well no snow today but i bet its coming. the yard drained a bit and things have made an attempt at drying out.

we cleaned house a bit today too. all four of us pitched in as we've been a bit lethargic of late. the lousy weather and cabin fever have made us all sleepy mroe than usual and the lack of dead heads to entertain us has left our minds empty.

when we were done cleaning we discussed some future matters. I promised Jay a trip east and he will get it. Period. Then when we're back from that we will commence a sweep and clear of as much of the town as we can. we talked about the moving wall method and decided it has its merits for clearing but we need to erect a barrier around the reminder of the town that isnt mobile. im in favor of shipping continers filled with rubble and debris but there arent that many around town. Jay firgured on a reinfoced dirt berm but we'd need way more fuel that i think is in town for that. Our short term plan is to block out around a five square block area with cars to begin with and after that is cleared see where we are at. the original barricade woudl act as the castle keep and the rest of the area could be put to seed growning veggtables and some small grains if i could find some. i have several boxes of seeds from the farm and fleet store to plant this year and plenty of canning supplies too.

i think spoilage is going to be a bigger and bigger problem as tme goes on. the lack of rodents has been a godsend for supplies staying unmolested, but alot of things are past the use by date. this summer will be the efining time for self sufficency for us. we have enough short term food supplies for this summer and next winter and i think that will be about it. we can supplant that with supplies we find in buildings but those are getting thin.

Fuel is another thing. some of the gasoline now has streamers in it (ethanol not so much). we have everal E-85 cars so we could set upa still to make alcahol to run them on but you need gas to mix it with. if we had more people we could put together a convoy and start gathering supplies from farther away. thats another thing we're going to scope out on our way east. if selby is deserted, we'll strip it bare.