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 was great fun. We had all four of our grandsons here for an extended visit. We did lots of hiking and some air rifle and archery practice. All of the boys got lessons on driving our electric UATV. The youngest — who is just three years old — sat in my lap, while I controlled the pedals. He is just starting to learn how to steer.
With just patchy snow remaining, we didn’t do any of our usual snow activities.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This past week’s weather was partly sunny early in the week with high temperatures about 44 Degrees Fahrenheit. Later in the week, we had rain and snow showers. It looks as though winter is returning for at least the next two weeks. Ho hum! However, we heard the frogs one night this week. It was the earliest I’ve ever heard them.
We had a great visit with our four grandsons for seven days. We had a blast with the boys! We returned them home Friday afternoon and got home in time for a quick dinner and bed. I tired myself out with them. 
But I rested on Saturday, and Saturday night I wrote this for you all:
We did several hikes in the adjoining National Forest. They went for Quad rides with Grandpa. They did archery and BB gun target practice.
With me and Grandpa, we helped them craft leather knife sheaths. They stamped designs on them, dyed them with shoe polish, and sewed them together with double stitches.
They helped me with the animal chores.
We roasted S’mores one evening in our wood heating stove with its door open. Another night we made candied popcorn balls with melted marshmallow and Maple syrup. Another day we roasted hotdogs in the woodstove.
While hiking, we identified many plants that over winter well, that have edible or medicinal value. We particularly read up on Old Man’s beard, Oregon grape, Pipsewa, Mullein, Kinnickinick, Buck brush, and a few others.
While hiking, I also taught them the “Bear song.” With similar lyrics to this song, but instead of “Ahead of me there was a tree”, we say “In front of me” and instead of the word’s “don’t” and “isn’t”, we say “Ain’t” and finally, we add a final verse: “And so I met that bear once more, now he’s a rug on the living room floor.” They loved it. From that day forward, I had to sing it to/with them at least twice a day.
The boys will be playing Junior Soccer in a few weeks. So Granny and Grandpa bought each boy their own inexpensive soccer ball to practice their soccer skills with while here at the ranch and then they can take their balls home. We bought them all the same ball. The boys put their name on their own ball and decorated their own ball with colored Sharpie Markers the minute we arrived to the ranch so they could tell who’s was who’s. We, Granny played with them, had some outdoor practice in good weather, and some easy indoor practice, in bad weather: dribbling and gentle passes, and very gentle competition, try to takeaway the ball from another player in the house, after picking up the Legos each day.
We have three tote bins full of Legos. They played with the Legos during downtimes, like when I’m cooking meals or doing dishes. The boys love to switch out the totes once or twice during a visit. Also while playing Legos they started to listen to Vision Forum’s Jonathan Park Creation series. We were able to listen to all of volume one and a part of volume 2.
They loved playing with our cats. And our cats, particularly our Male “M” loves playing with them or snuggling, too. He is such a cool cat. Of course, our dog also loves having the boys around.
We had Bible studies with the boys each morning. We studied Psalms 35-39 and Proverbs 17.
The two older boys expressed an interest in learning the Hebrew alphabet to someday read the scriptures in Hebrew. So I gave them a Hebrew consonant and vowel learning intensive this week. I have magnetic Hebrew letters on the refrigerator that I drilled for recognition, and I sang the Hebrew alphabet song to them over and over while pointing out the letters. I wrote the vowels and letter in script for them and started to pair vowels and letters together and sounded them out for them to start learning to read. Then I gave them a Hebrew reading Primer for children that I used for the girls when they were younger. Both boys are incredibly sharp. But the oldest was quickly ready to start reading Hebrew. He, after watching me pairing the letters began to pair letters and vowels together was reading Hebrew words in the Primer by the end of the visit. I also gave him a notebook with lots of notes that can help him along the way, until I can give him another lesson. Hebrew is a phonetic language which means if you know the letters and the vowels and basic syllable structure one can read Hebrew “fluently” and “correctly” aloud without understanding what is being read. One can also take Hebrew letters and vowels and “transliterate” them to spell English words. So I have taken some generally known poems and words and spelled the English words with Hebrew letters and vowels to help them with his reading skills. For example, the word Coca Cola looks like this in Hebrew: קוקה קולה
I also gave the oldest boy a brand new complete Hebrew Bible with both the old and New Testaments in it. He was so pleased to receive it. He is only nine years old. I gave him a quick lesson in how to use the Strong’s Concordance to look up Hebrew words and how to use the Blue Letter Bible app on the computer. I want to buy him a Concordance soon. He had a fire hose week of Hebrew but he was so “game” and we have a lifetime to keep working at it. He is homeschooled and he is extremely motivated and loves puzzles and Hebrew is a language that is a puzzle in many ways. So I know that he will be motivated to study on his own. Plus he wants to send secret messages to his brother, so I know that they will continue studying. ;-). At one point I wrote out an English word in Hebrew and he astutely pointed out to me that the word and letters were more “compact” than its English equivalent!!! He really impressed me with that comment! A nine-year-old, almost ten!!! I explained that Hebrew was a VERY compact language with many words having many meanings and many words having prefixes and suffixes that add to the compactness of the language. I cannot wait to teach him the verbs, both to show him the compactness of them and the puzzles that they form with their suffixes and prefixes. He is also studying Latin at this time and he also wants to study Greek, soon. They are amazing young men.
So until I can visit them again, I will mail the boys some English stories and poems in Hebrew to read to practice the letters and vowels. I also have easy Hebrew storybook readers for children to learn Hebrew words that I read to them all and translated as we went. I will read them to them again the next time I visit them and when they come back here for another visit, most likely in April. It is very exciting to me to be able to mentor our grandsons with something that they are interested in and in something that means so much to me. What a blessing!!!
Obviously, I spent a lot of time cooking, cleaning, laundering, and hand grinding Einkorn wheat to make muffins and rolls this week. I was able to clean out the Hen house one morning while they played games with Miss Violet. We played lots of games together. I finished reading to them “Rascal” by Sterling North. I had started reading the book to them during their last visit a month ago. So it was great to be able to finish it together. This book talks a lot about birds in Eastern North America. I have a Bird Bible book that has recorded bird songs. Every time Sterling mentioned a new bird we had to look it up and listen to its call. We listened to owls, Bitterns, Whipporwills, and many others. The second-born grandson really loves birds and spent a lot of time studying the Bird Bible Book and listening to their calls.
The boys enjoyed playing with the baby lambs. While they were here, the last night, my third ewe birthed twins and also last night a first-timer ewe birthed twins, but one of them died. Sad! I expect one more ewe to lamb, most likely this week, Again hopefully she will also have twins… Then lambing will be over for us with the meat and fiber breed. In May, we expect the ewes in our separate Dairy sheep flock to lamb.
I copied just some of chapter 31 of Deuteronomy this week. I only had time to copy a verse or two at a time….
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.