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 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’ve just returned to The Rawles Ranch. Thanks for your patience, while I attended a family memorial service.
I’ve reactivated order-taking at Elk Creek Company. With the recent increase in the spot price of silver (around $24.15 per Troy ounce), this is an advantageous time to pay for your order with silver. We have two payment options shown for our gun and knife prices: In pre-1965 U.S. silver coins, or in Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs). We appreciate your business, regardless of how you pay. Order mailings will resume on Monday, November 8th, 2021.
Now, over to Lily, who has been capably taking care of the ranch, in my absence. She is an amazing wife and a gift from God!
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
My dear husband is back home. It is so good to have him home! I am so glad, this season of our life has ended — having Jim gone four months out of each year. I feel as though we are entering a new season in our married life and it’s very exciting. We both share a sense of release and relief, along with much sadness, of course…
We have all kinds of plans for projects to do to improve the ranch: adding some new livestock, fencing, gardens, improving the meadows, and renovating/updating/freshening parts of our home. Many of these things are a long time in coming. Additionally, we have plans to spend more time together, just being.
I feel like time is just racing by, so much so that I’m not even sure of what I did this week. Let me think: I did a lot of the usual animal chores, cooking, laundry, and general clean up and organizing in the house.
Oh, I ordered and received Silicon food storage bags to use instead of plastic bags. I ordered about four X-large, two large, four medium and six small, and two snack size bags to try them out. I transferred the frozen foods that I use most frequently (strawberries, onions, mangoes and mixed sweet peppers) into the x-large bags and some more into the large bags, etc. I really like them. So, I promptly went and ordered another six X-large bags and eight more large bags. Eventually, I would like to mostly transition away from using plastic bags for most of my freezing of fruits, veggies, and home-prepared meats.
What else? Ah, it has been a week of a lot of manure clean-up, now that the nearly dozen large animals are up from the pastures and hanging out in the loafing areas and in the parking lot/barnyard in front of the barn. I’m happy about this because I need it to build up our compost pile. But it is a lot of work.
This week I shoveled out the second bed in the greenhouse and spread the soil in an area that needed it. This is to keep the Shmittah next year in the greenhouse beds. I pulled the last of peppers that were growing in a long clear shallow tote in the greenhouse, dumped its soil in the previously-mentioned outside area, and washed and bleached the tote. I will, later, refill it with some fresh composted soil.
In the greenhouse, I have about twelve busing trays and other type trays, and one bed growing through the fall and winter: celery, beets, spinach, kale, Pac Choi, parsley, lettuces, Swiss Chard, and one broccoli plant that does not have aphids.
I pulled up the two rows of broccoli that were growing in the main garden and gave it to the cows. It was quite inundated with aphids. This year has been the worst so far with aphids in my broccoli. I am not planting anything in the main garden next year. We’re keeping the Shmittah in that garden, next year. Therefore I am hoping that a year without Brassicas in the garden will wipe out the aphid population for future years.
I still have Dinosaur kale, collards, and carrots growing in the Main garden.
Oh yes, I weedwhacked the five foot tall bull thistles in the right Annex garden, shredded them to bits, to begin preparing it for the garden plot for next summer. The plan is to put manure on that plot, this fall, rototill it in the spring and then cover the whole thing with black row cover for weed control and plant it. This section of garden had its Shmittah rest this past summer, so…
We have received our orders of nearly two hundred pounds of mixed pasture grass seed and another fifty pounds of mixed cover crop seeds (such as alfalfa, turnip, and buckwheat) to enhance our meadow pastures’ fertility.
Additionally, I received a large number of wild herb seeds that I want to grow for food and medicinal purposes.
I have not been much into sprouting or microgreens in the past, but now feel it is very important for me to start growing them. Jim had in storage two sets of sprouting trays, that I dug out. And additionally we have screened caps for five large-mouth mason jars. So then this week, I tried to sprout some very old sprouting seeds, from before my time here on the ranch that were with the trays and some others, maybe not so old, that were up in the kitchen cupboard. They did not sprout. Therefore, I have ordered new fresh seeds: alfalfa, sunflower, kale, broccoli, cabbage, mustard, clover, cilantro, lentil, etc. from various vendors that should arrive in the next week or so. Actually, I know that we have at least one five gallon bucket of sprouting seeds somewhere around here that were purchased in the past five years or so…But, I will keep those sealed for now.
Jim’s mom had some very cool prep supplies that Jim brought home to me. One item was her Solar oven. When Jim showed it to me, while we were unpacking the horse trailer, I immediately, took about a twenty minute break to open up the package and take a look at it. It’s very simple, just a plastic turkey bag, a foam filled fold-able reflective pad a small dark enameled pot, and instructions. I read the instructions and I am very much looking forward to a sunny day to give it a try. Unfortunately, it looks like I will have to wait at least two weeks for some decent sunshine to appear. Our fall and winter rain/snow pattern is setting in with nary a breather between storms.
She also had a form of an oversized rocket stove that had been in storage more than fifteen years that had never been used. The included instructions state that is supposed to use only paper, but we will also use small twigs, etc. I’m glad to have another method to cook food available to us.
The pups have finally bonded having become best buddies. K. is so intelligent and so wants to please us. He has already calmed down his rough play with us and is play biting us very little now. Of course, it helps to have another dog around for him to get all his play bites out of his system. He is getting huge. He still has another year and a half of growth… Jim said he is going to be a formidable dog. The other day, I was sitting on the floor. K. came into the room and walked right over to me and put his body across my lap and sat down on me for a hug and snuggle. That was the first time he had done that with me. I thought that was so sweet, because he was so quiet and gentle about it.
On a day while I was working in the greenhouse, I stepped out the driveway-side door and looked down on the ground. There was a large pile of fresh cow manure with a huge dog foot print right in it’s center. I thought “Whoa, that is a big dog track!” For a split second, I thought it was a wolf track. (Alarm bells going off Alert. Alert. Alert.) Then, immediately, I thought that it must be K’s footprint because I highly doubt a wolf would step in manure… or would come this close to the house inside our fenced-in perimeter…One never knows, though, since we have had wolves inside the perimeter way out in the meadows…I’m fairly certain it’s our pup’s track, though, because domesticated dogs often don’t watch where they are placing their feet…
Little H. is such a sweet little girl pup. She is so keyed in on Miss Violet. Yet, she responds to everyone in the family. Well, not Jim, yet. She is a bit scared of him, since she barely got know him before he had to leave again on his recent trip. That will change quickly though, now that he is home for good. She is so small and so cute, but very feisty when it comes to holding her own against huge K. She really gives him a run for his money. K. does bully her once in a while. When that happens, if we’re nearby, H. will run to us and ask to be picked up. It’s so cute. She knows we will rescue her.
I listened to the book of Matthew this week. My exercise was all of the garden and manure work this week.
We are living in the Last days. The signs are all there.
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
o o o
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.