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 [1], 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 this column, in the Odds ‘n Sods Column, and in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
I had another quiet week here, helping an ailing elderly relative. I’d appreciate your prayers. The past two weeks have been very difficult. With the deteriorating health of my relative, I’ve been on bedside duty almost around the clock.
With the assistance of my sister, who came for an afternoon and an evening to relieve me, I was able to get away for a few hours. I needed this time for a face-to-face group meeting with some consulting client families that are involved in a group venture. That went well.
I am so thankful that Lily is able to manage the ranch in my absence. She is such a blessing to me!
Now, over to her…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
Early in the week, I canned three cases of peaches, 25 quarts worth. I pressure canned four quarts of zucchini.
My dehydrator fan is toast. Jim and I are going to work on building a couple of solar dehydrators, using the trays from that machine. Hey, why should we be relying on electricity when the powers that be will probably take it away shortly? The more stuff we learn to do without electricity, the easier it will be for us. Our ancestor’s functioned fine without it…
Gosh, it’s scary to think about how much normalcy bias I still operate in…
This has been a week of “hurry up and wait” concerning the last of the garden. I still have tomatoes, spaghetti squash, and Delicata squash growing. We had a bit of a frost, but thankfully it didn’t kill anything. But the next night we had a hard frost — although NOAA said it wouldn’t be a frost. So everything outside of the greenhouse died. Therefore I spent a good part of the day on Friday harvesting the squash and tomatoes. The undamaged tomatoes and squash will finish ripening in various places about the house and in the greenhouse.
I harvested my cantaloupe that was fairly decent size for the first time. They were a bit bigger than softballs. Last year the biggest was a bit bigger than a tennis ball and I only grew three. I harvested about six watermelons also not much bigger than softballs but still tasty watermelon.
I have been saving a lot of seeds this week.
The chickens now, for the most part put themselves to bed at dusk, finally. We have put up three roosting bars that are six feet off the ground, so if a skunk gets in, it can’t reach them. We still are having issues with them. They keep trying to dig under the shed and three nights in a row, succeeded in getting in, but there isn’t evidence of them getting the birds at this time. Therefore, each morning, where I see evidence of digging, I have been shoring up the base of the outside of the shed with staggered, overlapping hog panels, pallets, a few boards and heavy rocks. Each morning the skunk moved its strategy of action, so I worked harder to thwart it. One morning it dug a hole in a corner that had not been covered. The next morning it dug under the door in the front. That bad boy! By mid-week, I think I’ve completely thwarted it.
Now, I am getting my exercise playing chase around the living room couch with the pup. 😉
We are observing Yom Kippur over Saturday, which is the correct day according to the sighting of the moon this past Wednesday night.
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.