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:
We were quite busy this past week, picking up hay bales in the field, hauling them, and stacking them in our barn. Each year we need to bring in about 20 tons of grass hay. Each hauling round trip is about 60 miles. So we take two vehicles and trailers. Each hauling trip brings in about 2.6 tons. On some days, weather permitting, we make two trips. 5.2 tons is about all that my tired old back handle lifting and stacking twice, in one day. The process of handling and hauling hay by ourselves has its frustrations, but the resulting full barn is its own satisfying reward.
One troubling note: Standard (traditional “small square”) bales were selling for $130 per ton last year. This year they are $225 per ton. And that is hay coming from the same hay farmer, at his “picking up your own bales in the field, and you haul” price! But I should count my blessings. I’ve heard that the hay situation in drought-stricken Texas is so bad that hay is selling for $100+ per round bale, in some Texas counties!
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We are having lovely weather here in the American Redoubt, sunny and warm with a few thundershowers here and there.
This week our younger daughter and I helped Jim with the hay hauling. H. our pup came along and was so well behaved. She loves being with us and rides so well in the truck and SUV with us. It’s so nice to know that this year, we will have more than enough hay to see our beasties through to next summer.
Miss Violet and I have weeded the cabbage, onions, and beets thusfar down in the Annex garden. We are finally picking strawberries, this past week being their peak this year. It is two weeks later than previous years. I froze one cookie tray’s worth thusfar. We are eating them like crazy. Yum!
I reorganized a bit, in three of our freezers
I have been busy hand-watering the Annex, Perennial, and “Woodshed” vegetable beds and pots that are planted, and in the greenhouse.
We had our grandsons over for their very first “break-in” overnight this past weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Rawles. They are at the age where they are beginning to stretch their wings a wee bit. Their mom and dad rented an AirB&B in a nearby town and took a short getaway. It was a wonderful busy time of keeping the boys occupied with making our own “Huck Finn” style fishing poles, collecting worms from the compost pile, and fishing in the river. (We only had a few nibbles, since it was early afternoon.)
The grandsons helped with picking strawberries and snacking on them after I washed them, and swimming in our local swimming hole. (Grandson #3 received impromptu swim lessons from me, I used to teach toddlers how to swim in my much younger years, back east. It is so much fun when they are so eager to learn!)
I also took the grandsons hiking around the ranch and gave them edible plant identification lessons as well as identifying the few poisonous plants that are found on our ranch, (Grandson #2 spotted the little maroon flower from a wild ginger plant. I was so excited that he saw it and to see it, since I had only seen them in books up to that point). They also enjoyed helping/watching me do animal chores. They each lit a campfire fire that I used to cook barbecue chicken on one fire and french fried potatoes on the second fire. We played board games and sports and got out our big Playmobile/Legos tote.
We played with H. — our nearly yearling pup — who loved having the boys around. And, of course, I read to them some scriptures and from a book of blessings for children that we have. These boys are a wonderful blessing to us. They were super well-behaved. Now that the grandsons and Jim and I, are all “broken in” together, we are all very much looking forward to another longer planned stay, later this summer. I have all kinds of activities planned for them, then. We can’t wait. Camp Rawles! 😉
I have been listening to Appalachia’s Homestead with Patara. I know I mentioned her last week, I think it was just last week? I just want to say that she can be a real hoot in the midst of her warnings, that most of us are aware of, and especially when she demonstrates her recipes, oh dear! You’ll have to listen to this video to understand what I am referring to.
Just a reminder that you all really need to put away at least three and a half years worth of food for your family and for others who may join you. Time is running out! The Lord God is with us. He’ll protect and sustain us if we’re right with Him, until it is his chosen time to bring us home. Read the Psalms. They are very comforting!
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.