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 had my plans for the week put in slow motion, because of a sprained ankle. That always provides a refresher lesson in humility. But despite that injury, I still managed to help a friend ready his cabin for winter. I also picked up a load of dimensional lumber and plywood– enough to complete my workshop renovation. I hope to wrap up that work after there is snow on the ground. And we are expecting snow, soon.
Now, over to Lily…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was gorgeous though slowly cooling down. At the end of the week the rains finally came. We are possibly expecting snow early next week in our valley. Definitely, our surrounding mountains are expected to get up to two feet of snow. We shall see what kind of a winter we get this year…
I picked most of the apples from the last tree, about forty pounds worth. I left a few apples, about ten, on the tree to see how much they might grow and sweeten in the coming frosts. This apple is very hard. I think it;’s a very late harvesting apple and a great storage apple. I think it’s a Gravenstein.
I cleaned the hen house again. With so many birds it really needs to be cleaned out once a week.
At the end of the week, before the expected huge weather change, I raked the loafing area before the rains came, so it wouldn’t become a sloppy wet hay and mud mess. We also rolled up the hoses and put them away and cleaned up the ranch, putting all tools and equipment away into their proper protective spaces.
I put away the herbs that I dehydrated over last weekend and dehydrated in the dehydrator the batch of rosemary, horehound, and dill that were drying on the windowsill awaiting their turn in the dehydrator.
I added more oregano and chocolate mint to the dehydrator.
I harvested and dehydrated two quarts worth of broccoli and also I dehydrated a pint’s worth of broccoli leaves.
I dehydrated a five-pound bag of pears.
I have been reorganizing and straightening out the kitchen cupboards
Jim, Miss Violet, and I have been moving a lot of food items out to the root cellar and reorganizing and cleaning the hall pantry.
The chimney of our new wood cookstove was installed this week. We are now awaiting the fixing of one part and then we can fire it up, hopefully next week.
I have been collecting and drying seeds: Hungarian pepper seeds, shepherd’s purse. I put them in labeled envelopes. I am awaiting my onion flowers with seeds to dry out so I can put them into the envelopes.
Last spring I pruned my apple trees. I kept all of the branches in a pile to dry in the orchard for future smoking wood for meat preservation and to do some utensil carving. I moved them up to the house this week and covered them with a tarp.
We have a few Red and Sugar Maple trees about the ranch. Currently, they are in their full fall color glory: red, greens, yellows, and oranges all in varying shades of each color. I picked a large handful of the leaves and arranged them on our dining room table on a white tablecloth along with some green and brown Bracken ferns and covered them with clear plastic vinyl. It is so pretty. I’m not a much of a home decorator because, I have more important things to do with my time, but once in a while I enjoy doing a simple natural type decoration. 😉
While we were enjoying the lovely summer-like sunshine and temperatures, the spawning streams of the salmon in nearby British Columbia dried up and the salmon died before spawning. This is another hit on our fisheries and food supplies. So sad! Truly we are entering the days of the horseman of Revelation
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.