Editors’ Prepping Progress

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:

We had several nice soaking rain showers in the past week. That rainfall should give our pastures a chance for one more spurt of growth before the fall cold weather arrives. Hopefully, that grass will minimize the amount of hay needed for our cattle, until October.

I wrapped up the annual firewood project this week. It feels good to have it all safely stacked and ready for winter.

With more rain in the forecast, I have tarped all of my slash piles, to make them easier to burn, come October.   Wet slash piles take a lot of dyed diesel or propane torch fuel to get them burning, and that is a needless expense. So, I’ve developed the habit of tarping slash piles. There is something gratifying about a “one-match touch-off”.

I’ve been busier than usual with consulting work, both on the phone and face-to-face. This has meant some extra driving for me in north Idaho and northwestern Montana.  Many of my clients are telling me the same thing: Recent events and public discourse at the national level have them feeling increasingly anxious about getting their preps squared away.  Three of them used the same phrase: “Time is short.”  Clearly, food, fuel, ammunition, and night vision gear are all high on their priority lists. My advice: Buy them now, while they are still relatively inexpensive and plentiful.  Long-term storage food, in particular, is at risk of selling out quickly, in the event of a crisis.  Presently, there are no significant shortages of storage foods. But that could change just about overnight, because it is a thin market. A rush of orders could quickly have them quoting a six-month or longer order backlog.

Early in the week, I helped my eldest son Jonathan with the final edit of his new relocation e-book. That is available as a free PDF download.  And Jonathan tells me that his SurvivalRealty.com business is picking up.  Higher interest rates have made fewer buyers qualify for mortgages, so rural retreat properties are staying on the market longer. I’ve also heard that the ongoing rollout of the Starlink satellite constellation is making very remote properties more viable as “work-from-home” retreats.  This is having a profound effect on the rural real estate market.

Now, on to Lily’s part of the report…

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,

This week has flown by! The weather was hot, then the rains came. Whoo hoo! and now it is very pleasant weather for working outdoors. Not that I have been outdoors much lately…Too much kitchen work.

Honestly, at the beginning of the week, I was struggling with the big job of preserving foods, feeling overwhelmed with the volume of work, but still thankful for the abundance.  I love preserving food!  But I don’t like that it sometimes takes ALL DAY! I have been doing it, but I needed some encouragement and help from Jim with the peaches.  Jim helped me wash, slice, and get in the dehydrator and freezer four-twenty pound cases of peaches in a very timely manner. The rest of the preserving listed below, I was able to get on, alone.  😉

I chopped and froze a lot of peppers that we picked in Spokane Valley, and from our garden.

I harvested the rest of the outdoor garden celery, chopped, froze, and dehydrated it.

I harvested many small cabbages, chopped those and made sauerkraut.  I had not eaten sauerkraut in a very long time, but super-awesome daughter-in-law made some last week and while I was visiting, I got brave and tried a little bit.  It was good and did not seem to give me any histamine reaction, so I came home, harvested cabbages, and made some, too.  I have yet to try it though, as of writing this.  It’s been fermenting about five days.  I am planning on making another batch early next week.  I’m also planning on fermenting carrots and beets in the future. Come to think of it, I made sauerkraut last year, but only Jim ate a few spoonfuls, so I ended up, eventually giving it to the chickens. I was still struggling with food sensitivities and did not dare to eat it.  But this year, my guts are doing better.

A few weeks ago when we were preserving our Transparent apples, I made apple vinegar.  I strained it this past week.  I tasted it and it was good!  I understand that one needs to let it stand for a few more weeks after straining so, I am doing that.  We have more apples ripening at the moment.  I plan on making more cider vinegar with those.

Miss Violet helped me harvest all of the tomatoes in the garden whether they were ripe or not.  The vines and some tomatoes were rotting from the watering, rain, less daylight,and a few 44 degree nights. So it was time to bring in the good ones.  They will be ripening slowly in our dark cold room.

Thank You Dear Readers for sending me your ideas on how to quickly reduce the tomatoes into sauce without boiling it to death. Folks basically sent me essentially three different ideas for getting this job done.

Let me post them:

JZ says:

“Run tomatoes through a blender, juicer, or similar.  Clean ice chest of adequate size with a drain.  Pour juice in ice chest and let sit still at least 6 hours, but the longer the better.  The water will separate from the juice, collecting in the bottom of the ice chest.  Open drain, let clear water run out.  When outflow starts turning red, close drain.  If juice not thick enough, let sit again and drain again.  Take thickened juice and cook.”

Cowboychemist wrote:

“Jackie Clay over at Backwoods Home talks about reducing tomatoes by putting them in an oven in a shallow pan at a low setting. Hope this helps”

S.S. says:

“Good morning 🤗 I like cooking down my tomato paste in a crockpot. It would work well for sauce. I don’t have to constantly watch it 😊. I use a wooden spoon to stir it occasionally and just leave it in the crockpot so it keeps the lid slightly open so the steam can come out. My tomatos are never bitter so far. 😊

KH says:

“When I process a lot of tomatoes, I like to core them, quarter and toss them in the pot – skins, seeds and all.

Once soft, I then use my Vitamix to make it all smooth.

Then into the turkey roaster – I put water between the roaster and the pan, and set it to a low temp. I let it go all night. As long as there is water between the pans, no scorching occurs.

It is a wonderful way to cook down a lot of tomatoes without a lot of fuss.”

Finally, C. says:

Jim trimmed some saplings Balsam poplar and alder saplings in the orchard this week. I recently saw that we could feed the leaves to our cattle and sheep as food. So I did so.  The animals really enjoyed them.  We have a lot of saplings that we don’t want to grow into trees, therefore I will continue to supplement their feed with them.  It will save money on their hay bill and give them additional nutrients since leaves have a lot of nutrients and minerals. We need to think of other alternatives for feeding our beasties if a time comes when we cannot get hay or grains, etc.

Seguing from the saplings, I studied up on materials used for basketry weaving this week.  I’d like to weave some of my own baskets in the future. Alders and poplar saplings are used in basketry, so additionally, I also trimmed some of our hazelnut bushes that are also used in basketry and fed the leaves to the sheep. After they were finished, I collected all of the branches and will use them in the future. I also wish the collect cattails sometime soon.