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 cut and split another cord of wood. With the help of our youngest daughter, it is now all stacked. I also did some trench-digging, to get ready to lay black PVC pipe for an extension line to our main orchard.
On Thursday, I had another on-site consulting day, with one of my semi-local clients. They’ve had the ranch for just two years. It is gratifying to see such rapid progress on a ranch retreat. That family is getting everything “dialed in”, nicely! They have one of the most capable and redundant off-grid power systems that I’ve ever seen. And it is good knowing that there is now a family that is providing all of their own needs, but that will also be in a position to help many others, charitably.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had an overall cooler week, here in the Redoubt. We had one brief shower over the weekend. I wish it had been more rain.
Again this week, I have been very busy harvesting, pulling weeds, and preserving produce.
I dug up another bed of potatoes, mostly Yellow Yukons, a lot of them, many one pounders, too. Hallelujah!
I harvested a crate worth thus far, of Transparent Apples. Some of those I dehydrated in various forms. I grated a batch and seasoned it with cinnamon. Another batch, I grated apples and carrots and seasoned with cinnamon, and nutmeg. In another batch, I blended in the Vitamix: apple, cinnamon, walnuts, and a bit of sugar which made a paste that I dehydrated. This one came out like an apple walnut pancake. It was super yummy. All were a hit with the family. I refrigerated the left-overs.
I harvested pitted and froze the last of the tart cherries.
Miss Violet helped me pit an order of Black cherries, of which some were frozen and some were dehydrated.
I picked more raspberries and froze them.
I froze and dehydrated more Zucchini.
I harvested cucumbers, Hungarian peppers, and onions. I made a batch of cucumber relish and water-bath canned it.
I helped Miss Violet stack wood.
I helped Jim, “oversaw” him, drop quite a large dead-standing Tamarack tree this week. I was a bit worried for him, when it became hung up in the other trees surrounding it. I helped him by driving our quad backward to try to pull the hung-up tree down with a rope tied to the butt of the tree and connected to the quad’s winch. Jim had to carefully keep sawing chunks off the bottom of the tree until it was low enough to pull with the quad to complete its fall. I was so relieved when it finally hit the ground.
I began to weedwhack the orchard. I will finish it this coming week, Lord willing.
One of the hens that went broody earlier in the summer and raised a clutch of chicks, went broody again this week. She is dead serious about her job. Therefore I put her in one of the broody boxes and put another batch of eggs under her. I am very pleased that she wants to do another round. We need more chickens for meat and eggs. Since she is doing such a great job, I’ll probably spare her once we cull her generation sometime in the next few months.
I also moved the other two hens back out to the regular flock of chickens. They appeared to be done with mothering their now six-week-old chicks.
Our cows and horses have grazed down the grass in the open meadows. Therefore we had to move them up into the corrals and have begun to feed them hay. It’s difficult to graze cattle when three months of the summer are in “drought” here in the Redoubt.
I deep cleaned our oven, scrubbing it for three hours. I had not cleaned it in months. It was seriously bad and embarrassing. Later, when I gave up in despair of ever getting it spotlessly clean, I for the first time pressed the self-clean function button on the stove’s control panel. I had not ever used the self-cleaning function before in my life. It did an amazing job. I am super impressed by how well it cleaned the oven. Why have I not ever used that function before? Ignorance! We did have to leave the house for a few hours, though. It became very smoky, very quickly. Jim quickly set up the fans and opened all windows to air it out. Miss Violet and I took the Black Cherry pitting outside, then later we rode our bikes around until it was clear to enter the house again. After the Self-cleaning cycle was completed, I wiped out the ash with a damp washcloth. And that was it! I will definitely be employing this function more often in the future.
For the first time ever this week, one morning, upon waking up, at 6AM, I went swimming. I had been recently waking up feeling overheated. I was so hot that morning that I decided to immediately run outside and jump into our redneck swimming pool. So I did so. I swam laps for about twenty minutes and cooled down my core. It felt so novel, lovely, wonderful and invigorating. The outside air temperature was 56 degrees Fahrenheit, humidity was high, the pool temperature, I estimate was about 80 degrees. It was a wonderful feeling to swim first thing in the morning. I intended to do it again another morning, but I happened to wake up freezing cold the next few mornings. We keep our large bedroom window open at night. The humidity was very low and the air temperature about 46 degrees Fahrenheit…Brr! Next week we’re suppose to get up to nearly a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so perhaps I’ll swim in the early morning then…
I have resumed sit-ups, push-ups, leg lifts, and weights after a couple of weeks’ break.
A few video links of interest:
- Jana Ben Noon, When Medical Heroes Betray.
- Dr. Zelenco promoted the Noahide Laws.
- Why do they say you should die if unjabbed?
- This is a must-listen to interview with Darin Olien, author of “Fatal Convenience”.)
- Then listen to this Australian Woman’s reaction to the reading of this excerpt of this infamous writing: “The Plan to Kill us Via Pharmakeia”. The these last two videos are related in content.
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.