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 past week, with the help of our neighbor’s tractor, we cleaned out the main corral and the bullpen. The manure was segregated, by age. The oldest manure — fully rotted down to the consistency of soil — was taken down near the annex garden to form another squash-growing mound. The rest was set aside in two piles to rot. Some of that will be hauled by wheelbarrow loads to fertilize around the drip lines of some fruit frees. The rest will be left to rot for another 10 months and then used in our gardens. And some of that will be used to fertilize edible forest garden mounds/patches — mostly in our ranch’s timbered areas.
I cataloged a few new guns, including a nice scoped Chilean contract Model 1895 Mauser Loewe Sporter chambered in 7×57 Mauser. I’ve also been busy tagging merchandise and pre-packing for a gun show in early August. This will be the first time that I’ve rented tables at a gun show in several years. (I mainly go to gun shows just to buy antique guns for my mailorder business. I normally spend just one day walking each show and don’t rent any tables.)
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had nearly unbearably hot weather up until Thursday morning. Those high temperatures had been in the low to mid-nineties our low temperatures as high as 67 degrees Fahrenheit. The cool-down has been very welcomed.
The summer heat, healing up from the tooth extraction made life a bit miserable for me. And I broke my little toe. I kicked a dry bag in the dark while walking very swiftly, barefoot. I also had a rather big finger infection in the past month, and the addition of lots of summer light going to bed late and waking up super early the past two months have made me very sleepy, lately. I took long siesta naps in the afternoons during the past two weeks, until Thursday. The cool down, and darkness coming a little bit earlier, and my body finally healing is helping me not to fall asleep in the afternoons when I get quiet for a bit. I’m glad. It’s really weird to be falling asleep so quickly when getting quiet. I was starting to feel older than I should have.
This week I have done all kinds of things. I have been waking up about 5:30 AM and heading out to do animal chores. I have been milking my new cow, and caring for the chickens. They are taking longer to care for now that I have so many of different ages. They have two water containers to wash and fill. I fill a large bucket with their mixed grains that I mix up for them and soak/ferment it in water. They love it. And I add calcium carbonate grit and chick grower to the mix for the babies. Plus I change out the boxes with fresh hay for the egg layers to have a clean spot to lay their eggs.
I cleaned their hen house this week. I also cleaned the sheep shed and the cow stalls.
I harvested the garlic. They ranged from small to huge, but mostly medium in size.
Jim and I went Huckleberry picking. We took home about eight pounds of berries.
I went Serviceberry picking on my own this week and brought in about a half gallon. I gotta get more of those. I love dehydrating them into cakes and eating them with soups, etc.
Despite losing a third of my raspberry canes this past winter, I am bringing in gallons of raspberries this week. All are being frozen at this time. In the greenhouse, I am harvesting zuchinnis, peppers, etc.
I harvested a few sour cherries. This year there are hardly any cherries on the tree. It was not damaged by the extreme temperatures, so it’s just an off-year for it.
I am harvesting bowlfuls of Black Raspberries. I transplanted them last year down into the orchard. So it will be a few years before they are back up and producing bucketfuls.
I am also harvesting broccoli on a regular basis.
We finally bought a new weedwhacker. Jim weedwhacked the orchard and I weedwhacked the fourth section of the Main garden that wasn’t planted yet and some edge areas. Jim also weedwhacked parts of the Main garden next to the house, that I didn’t get to.
I mowed the grass pathways in the Main garden. I am rotating the water sprinklers through the two Main garden plots and the raspberries, at regular intervals.
And I pulled thistles around the Black Raspberries that Jim didn’t want to weedwhack too closely to. He didn’t want to accidentally take down some brambles.
I did not plant the Annex garden this year because of the thistles. Our gardens are much smaller this year, sadly. If I can get my energy back and the intense heat doesn’t return for a while, I hope to plant fall crops in the third and fourth sections of the Main garden in the next week or so and also get some fall greenhouse crops growing.
We are once again trying to establish a rustic outdoor kitchen on a cement pad right outside our ranch house. Thusfar, we removed a small section of railing from our porch to access the cement patio. Jim temporarily placed two tree trunk rounds as steeping stairs down to it, for now. He wants to build a stone staircase. We moved the barbecue into place and bought a small toaster oven to use outside. We are still working out the details of what we want. I don’t want the fancy kitchen like what we see advertised today. So we will let you know how it goes.
I started the summer hanging out Hummingbird feeders. We didn’t have much action all summer until late last week. Suddenly we saw hummers visiting the feeders. I quickly took them inside to be washed, refilled, and quickly brought back outside. Now, about two weeks later, I am refilling them about every two days. We have about fifty hummers visiting them all day long. It’s fun to look out the windows and see all those beautiful little hummingbirds hovering, and zooming around our porch.
I am trying to keep a very clean and orderly house and keep us well-fed. That takes up a lot of time and energy, cooking by scratch, vacuuming, washing floors, laundry, deep cleaning stuff, etc.
May You All Remain Safe, Blessed and Hidden in Christ Jesus,
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
o o o
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.