To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those –or excerpts thereof — in the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
This week I had to make a trip down to Sandpoint, to run some errands, including buying some grain for our chicken feed mix. I’ve made some progress on the workshop partitioning. But I had to put that on hold for a couple of days to assist our #2 Son in running some new Cat-6 Ethernet cables under the house.
Next week I have a repair scheduled for our aging pickup truck. That trip will essentially consume an entire day. And I also need to swap out the studded winter tires for summer tires, on both of our rigs. These chores always take a lot of time. But hey… “What’s time to a hog?”
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was sunny and in the high 40s early in the week, then became snow showery and rainy at the end of the week with highs in the low forties.
On Tuesday morning, I heard the first robin dawn chorus. What a beautiful sound that is! I also heard the first Red-Wing Blackbirds, nuthatches, and field sparrows.
This week, I cleaned out the Henhouse. I am collecting eggs for the next incubation. This weekend and into the early part of next week, we should be hatching out some chicks from the current incubation time.
I washed both of the cows’ water troughs.
The horses have begun the GREAT SHED of their winter coats! I spent a lot of time this week brushing them out! They super enjoy this attention. Miss S. gets quite jealous when I switch from brushing her to brushing Ch. She was so funny, she kept stretching her nose out over the back of Ch., towards me, while I brushed her. She affectionately also rested her nose on my shoulder when I moved around to the side of Ch, where she was standing. I like communing with the horses. I don’t spend enough time with them.
The next day, after brushing them, I led them out into the meadow. They hadn’t realized yet that the snow is quite shallow, with intermittent snowless patches where dead grass is exposed with a little bit of greenery coming up. They were quite excited to be out there for a change in scenery and nibbled on the dry grasses
I moved all brassicas from the greenhouse bedroom out to the outside greenhouse.
My birthday is approaching soon. Jim asked me what I wanted. I asked him for three Sweetheart Apricot trees. With these, one can eat the seed. It is reported to taste like an almond. Therefore, I spent time digging out the holes in the area that I want to put them in, in the Main garden. It has the best soil and drainage for apricot growing requirements. I also asked for a mulberry tree. That one will go down in the orchard. The saplings should arrive in the first week of May.
I did multiple loads of laundry outside in the James Washer and dried the laundry in the dryer.
Passover is coming next week, so I continued with some deep spring cleaning. This time I scrubbed our Oriental rug with a washcloth, gentle Dr. Bronner’s lavender soap and water. It looks great, again. I also reorganized our laundry room cupboards that are full of towels, washcloths, cleaning agents, detergents, animal medical/general animal care cupboard, pest control, our off-grid lighting materials, and one food pantry cupboard.
Our last little lamb was born for the season. She is another super cutie!
I continued to shovel and chop up ice chunks, put space and ground between ice blocks, to help speed up the melt process, in the Main garden. It worked. By Thursday, I was able to rototill two thirds of the Main garden. The few snow patches left were small enough to break up with the rototiller. The southern third of the garden still has a significant snow layer as it is shaded more from the trees in our “South pasture”. The designated “South pasture” has both forests and meadows, more forest near the main garden. I won’t be able to get to rototilling that probably for another week or so. It will take about that long to melt if not more… March 30th and 31st are the earliest I have ever rototilled.
I have begun picking up the ever continuing crop of rocks that were unearthed by the plowing. I will be raking and collecting as many grass and weed roots as possible also that were unearthed. Once I am satisfied with the soil clean up, I will be laying down compost and re-rototilling and planting my cold-weather crops. Since I let my Main garden have a Shmitta Year off, last year, I am hoping and praying and believing for a hundred-fold crop increase in everything I plant, this year! I am trying the Father God’s promises that if we obey his edicts that we will be blessed a hundred-fold or more despite what the climate may do.
Most mornings, I am now doing fifty sit-ups at one go. I have been lifting weights with three-pound barbels during the past two months. I have gotten up to seventy-five reps with those, lifting them in various ways: curls, over the shoulders, pulling them up from the hips, arm spreading while lying on the floor, and lifting them straight up from while lying on my back. They became too easy, so this week, we bought a pair of five-pound barbels and a pair of eight-pound barbels. Since I am more into endurance muscles than bulk, I prefer to do many reps of lower weights. It is now time to work with heavier, but still low, weights. So this week, so far, I am pushing thirty reps with the five pounders and fifteen reps with the eight-pounders. I will be working up to seventy-five reps with both of those with all of the various lifts.
I’m now up to twenty-three perfect girly push-ups in rapid succession. I am now doing them about twice a day. It is a great feeling! Now that I have more core strength, I am working on doing pull-ups with a five pound exercise rubber band that is hanging from the pull-up bar that I stand in it’s loop. Just that little rebound helps me to do more pull-ups in a row, which still is adding to muscle strength of my arms. I had to wait for more core muscle strength before working on pull-ups because I kept pulling chest, stomach and arm muscles in the beginning of trying to do them, ouch. But now, I can work on them.
OUR NEW WORLD ORDER David Dubuyne of Adapt 2030: One Belt One Road Initiative: “This Cannot Be Happening” Part 2.
You know there are terrible things occurring in the world at this time. I hate what is going on. I hate the evil that wants to destroy all of the Father God’s Creation and his laws and His natural order of things. I hate being reminded of all of the evil, though every time I see and hear of it, it REINFORCES MY BELIEF AND TRUST THAT GOD OUR FATHER EXISTS AND IS A GOOD AND LOVING GOD MERCIFUL AND TRUE and that it is absolute evil that wants to destroy all that GOD declared was GOOD. And God will allow Satan to prevail for a time so that all will see his evil and corruptness so that when the time comes for God to judge him. We will all be witnesses against him and God’s judgment of him will stand. He will not get away with this!! His time in the Lake of Fire is rapidly approaching. We will be victorious! Stand strong in the goodness and Faith and belief in Jesus!
A lovely scripture that I was reminded of this week:
2 Timothy 4:8
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.
Remember our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ comes in the clouds! Do not be deceived by any other appearing. If something appears in the clouds and does not take you up, ignore it. Ignore any “Messiah” that comes from Inner earth or under the earth!
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
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As always, please share and send e-mails of your own successes and hard-earned wisdom and we will post them in the “Snippets” column this coming week. We want to hear from you.