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, 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:

The year is coming to an end. 2022 was challenging, with expanding government over-reach, economic instability, deep political division, rampant moral decline, and the arrival of a new wave of inflation. Here at the ranch, our costs for hay, grain, and groceries jumped up substantially. The mainstream media is now blathering incessantly about the recent drop in fuel prices, and a “drop in inflation.” What they are failing to report is that fuel is still 40% higher than it was two years ago, and that their much-touted “drop in inflation” is actually just a slight decrease in the rate of increase in the ongoing destruction of the Dollar’s buying power. We will be tightening our belts and re-evaluating how much livestock we can afford to feed. We’ll likely be eating a lot of young roosters this winter and spring. We’ll also be selling or butchering steers and selling off some cow-calf pairs in 2023. With hay continuing to be sky-high, we just can’t afford to feed them.

What will 2023 bring?  A deep recession and widespread layoffs are likely. Certainly there will be more censorship, election fraud, and political turmoil. There isn’t a lot of good news expected. One exception is that with the encouraging precedents set by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen decision and the West Virginia v. EPA decision, the courts will move toward reaffirming our right to keep and bear arms. Meanwhile, state legislatures in “Blue” and “Purple” states are busy drafting more gun restrictions, magazine bans, and Red Flag/ERPO laws. Be vigilant folks, and contact your state and federal legislators often!

At the Federal level, there seems to be no end in sight of gross overspending and poking our collective noses and countless billions in arms into a war between quasi-communists and quasi-fascists, in Ukraine. Team Biden has sided with the quasi-fascists. They’ve delusionally cozied up to the gang that they see as the lesser of two evils. But inescapably, evil is still evil.  If the Bidenistas aren’t careful, then the war in Ukraine may escalate into World War 3. So we must pray hard, and stock up!

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
This week, after some deep cold, the rain came!  Interestingly, it started raining last Saturday while our temperatures on the porch registered only 17 degrees Fahrenheit.  I’ve not seen rain come at that low of a temperature, before. There must have been very warm temperatures above a very shallow cold layer at the bottom of the air column. This did not allow the rain time enough to turn to snow. Of course, all of our trees and snow formed a quarter inch layer of ice on them. We lost grid power, though, only for about two hours. For the record, I have seen it rain at about 28 degrees Fahrenheit back in January of 1998 in New England.  We even had lightning and thunder during that storm.

We had very warm temperatures up into the forties with rain all week.  I am not happy about it.  This was one prayer that God did not grant me. But, hopefully, we will have many more really good snowy days this winter.

I spent time this week, preparing veggies for my smoothies ahead of time.  I chopped six small green and purple cabbages and peeled three pounds of carrots and a couple of pounds of beets. I put them in silicon bags and put those in the refrigerator for use for the rest of the week.

The warmer weather allowed me to clean out the hen house.  During that very cold spell last week, all of their manure froze on the floor making it impossible for me to clean.  As soon as it was above freezing all of their manure melted and was easy for me to scrape up and clean the floor.

I have made a list of the things I need to organize and deep clean.  I organized and deep-cleaned what was our homeschool, business, and art supply cabinet.  It is full paper: construction paper, various printing papers, resume paper, card stock, lined paper, art pads, grid paper for geometry and architecture, tracing paper, et cetera.  There were also paints, colored pencils, regular pencils, erasers, hand pencil sharpeners, tacks, paper clips, rubber bands, various glues, pencils, pens, markers, sharpies, highlighters, white out, staples, staplers, hole punches, science stuff: rulers, magnifying glass, protractors, biology slides, pH paper strips, timers, and so forth.

This week I tried to stay off of the computer as much as possible.  Instead, I did a lot of cleaning, cooking and reading books!  What a concept?  I read The Last of the Mountain Men: Sylvan Hart, by Harold Peterson.  I very much enjoyed most of it. I really could relate to Sylvan (aka “Buckskin Bill”) in so many ways.  I like solitude and gardening, nature watching, working on projects, trying to be independent of the system. etc.  As Doug says, over at Off Grid with Doug and Stacey’s YouTube Channel Which sums up Sylvan’s premise of life:  “We are the ungovernable”.

Also in The Last of the Mountain Men: Sylvan Hart, there was a lot of history and geography of Idaho and Montana, gold prospecting, boomtowns, and stories of murders, robberies, immorality, and hangings.  The last four I didn’t care too much about.  As I read the book, I spent time pouring over the Idaho Gazetteer map book trying to find the towns and places the author was referring to. I very much enjoyed the book, overall.

A Brief Bible Study

This week I was reading Isaiah 24-33.  In chapter 26 I came to this scripture followed by chapter 27:

I found another Jab song for your listening pleasure.

May you all have a very blessed and safe week and a Blessed New Year.

– 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.