Editors’ Prepping Progress

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:

After getting 20+ inches of snow last week, this week I caught up on snow shoveling.  We needed to cut paths to the greenhouse and woodshed. I also needed to clear out the snow around the doors to the hen house and sheep shed.

On Tuesday morning, Lily implored me to slaughter, gut, and skin a couple of hens that she had determined were the egg-eating culprits. It was below freezing, so I made quick work of it. The red-spattered snow made the scene of my trabajo de matanza look a bit brutal. Lily had them both cooking in an oversize stew pot within an hour. Such is life on the ranch.

I had to make a trip to town to pick up mail, and mail out my Elk Creek Company ^[2] packages. This time of year the roads can be a challenge, so I took that trip slower than usual.

I have had a lot of organizational projects for the past two weeks.  That started with my annual desk-clearing and establishing and new box for receipts, bills, and statements, marked “2022.”  I also stowed our Luxe hot tent and 3W collapsable backpacking stove ^[3]. 3W stands for: “Wild, Wild West.” They are made in South Korea — so I suppose they mean the western edge of South Korea?  😉  That tentage and the stove are now housed in one of our green hardshell portage packs.

Stacked atop that pack is a standard black plastic Rubbermaid tote bin filled with tinder, fatwood kindling, and firewood. This firewood is all cut to the requisite special super-short length and split extra small, to fit in that tiny stove. Outwardly, the 3W stove looks almost like a toy. But once we get a fire going, it cranks out some copious heat. It is an amazing little stove.

My intent is to keep the tent, stove, and stove fuel all stored in a “grab-and-go” configuration. They can both go in one of our cargo sleds — or get thrown in the back of one of our vehicles — at a moment’s notice.

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
The weather for most of the week was terrible, rain for over two days after the initial snow/rain storm from last Thursday through the weekend. Our driveway, parking area, and barnyard are bumpy, treacherous plains of ice.  The snow surface for the first few days had an inch thick ice layer on top of it, until the next weather system of rain melted it. Therefore, it was not a good week for playing with the dogs outside or for walking or skiing. The daytime temperatures for the foreseeable future will be above freezing.  Hopefully, that will melt the ice in our driveway, parking area, and barnyard, soon.

After Jim butchered the chickens, I boiled them down, made chicken broth, froze two gallons worth, and made a chicken soup. A few days later, and I see there is still one more egg eater in there.  Grrr!  I will have to sit in the hen house with a chair and a book and watch, someday soon. We need to find out who this one is. The other two birds were white and their exceptionally dirty yellow-tinted breast feathers gave them away. And I had caught one of them in the act. Cannibals!

At the end of the week, on a day that I thought was going to be cloudy and foggy all day at home, we decided to go to town to restock up on meat, produce, and cleaning supplies. (We no longer choose to shop at Costco.) I thought that town was going to be sunny and was very much looking forward to it. It turned out that town was in a fog bank the whole livelong day and the drive home was in fog the whole way until we turned up onto the highway into our valley about 4:30 PM and found that it was sunny, with beautiful bluebird blue skies in our valley!  The mountains around us were intensely white and beautiful. I felt like crying, because for most of the day we had missed that feeling of sunshine on our skin, and because by the time we would get home the sun would have gone behind the mountain. Unless we get some sun on Sunday, we won’t see it again for another two weeks, according to the long-term forecast. By now, most folks in our region are beginning to feel quite sun-deprived.

I shoveled snow off of the garden porch and the path to the compost pile and around the front of the house to the woodshed.

I did a lot of deep cleaning of the house this week, along with organizing and cooking.

I marched around the living room a few times, did sit-ups, and lifted weights.

I took one loop around the perimeter of the parking lot, barnyard, and northwest woods on skis.  K. was with me and wouldn’t let up on the biting of the skis.  I reluctantly thunked him with my poles and yelled at him a few times. He let up on the biting, but kept stepping on the backs of them and getting in my way in the front.  So I quit. That’s when I went to shovel.

I am at chapter 17 in my reading of Genesis in Hebrew and Latin. I listened to Ephesians this week.

My eldest cousin, age 68, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, last Friday night.  He always ate a very healthy diet and worked out four hours a day, for years…  The only change in his routine was that he took the two vaxxes and the booster…

In my estimation, we are in the midst of a medical genocide…Two-thirds of Americans have allowed the serpent to inject them with His poisonous venom because of their FEAR of DEATH, now ensuring and hastening their worst fears of death by their compliance.

The rumors of new wars are getting stronger by the day. China and Russia, both are breathing out nuclear threats to the United States.

Get ready for war!

The noose is tightening on the unvaxxed which further illustrates the Beast System — or its precursor — is here.  Who will you choose? Jesus or The Beast’s system? Should we choose the Mark only to physically live maybe three years longer and lose our eternal life?  Or shall we refuse the Mark and choose immediate death, Martyrdom, but Eternal life in Jesus’ Kingdom?

I believe we will soon be faced with the choice of either taking that Vax and being “slowly” killed by the serpent’s poisonous venom therein or being shot or guillotined for refusing it.  Either way, we are facing death.  The question is, will we choose either:

A.) Temporary life through the vax and being able to buy, sell, travel, eat food in the Beast’s system and reaping eternal death,

or, should we believe in The Word of God and therefore choose:

B.) Possibly immediate or near-term death, and obtain eternal life?

This is exactly what we may be facing in the very near future. Whom shall ye serve?

I have some verses for you to ponder: