funny about our cat Thor. In fact, its not just funny, its down right wrong. One of his ears is its normal, fluffy orange self; but his left ear is a huge swollen red thing blown up like a balloon (and still growing). Now we've had cat's with Giant Ear before. And they are a lot less frightening after you've seen the first one. But that doesn't make it any less startling. Like all Giant Ears, this one develops just after the vet's office has closed (the ear was normal sized two hours before). We payed for a house call the first time this happened, but since we know that vet can't really do anything anyway, I know we will have to treat it at home ourselves. At least for the day.
So now, The Fox comes back, and instead of nicely filled buckets for her to deal with, she finds me, with partly wet buckets all over the floor and cutting out a round piece of cardboard. I've not been very neat and the cardboard is everywhere. "I'm making an Elizabethan Collar" I say...and the Fox wonders? Why am I making re-enactment garb at a time like this? And why in the world would I be making it out of cardboard, instead of lace? And more importantly, where are the dried grain buckets?...
Before she needs to ask, I blurt out the information about Thor's ear and we go upstairs to collar poor kitty. Thankfully Thor does not live up to his name and purrs throughout the operation. Which still takes about 10 minutes to put together. When we finally get it on, it doesn't look quite right and Fox offers to make another one. Which she does...
25 minutes have now become over T minus 2 hours and counting...
Now its back to the grain buckets, which we managed to dry, fill and freeze. The later with the help of the wheel barrel. Fox is a very practical person and thought of this. I had only thought to ask my husband to carry them...and been told he would be happy too...later. I don't have to tell the other partnered folks on this list, but for the benefit of the very young, remember: when he says "later," that is a code word for "love you honey, what did you say?" This is most often combined with a quick exit, before you have time to answer, or can even think of doing so. About one quarter of the time, "later," really does mean later, but if you do not wish to wait for the next ice age for it to happen, its often better to manage yourself. Hence, the wheel barrel...[update, this did turn out to be one of those time, 2 hours later he came back to see if we needed help and was surprise/relieved? that we had dealt with it already]. Hubby gets a hug!...
Finally, most buckets were in the freezer, the rest were stacked in the pantry and the cat was safely collard. Still no sign of where the other cat had marked, but having the pantry opened all day had helped. We sat down exhausted and I glanced at my watch. We had started this chore about 2pm and it was now after 7 o'clock in the evening....I know time is a funny thing, and that being the wife of a fantasy writer can be strange sometimes, but turning 25 minutes into 5 hours takes a certain skill..but not one I hope to be practicing a lot. I hoping that the planets will re-align themselves soon, but I'm not counting on it. I still have to mop the pantry and re-organize the shelves...I suppose I should get started...on the other hand, maybe I'll just take a long, hot bath instead....
"AARRRRRG WE FORGOT TO PUT MORE TURF IN THE STOVE...." "And the water is COLD!!!"
Stay tuned for, the Further Adventures of Disaster Cat "