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, I took advantage of some rainy weather to do some organizing in JASBORR. (Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy.) Among other things, I caught up on labeling ammo crates and cans.
On another drizzly day, Lily and I re-packed some grains and legumes from bags into 5-gallon food-grade buckets.
I felled some more dead-standing, diseased, and “leaner” trees and cut them up for firewood.
We had hoped to take a hike up a mountain, in the adjoining National Forest this week, but both the weather and the pace of activities at the ranch got in the way…
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was wonderful.
I did a lot this week and can barely remember all that it was.
In the chicken department. I started a few birds in the “forced” brooding boxes. One of the birds just wasn’t having it. She is barely a year old. She ate an egg or two. Every time I passed her brooder she was trying very hard to get out. I have a board over her pot with a two inch gap for light and air and she was constantly trying to get out. Clearly, she wasn’t happy at all. Therefore, after three days of her not settling into the job, I de-comissioned her. I brought her back to the hen house, put her eggs into the compost pile and took up another bird who was giving me a lot of grief when I took her eggs from underneath her in the hen house. I picked her up and escorted her to the house and set her on the day’s eggs. She happily took right to her new job. The other birds, too, are very happy brooding over their eggs. I hope, hope, hope that they each successfully hatch a few chicks.
I had been giving them food and water in their brooder pots, but they were spilling it and getting their nests all mucked up. Therefore, I decided to give them a recess several times a day during which they get ten minutes to eat and drink and defecate outside of the nesting container. It seems to be working. I have them in the garage. So it is a very controlled area and can be cleaned up by me very quickly.
I finished planting all of the available space in the Main garden beds. Along the side of the house we had two decorative bushes of some kind, that I didn’t like. Finally, after thirteen years, I asked Jim to dig them out so I could plant something else in that space. With some strenuous shoveling, Jim removed the bushes and their main root balls. After he left, I cleaned up all of the rest of their smaller roots, all of the grass roots, and rocks. Then, I collected aged manure from the corral and mixed it in this bed and planted strawberries that I grew from seed this late winter in the Greenhouse bedroom.
I also decided that some portions of the Perennial/Extension garden area that are not fully planted with perennials, I will be putting more veggies in.
Next week, I will be tackling the Annex gardens. I haven’t done anything down there yet this year.
I cleaned out the greenhouse and am in the midst of scrubbing all of our seedling pots and trays.
The horses had a visit from the farrier this week.
I harvested and dehydrated dandelion flowers, basil, and mint.
I canoed by myself and with a friend in the flooded meadows and a few water channels, this week. The water is now receding and the snow has melted off the top of the Unnamed Mountain.
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.