To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make 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 via e-mail. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
I had a quiet week while traveling out of state. I did my usual blog writing and editing. And I took the time to do some stretching, calisthenics, and an average of 10 miles per day of bike riding. I also added a big batch of percussion revolvers to the Elk Creek Company online store. (Note that I’ll have ordering deactivated until March 31st. If any of the guns listed interest you, then mark your calendar for the 31st. Note that I expect a big rush of orders for pre-1899 guns, if congress passes their planned private party modern gun transfer ban. (So-called “Universal Background Checks.”) Now, over to Lily…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We have had very spring-like weather this week, lots of sun and temperatures in the high forties to mid-fifties.
We took advantage of the weather and spent time wearing shorts to absorb sunlight and Vitamin D, while cleaning up manure around the loafing areas of our beasties around the ranch. While working we were very warm and the occasional cold breeze that blew through felt good to us. We’re tough Redoubt girls and can handle the cold winds that blow through every now and then.
Since we are experiencing such “warm” spring-like weather, I moved the kale, spinach, broccoli, onions, and winter lettuce from the Indoor bathroom greenhouse outside to the garden greenhouse. I transplanted the broccoli into a section of one of the beds and I covered the onions and lettuces with large clear totes, so that we have a “greenhouse within a greenhouse” — two layers of protection.
My bees made it through the bitter cold weather two weeks ago. I fed them some more honey this week, since the last honey I gave them was all gone.
This week, I watched the latest Gridlessness video on Rabbit Snaring. Honestly, I had never seen it done, before and hadn’t studied it, for reasons of my own, but was feeling like it was time to learn this skill. The video was very interesting and making and placing snares correctly appear to be an easy thing to do. Immediately, after watching the video, I made a snare and showed the girls how to make one. Then we pulled out Bradford Angier’s book, “How to Eat in the Woods”, and spent some time studying different ways of setting up snare and traps for rabbits and squirrels. I then put it into my Bugout bag. I do realize that to have any success, one needs to put out about fifteen snares at a time just to get one rabbit. I plan to make more, soon.
We are planning on going out into the National Forest to practice looking for rabbit trails and setting them up, only for practice, but not leave them, for several reasons: I don’t like killing beautiful little animals, and they’re not biblically considered food (“not kosher…”) Therefore, I don’t plan to eat them until I am desperate. I’m not legalistic. This is just my preference.
I will be spending more time studying in the catching game section of Angier’s book.
I spent a lot of time studying a book on the local hiking trails through our mountains. Happily for me and the girls, now that I don’t have to moderate comments, we can leave the ranch for longer hikes in the very near future, when the snow is off our area and spend much more time working on camp craft/bushcraft skill building. I have such a lovely sense of freedom and lightness, now.
The plan is to get in shape gradually, in order to do some backpacking trips, later this spring. So we drove to an area in our region that no longer has snow on the ground. We started out this week with a forty-minute hike out in one direction and when the forty minutes were up, we turned around and hiked back. Then after that warm up, we hiked up a steep shortish trail to a small mountain lake where I chopped a hole into the ice with my hatchet at the shoreline. Once I cleared away the ice chunks, I was watching the debris on the bottom of the lake for unusual movement of critters. Suddenly a leaf moved more than it ought to from a small current. I lifted the leaf and found a crayfish trying to get away. The crayfish was relatively sluggish in the cold water. I promptly caught it. I showed it to the girls and said, “Well, there is a few calories and protein there for ya, if we were desperate.” Then I immediately put the little animal back into the lake.
We ate a snack while soaking up the sunshine on the lake’s shoreline, then hiked out. About ten minutes from the car, I got the bright idea that I wanted to walk barefoot on the dirt and gravelly path to ground myself. The girls decided to join me. It’s been a very long winter and I need and want to feel the earth between my toes again. Much of the ground was wet from the recently-melted snow. It was very cold in the shaded places, but we toughed it out and ran from the shaded areas to the sunny areas where the ground was a bit warmer. We laughed and moaned and complained about how cold the ground felt, and how our feet were aching, but it was fun, and also gave us such a wonderful feeling of well-being. It was a lovely hike. In all, we were out two hours. We’re now looking for our next trail to hike. We want one just a bit longer and a little bit steeper, but not too much.
