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 just noticed that this is the 370th time that we’ve posted our weekly Editors’ Prepping Progress column, since its start in 2017. Time passes quickly!
The snow is rapidly receding, with warmer weather and fairly frequent rain showers. It is about a full month ahead of the expected melt, for our valley. But there are only about two tons of hay left in our barn. So I may yet have to buy some more hay before I can get the horses and cattle out on our pasture.
Once the snow clears in our woods, I can safely start cutting deadfall. We always have more than enough firewood for each winter. But I’m always anxious to start cutting wood, each spring. This year, for the first time ever, I might get a free US Forest Service domestic wood-cutting permit. This will provide several cords of wood. To qualify for cutting under the permit, the trees must all be dead-fallen or dead-standing. And I won’t be allowed to haul out any pieces more than six feet long. They place that stipulation to keep folks from cutting, commercially viable logs for lumber-milling.
Inevitably, each spring there are also fence and gate repairs to be done. This past winter we didn’t have any trees go down over our fence lines. That was fortunate. But there are always fence tensioning adjustments — particularly in spots where deer frequently cross fences. Larger game — elk, moose, and bears — can really do a number on a fence. But again, this year we were fortunate, with just a couple of “scrunched” spots on the fence top wires. Our fencing is all woven wire. Because we have horses, we don’t run any barbed wire.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The beginning of the week was in the high forties and rainy. The end of the week was sunny with highs into the fifties. I wore shorts outside to work on my vitamin D intake. Lovely! I heard the frogs begin calling on March 12 in the evening. It is very early for them to be calling.
We have a pair of Flickers flying around looking for holes in trees to nest in.
I took the onions and Brassicas from the bedroom Green House out to the outside greenhouse. I covered them with a large clear tote to add protection to them for cold nights. The extended forecast looks like it may only get down to 26 degrees for the lowest. Usually, it doesn’t get that cold. If it looks as though it might I will bring them in on those nights. Actually, two mornings we woke up to frost. I ran out to the greenhouse and checked the temperature. It was right at 32*Fahrenheit. Everything was fine in there!
After bringing them out. I washed off the empty space on the tables and then put new trays filled with soil in the area where the Brassicas had been, and planted herbs. I planted Basil, Parsley, Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Cilantro, Cumin, Nasturtiums, Geraniums, and Marigolds.
I had baby celery all bunched up in a half-sized tray. I transplanted those into three regular-sized flat trays in the bedroom greenhouse and then I planted three more of our larger white shallow totes in the outside greenhouse. Those I covered with other large clear totes, for added protection.
On Friday I made the discovery that voles are in the greenhouse. I already knew they were in there because they were eating some extra potatoes I had just sitting in there. but I didn’t know they would eat my seedlings. They ate four trays of my Brassicas. I replanted them quickly and put our cats M and M in the greenhouse for some hours. They killed one of voles. YES! Good Kitty! I saw a second vole, so over the weekend I will put the cats in there a few more times. Grrrr! I can’t leave them in there unaccompanied because they will dig the dirt in the planted trays. Anyhow, those trays that had tightly fitting clear plastic tops on them were safe from the voles, so I quickly covered the rest of the trays with clear totes or the clear tops that came with them. Not all had been covered and some had been covered too loosely allowing the voles to get into them. Those I tightened up. Sigh, lessons learned even after years of gardening….
We had a little ewe lamb born this week. She is so cute and petite compared to the little ramling, who is seven days older.
We slaughtered and butchered four roosters. Jim did the slaughtering and gutting. It was getting very crazy in the Hen house with all those randy roos. Jim grabbed four of them, but the fifth and last rooster slated to be butchered escaped Jim’s grasp, and so has had a stay in his execution. So there are still five in there. They are all different breeds and I like the diversity for breeding purposes. So we will keep Rooster #5, for a time.
I began a deep spring cleaning of our home this week. Thus far, I vacuumed and washed the floors. I surface-scrubbed our Oriental rug. Later in the summer I will take it outside and give it a thorough scrubbing and rinsing with the hose. I scrubbed our microwave. I scrubbed out the stove and then ran it through an oven-cleaning cycle. I reorganized a cupboard with our food storage dishes. Miss Violet helped me scrub the hallway walls where our pup likes to lie down when she comes in from outside. She often shakes and gets mud splotches all over the wall of that hall. Thankfully we painted them two years ago with a high gloss white paint, so they clean up easily. Next week I will continue deep cleaning.
The redneck swimming pool thawed out this week with my help in breaking up it’s mostly melted ice. All of the broken-up ice melted by the afternoon, so that afternoon, we began draining and scrubbing it. The next day I scrubbed more of it. By Sunday, hopefully, we can refill it. Even though we won’t be swimming in it for a while, the clean water will be available for us to use if need be. I also might as well take care of it now before the crazy gardening season begins. We are expecting more snow showers until mid-May…Technically we can have snow here in any month of the year….So it doesn’t matter.
I’ve eaten a lot of the Einkorn grain this week in muffins and flatbread with little to no issues. Yum! Thank You, Father God! I still need to make the sourdough bread and try that.
Miss Violet and I read the book of Jonah and talked about the connection of the Total Eclipse on April 8th has with it. I read Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and chapters 38-53 of Isaiah. I also spent a day fasting and praying about possible travel plans and for our daughter Miss Eloise. There are still some struggles with her.
We are preparing to celebrate Passover and Unleavened Bread on March 25th. According to the Biblical Observations of the Barley in Israel. Rivka Biderman also did a video on the other plant species in Israel that are telling of the season of Passover. They are the Fig tree, the Flax, and the Olive tree. The Fig is putting out its new leaves and its baby figs. The Flax is blooming. They are pink flowers, in Israel. Ours are blue here in the USA. At least I have never seen pink-flowered flax here, before. And the Olive trees are putting out new leaves. I find her videos very exciting to see. I love this sort of thing.
Folks may also be interested in the Torah calendar that follows the Biblical way of Observing the moon and the times.
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.