To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both 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 the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
I’ve had a busy week. In addition to projects around the ranch, I’ve been working out some details with our new credit card merchant account for Elk Creek Company that does not involve PayPal. Among other things, it allows us to now take credit card payments for the Ten Cent Challenge.
I’ve also had to correct some glitches in a few archive USB stick orders. (More than 350 have sold, so far. The sticks are selling at a brisk pace!)
And I’ve been in contact with three of my consulting clients in the past few days. One of them requested a face-to-face consulting session. Not surprisingly, all three of them had questions about the ATF’s dastardly new ban and registration scheme for pistol arm braces. I told them that I am confident that the courts will soon overturn this new voluminous set of rules, for several reasons:
- The rules represent an uncompensated “taking”.
- The ATF overstepped its rulemaking authority, essentially making up a new law from whole cloth. This is a no-no, per the Supreme Court’s recent EPA decision.
- Guns, gun parts, and accessories that are in common use are protected under the Secon Amendment, per the recent Bruen decision.
So, please don’t panic about this.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a very busy week and we will be having a very busy weekend.
Our senior matriarch cow, “L.” gave birth to a heifer calf last Friday night, unexpectedly, in the rain. It rained all night with temperatures in the low thirties. These temperatures are not a bad temp for a calf to be born in, but cold and getting wet is not a good combination. When I went out for the regular morning livestock feeding, “L.” did not show up at the hay I threw out to the herd, so I looked around the corner of the milking stalls and there she was in our back corral with a calf by her side. I found the calf soaking wet, shivering violently, and exhausted. She was still walking around. I was pretty sure she had already nursed, but she was so cold.
I decided that for the first time ever — we have never had to help a calf up to this point out of the fifteen or more we have had born on our ranch — that we needed to intervene with this baby, to get her dry and warmed up. I went into the house and told Jim. We had a bit of a rodeo to separate the mom and the calf. We carried the calf into the tiled floor of our kitchen to rub her dry with some ancient bath towels. We then wrapped her in a fresh set of dry towels and Lily’s retired thirty-year-old-plus LL Bean sleeping bag and draped a heating pad between the layers.
I put my fingers in her mouth to see if she still had the swallowing reflex. She did, but her poor little tongue and cheek were freezing cold. We gave her some warm water and molasses through a giant 50 ML cattle syringe (sans needle). Within an hour, her hide was getting fluffy dry, her tongue had warmed up and she was up on her feet, looking for mama. So Jim carried her back out of the house and loaded up into a cargo sled, for the trip out to rejoin her mom. Mom and baby were super happy to be reunited. We named her an “M” name.
And I finally named one of our calves that was born last summer, “W”.
We kept the cow and calf isolated in the barn with plenty of hay, water, and salt available — including some loose hay for bedding– for six days until we dehorned her with dehorning paste. Then we released the two of them back with the herd. She was so cute running around the corral with the others. She is a beautiful little heifer!!!
Jim had to work and Miss Violet was not up for an adventure. So I went to represent our family cross-country skiing on our Unnamed Mountain’s old logging roads with our neighbors, their whole family and two of their young adult friends. It was a lovely adventure a balm for my adventurous soul. We skied about two and half miles on the roads and had to navigate lots of downed trees. and do a bushwhack down a steep hill to a meadow. We had to remove our skis numerous times and go on foot. Thankfully, the snow wasn’t too deep only near downed trees did we post-hole up to our thighs. It was so much fun, though.
We saw lots of animal tracks: Mountain Lion, Moose tracks (and their “raisins”), Bobcat, Fisher and Martin, squirrel, rabbit, deer, and quail. They had two young children on skis and they were absolutely intrepid skiers. I was very impressed with their adventuresome spirit and go-get-it-ness. We all look forward to more adventures with this family in the coming days, months, and hopefully years.
I cleaned out the hen house, twice. I cleaned the barn where mama cow and baby dwelled for six days.
I cleaned the guest bedroom and organized our game/puzzle closet and bedding closets. I cleaned out dead vegetation from some of my trays in the greenhouse to prep them for spring planting.
I saw this video this week. This is what we need to be praying against: Montage of the Great Reset’s Leaders’ ideas.
I did some sit-ups and walking in addition to my ski trip for exercise.
I have been attending an additional Bible study, besides our regular Shabbat Bible study. This new study for the past three weeks has been with a friend. We are looking at the Character of God. My daughters, Miss Violet and Miss Eloise, join us.
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.