As preppers work to make progress to achieve prepping goals, we took some actions this week too. The SurvivalBlog editors made plans earlier in the week and now reflect upon these. At this time of year, gardening is at the top of our lists. Below, the editors share what we each accomplished. Please write to us in the comments and tell us what you did this week to get your preps in place and to be ready.
JWR
Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,
My, what a busy, wonderful week! We had beautiful weather during the beginning of the week and rain at the end of the week.
Outdoor Skills Acquisition
First of all, we worked on boating safety and paddling skills in the river that flows through the Rawles’ Ranch, several times. One of those times was with friends. That day was a beautiful day and a wonderful time spent with them and their children. The young ones are becoming proficient in maneuvering the canoes and Kayaks. They are doing well with front strokes, front and back sweeps, J-strokes, draws and push-aways, and other strokes. Fun!
No, we didn’t hike this week. We were too busy. Maybe next week…
In The Garden
Every year gardening is a great experiment to see what will grow. There is always all kinds of variables that interfere or enhance the ability of plants to grow. Some years, some crops go gangbusters and the next year they do very poorly. Lily enjoys the sowing process and waiting with expectation to see what grows, and how it yields. It is always exciting to see the seedlings break through the soil looking so healthy and promising. Currently the zucchini, other squashes, and asparagus planted last week have pushed their cotyledon leaves out/shooting up stalks. They’re looking good. So do the onions.
This week Lily planted: Fingerling, red and white Potatoes, French beans, Yellow Wax beans, Purple Pole beans, Acorn squash, Buttercup squash, Hubbard Squash and other squashes, Alaskan corn, Mesculin lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, watermelon, and probably a few more that I can’t think of just now. There is still space for more things, later.
She finished weeding, composting and mulching with straw the eight 30-foot rows of strawberries, and a 4ft x 12ft bed of strawberries, and dug up and transplanted back into the rows some wayward ones.
Next, she planted a new raspberry bed. She has always wanted a Fall Gold raspberry bed and now has added it to the main garden. We already have well-established red and black raspberry patches.
In addition, we harvested some Rhubarb and froze it.
Gardening in the Greenhouse
Next, in the greenhouse we planted Butternut squash and Cantaloupe seedlings. We also planted some red onion seeds to grow bulbs to plant for next summer’s onions. (As opposed to most of our other plantings, which are for this year’s harvest.) Cabbage seeds were planted in a spare spot to see if they’ll fare well in the heat of the greenhouse this summer.
Food Stores
We’re trying to eat many of our frozen fruit and vegetables from last year to make room in the freezers for this year’s coming harvest.
On the day it rained, we reorganized our chest freezers and sequentially defrosted and washed them. This was in anticipation for the arrival of the beef. That arrived at the end of the week. Most of all, we praise and thank the Lord for full freezers, once again. Yehovah Yireh!
Ranch Infrastructure Maintenance and Projects
Jim spent more time with his plumbing and electrical projects.
Livestock
Horses were worked and our local farrier came and did a great job on trimming their hooves.
Spiritual Preparation
Finally, we had a lovely time reading the Word of the Lord during Shavuot, together, as a family.
HJL
First, though we had a short week before our focus was shifted to the gathering of friends and family, the Latimer family accomplished a good deal.
Livestock Gardening and Watering System
The family worked together to finish planting the entire livestock garden of black-eyed peas/cow peas and black oil sunflowers. We estimate that we planted about 1,000 peas and about 600 sunflowers. We already have hundreds of tiny cow pea plants popping their heads through the soil, thanks to the automated watering system that I finally finished for this garden as well as for all of the gardens. This week, I was able to finish the water system for the annual and perennial vegetable/fruit gardens, orchard, and the herb/tea/medicinal garden.
Harvesting
This week, in our vegetable garden, we harvested a gallon and a half of lettuce, a quart of radishes, and enough sugar peas to provide the family with several days of good afternoon snacks. Also, we harvested chamomile, which we enjoy for tea, and cut yarrow and parsley, all which were dried.
Bread
Sarah and I ground gallons of grain this week. Sarah baked eight loaves of various types of bread, most of which went into the freezer in anticipation of our upcoming gathering. She also baked some desserts and snacks. One of our adult children helped her with some of the planned cooking also.
Smoking Beef Bacon
Finally, the bacon brining went well. The meat was left in the brine for almost four days, rinsed thoroughly, and then smoked for eight hours. It was chilled and sliced. We haven’t had a chance to cook any yet but will let you know how it turns out when we do.
Continuing to appreciate the potatoes growing in my 5×5 ft. raised bed. Grew 6 inches in 5 days in my decomposed woodchip/chicken manure mix.
Got some sexlink RIR/White Legghorn? mix chickens last year. Marvelous eggers.
Bought a never been used SS pressure cooker at a g sale for $5 today.
