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:
This week we did a bit of snowplowing. I also got some work done, remodeling our workshop. And I constructed a full-height 3′ x7′ poultry wire mesh room within our henhouse. We plan to use that room for specific breeding and to protect our baby chicks. The framework for that room was constructed with mixture of 2x2s and 2x4s. Its door is a framework of 2x2s with a 2×4 cross-brace, with poultry wire stapled on.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was cloudy with intermittent sun and snow showers with highs in the high thirties and low forties. We had a snowstorm that dropped eight-inches at the end of the week.
This week I planted in trays: Genovese and deep purple basil, parsley, cilantro, and scarlet kale. I put them under the grow lights in the guest bedroom greenhouse.
I spent a lot of time organizing and cleaning this week because I accidentally forgot a bone broth stew overnight on the stove and Jim found it at 3 AM quite blackened with the house quite smoky. The issue was, is that I wanted it to cook as long as possible before putting it into the refrigerator overnight and then would resume cooking the stew again in the morning, but we forgot it was on the stove, on low heat after we went to the bedroom in the early evening to Internet surf and then go to sleep. So I spent the rest of the week washing everything: floors, walls, cupboards and clothes to get that horrible smell out of the house. I have a super sensitive nose. Well, we can call it early spring cleaning… LOL 😉 This will also free me up for outside garden work in a few weeks knowing that the house is clean, organized, and functional.
I’ve also been doing a lot of regular cooking for us: a roast, stews and soups, and some extra cooking, most days, for our animals. This included meat and fish for the cats, dog, and chickens now that we are not feeding them commercial food. I have been buying smelt (being sold locally as bait for fishing), cod, cheap liver and cheaper ground beef to give to them with eggs. I also give them canned tuna, sardines, and chicken, also some lamb. I do not wish to give them our own beef from our own cows because it is so yummy. I want to keep that for us humans.
This week, I helped Jim with his “henhouse within the henhouse” build. I am so happy to have it. Now we have a safe place for chicks to grow up. I now have a place to selectively breed who I want, since we have a number of breeds cooped up together and I have a few giant birds that I want offspring from to increase the size of my birds in the next generation. Also, perhaps I can put a broody hen in that room at some point. Currently, I have put my neighbor’s birds in it with two of my mature giant roosters, hoping that they will be bred by them and that I will get some eggs from them to incubate. If I get a lot of eggs from them and hatch them out I will be giving some of those chicks to the neighbors when they return this summer. Also, I want to keep a few of them myself.
In addition to helping Jim with the build, I took time to wait and watch the hens lay eggs and snatched them while they were still warm and viable, so that I can do an early incubation of eggs. I have been in the coop for numerous days getting the eggs. We do have some naughty egg-eaters — so I had to beat them to the eggs. We will be butchering those egg-eaters, soon. But I am hoping to get more eggs from them to incubate before we do so. We are also planning on giving a few hens away to some friends as soon as the weather lets up and they get their own henhouse built. So I really need to set aside eggs for incubating, now. I am incubating fifteen eggs as of writing this. I hope to get a few more in there in the next day or so. They are laying so slowly. I have never spent so much time around the birds as I have during the past two weeks. I also finally put a light inside the hen house to give them light 24 hours a day. Hopefully, that with their excellent diet will encourage them to lay.
Jim, Miss Violet and I skied together on Saturday, but we didn’t get out the rest of the week because we ended up being super busy. We did work out with calisthenics several times early in the week. I became very sore so ended up taking two days off to recover and resumed on Friday.
Miss Violet and I listened to most of the book of Exodus early in the week.
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– 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.