Recently, I had been thinking a lot about winter camping and having a small wood stove to add warmth to the situation. I watch “Outdoor Boys” often, and noticed that the Dad brought a small camping stove on a couple of their outings. I thought that that was a great idea. I really wanted one. About this time one of our Bible study members mentioned to me that we ought to get a small wood stove for emergencies in case for some reason our home wasn’t available to us. I then saw an ad about “Hot Tents” and researched them. When I found the one I liked, I showed it to Jim. We discussed the idea and ordered a Luxe brand collapsing backpacking wood stove and Megahorn Tipi Tent Bundle. We received the order this week. The girls and I set up the wood stove, (It’s a very cute little thing. I like it!) and put it out in the yard and lit a fire in it to burn off the packing oils. It put out a lot of heat. Next week, Lord willing, I plan to set up the tent and stove on our land and sleep out in it. We’ll let you know how it goes.
Critter Story Time
One evening at almost dark, the girls and I saw both horses on high alert, once again, snorting and whooshing up a storm. “What now?”, I said, aloud to myself. They were standing down in the near-house meadow the same distance from the house but were nearer to the north woods, not up against the orchard fence from the last time when we had a Mountain Lion here. We didn’t see what this animal was, but thought it was a probably a mountain lion. Since it was almost dark, I decided that I wanted to scare it off immediately, so I went out onto the porch and shot a few rounds of .45 ACP into the snow bank just twenty feet out from off our porch. The porch rail serves as the bench for our most-commonly-used firing range.
Another neighbor called a few moments later. Miss Violet answered the phone and brought it out and handed it to me. He asked me, “Was that you shootin’ ?” (They love shootin’ all kinds of guns.) They’re also looking out for me and the girls while Jim is traveling. I said, “Yes, the horses are acting as though we have another mountain lion in about the same place as last time. I was just hoping shootin’ a few rounds would scare it off.” He then said that a half hour earlier a moose went through his ranch onto ours. I said, “Oh, well then, that explains why our horses are acting so on alert. I don’t think they’ve seen a moose in a long time and don’t know what to think of it.” I laughed. “Ooh! I would have liked to have seen it.” Maybe it will still be around here in the morning light?
I don’t know if it was still around, come morning, because I didn’t see it. But my beasties kept looking towards the river during their breakfast time. Around 7:00 pm that evening that same neighbor called again and said he saw a wolf or a coyote across the river in the meadows north of me around noon that day and it was heading north. In that same area that he had seen the wolf or coyote, I had seen four deer running north through the meadows and looking backwards later in the day around 4:00PM. I didn’t have my binocs with me at the time, so I couldn’t glass the area they were looking back at to see what was there. I had thought they were looking at the possible moose, or geese and Tundra swans, but maybe not….So then, we’ve got quite a bit of wildlife hanging tight in here, once again. Exciting!
During the past two weeks, I have listened to the books of John, Acts, and Romans.
Vaccine Info:
I am warning our readers. Please, read and inquire of the Lord to show you the truth about this. I really believe that the vaccine could be a depopulation bioweapon being forced upon the world to reduce it’s population. Further, it could be a tool to bring about the ‘Mark of the Beast” spoken of in Revelation 13, 14 and 19 — through the Green Passport proof of Vaccination. This Passport will soon be tattooed into the skin of your arm or forehead. The masks and temperature checks at many public venues are part of the conditioning of the sheeple. Please, please, please, I beseech you, to pray and ask the Father for wisdom and discernment concerning this vaccine. Research it. Listen to the videos we have been linking to. Read the articles, I have been posting about Israel’s leading edge of the rollout of this Vaccine and it’s Green Passport. The whole world is following their example. What is happening in Israel will happen here. They are discriminating between those people who are vaccinated and those who are not.. High schoolers who are not vaccinated are not allowed to take their Matriculation exams! Just look at what Austria and Denmark are doing with Israel in the very near future. Here is what is happening to the poor Israelis right now in Israel. And this was their latest video, A MUST TO LISTEN TO. Please pray for their salvation. Please do not take the vaccine if you value your mortal life, and your eternal life with Jesus the Son of God and His Father the Creator.
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 always want to hear from you.