Trying to give away raspberry plants as ours are being prolific. Gotta buy a d’anjou or Bartlett pear tree to pollinate our Bosc pear trees better.
Still pretty cool and wet in the NODOUBT. Sweet corn is having a hard time germinating. Bloody Butcher (marvelous corn for corn meal) is doing well tho. Planted with Kentucky wonder pole beans. Beans give nitrogen back to the corn. Beans climb up the corn. Nice thing about these beans is you can eat them as green beans or let them dry on the vine and have beans for soup. Can see dried beans, and green beans and new blossoms side by side on the same plant. Way Cool!!! Tried squash with the mix last year (three sisters), but not enuf light for the Waltham butternut to mature large.
Critters eating my summer squash. Trap set.
Waiting for things to dry out to get my ash firewood out of a friends woods.
Just sent a coon to never never land.
Cuomo sucks.
Jesus reigns.
MtH
The wife and I are planning to move to our country property sometime late this summer. We have planted our garden in plastic buckets so that we can pick them up and move them out to the country–from sweet potatoes to cucumbers to egg plant to onions. The wife is very allergic to tomatoes and cannot even pick them, so we buy them at a Farmer’s market to process. We are accumulating materials for our chicken coop and will build that when it comes time to move. We are trying to decide if we want to raise quail or rabbits for meat also. The Lord has been good to us and we also thank him for what He gives us.
Check out New Zealand rabbits. No noise, great meat to feed ratio, need about 4 square feet per critter. Need shelter from the heat, I have mine under trees. Don’t mind cold. Careful on your OPSEC.
We have a great and merciful God, but I’m a feelin that time is short.
MtH
I have all of my rabbits in two story rabbit tractors, so they can eat grass, but then go up to the top story to be off the ground. It has a wire floor that they can eat grass through. I have a nest on the top story, so they can raise their babies. I can shut them up in the top if I need to.
Obviously it also provides a mobile, free way to grow meat, that you can move easily to hide, but still get them food. The same is true of chicken tractors, except roosters are loud.
Rabbit meat is extremely lean, and it is fairly well known that you can get poisoning from eating only rabbit meat because it is so lean. We must have the fat to stay healthy. It’s ok in small amounts, but long term, it is not a good solution as the only source of meat. Grow a calf or goat or chicken also.
JWR,
Thanks for the progress report. It’s great to see this type of report because it inspires me to continue my preparedness work here at my homestead in SE Alabama. Take care and my God Bless you and your family in 2017.
Planted my second wave of lettuce, filled my wife’s pool aka my emergency water container, made some improvements in weight lifting this week. Preparing for IPSC.
I love to see these things folks do.
Picked my first handful of green beans this a.m.! The DD and I will enjoy them for supper. I planted the flowers she got me for my birthday on Tuesday.
I’ve also finished weed eating the fence rows that I had sprayed with round-up. Everything looks so nice. It does my heart good to enjoy the loviliness of my place. I also hoed, weeded, fertilized, and watered my small garden. We are expecting rain this weekend. Nobody waters like the good Lord.
We are moving stepping stones I no longer use to my daughters house and making her a walkway. She hasn’t been able to get the dirt work done on her new home, so we are using what we have till her money gets greener. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!” I mowed her place and mine and in a few days will have to do my sister’s place for her. Raking leaves that are still left from fall and probably the year before, that are still around the house. I didn’t get the deck worked on before, but plans are for this week and I have to clean up around that. Trying to keep everything tidier than I’ve been able to in the lasst few years…hoping this keeps unwanted varmints away! I’ve got some raised garden beds that I want to dismantle and use the block for other things later in the year.
Weather is good, we’ve had an unusual milder and wetter late spring, but today we are nearing 90 and humid. Summer is coming so want to get as much done as possible of the harder work.
God is good!
Our homestead is very hilly and sloped, with quite a significant “cliff” the wife calls is that drops about 12 feet and then rises into woods. All kinds of lovely things grow up and over this cliff, it’s our intention to eventually fence off where the cliff is. So that involves clearing brush, brush, and more brush, which was allowed to grow over and out of control. So this week, clearing brush. Last week, cleared brush. Next week….clearing brush. The week after that…you get the idea.
I ended up plowing Saturday yet again my new five-acre field. With all the rain that we’ve received in the past two weeks the weeds were just as thick as last time. Here’s the not so good part, at some point during my plowing my wallet fell out of my back pocket and got plowed in. Normally I take it out and leave it in the truck, but this time I forgot. It wasn’t until I got back home that I realized it was missing. This morning me, my wife, and my sister-in-law drove the sixty miles back out to the getaway spot and started the search. We had two metal detectors hoping the magnetic strips on credit cards would give a signal. We weren’t there looking twenty minutes before my wife found it. I was on the far end of the field when I heard them yelling trying to get my attention that they found it. I could not believe she found it so quickly as only a piece of it was poking up out of the dirt. Lesson learned and thank God for the quick recovery.