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’ve been very busy packing orders for my Elk Creek Company side business. The recent flurry of orders is attributable to my raising our silver divisor to 24.9 times face value, in U.S. pre-1965 silver coinage. (Circulated 90% silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars — commonly called “junk” silver.) This is the most that we’ve ever offered, in trade! This is your chance to both take advantage of the spike in spot silver and diversify your tangible investment holdings.
This past week started out with great weather, but devolved into some frequent rain showers with afternoon temperatures in the 50s that melted most of our remaining snow.
I help Lily haul out a lot of manure and soiled bedding straw from both the sheep shed and the cattle loafing area. In all, this was more than 40 full wheelbarrow loads. That should make great compost for our gardens.
Lots of seasonal songbirds have returned to our valley. Lily will fill you in, with her part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week we had a day or two of sun and then rain and snow showers. It was a real mixed bag of weather. I heard Red-Winged Blackbirds, this week.
This week our second batch of incubated chicken eggs began hatching, on Thursday. They are still in the midst of hatching as I write this Friday afternoon.
I cleaned the hen house once this week.
Jim and I cleaned out the whole sheep shed of our meat and fiber flock. That was a huge job! I’m glad it’s finished. I’ve been spending a lot of time with these sheep feeding them grain by hand to tame them and hopefully to try milking them in a few weeks.
Another ewe lambed a ram lamb this week. I think we are done with the meat and fiber sheep lambing….I have two more ewes that could potentially lamb, but this breed of ewes seem to like to wait until they are more than a year old to breed. Last fall they were eight to nine months old during breeding season, so we shall see…We got a lot of rams this spring, but I am excited about this because I have a rare breed that is very difficult to get other unrelated rams. So these rams will give me more genetic diversity for the coming years, and more young rams to butcher.
Jim, I and Miss Violet cleaned up the loafing area together. I shoveled up the main layer of leftover hay and manure while Jim and Miss Violet wheeled it away to the manure pile in wheelbarrows. I started raking up the leftover stuff, later. I will finish that this next week, Lord willing. The next big projects are the cow stalls and corrals, and then the Dairy sheep pens. Then we will concentrate on manuring the gardens with the composted manure that we collected last year.
I started garden cleanup this week. I raked the beds of Asparagus, Oregano, Sunchokes, and Comfrey, thus far… I began spreading composted manure on some of them in between rain showers
In the outside greenhouse, I cleaned up pots of Tarragon and Sage from last summer’s died-back growth. I cleaned up a large plastic tote that is growing walking onions, that I never planted outside last year after someone gave them to me. They are very happy regrowing in the huge tote. Finally, I cleaned up the dead previous summer’s growth of mint in a small tray. I watered the plants and seedlings that are currently in there. At this time of the year they only need sporadic watering.
In the indoor bedroom greenhouse, I planted another whole bunch of trays with sprouting greens such as Pac Choi, cabbage, broccoli, Arugula, cilantro, etc. I had been buying some sprouting greens a few times recently, from a grocery store, and I thought again, “How ridiculous!” The lettuces and other sprouts that we had grown in the indoor greenhouse bedroom since December, were either eaten up or taken to the outside greenhouse and are growing VERY SLOWLY. So it was time to replant again. I need to be on a better winter schedule for them… But having guests doesn’t help the schedule much. In my defense, guests get priority in that bedroom. ;-0 Thankfully, I have about three weeks to use that bedroom, before we expect more guests and by then the greenhouse should be warm enough both day and night for all of my plants to go out there.
The “greens” seeds that I planted in the outside greenhouse about two or three weeks ago are just starting to sprout a little bit. It’s still just too cold for germination out there.
By the way, the seeds that I planted both last week and this week in the bedroom greenhouse have already sprouted and some are already putting out their secondary leaves. Next week we will be able to start harvesting, again.
I refilled, reorganized, and cleaned my spice jars and their cupboard.
I spent a fair amount of time reading through my flower books and edible wild plant books, getting ready for the upcoming growing season.
This week I picked up the book, “Inland Salish Journey: Fur Trade to Settlement” written by Mike Reeb. He is a local and lives in Ponderay, Idaho. I began reading it this week. I love it. It is so fascinating to read about the Native American’s way of life here in our region, the American Redoubt. I am learning a lot about how they lived, what they ate, and their interactions with the “white man”. The Salish were among the most highly respected tribes for their honesty, hard work, and morality. I have a lot of feelings about what European man and our governments did to them…Really, what the governments did to them and are still doing to all of us…
I almost finished writing out Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy.
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.