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 ^[1], 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 had a very busy week of firewood cutting. I cut and hauled nearly two cords. More than half of it is in 6-foot-long sections so it still needs to be gang cut.  I stacked all of those logs with the butt ends all neatly aligned. It looks a bit OCD to do so, but that works for me.

I had phone and Zoom meetings with my literary agent and one of my publishers.

On Thursday, we hired some tractor time, with our neighbor. He helped me fill in a low spot with rock and then gravel, He also moved several tons of 1- to 3-year-old composted manure.  The neighbor is a retired gentleman, and a godly Christian. And he loves running his tractor. We are happy to pay him for his time and his diesel fuel.  If I were to accomplish the same that he did in 4 hours with the tractor, it would have taken me weeks with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

Since we’ve started tapping birch water from our trees and boiling down birch syrup, I did some research. I found a useful summary at Healthline ^[2]. It included this:

“One 10.2-ounce (300-ml) bottle [of birch water] contains:

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
This week the afternoon temperature highs were mostly in the low sixties but Thursday and Friday, the high reached seventy degrees Fahrenheit.  We had several frosty nights. The skies were clear and sunny all week.

All of our wild female turkeys have disappeared into the forest to brood their eggs. I hope they all have much success in hatching and the chicks surviving to adulthood. We have two “lonely” Tom turkeys still hanging close to the ranch.

I was very unwise this week and put a few of my tomato seedling trays in the greenhouse one day.  That night the temperatures went down to 28 degrees and nipped the tomatoes in the greenhouse.  I’m bummed.  I lost about half of them. I brought in to the house the tomatoes that were lightly nipped and hope they will recover. Thankfully, I left three trays in the house during that time and of course they are fine.  Note to self: “Lily, You must be very, very patient with the warm weather crops here. Stop trying to jump the season.  You’ll lose your seedlings and waste all that time and energy/electricity for naught. Remember: Warm crops not out in the greenhouse or garden until at least Memorial Day!”  Self-spank!  😉

This week I did a lot of dairying.  I milked my one sheep twice daily.  I milked her cohorts a couple of times.  This week, I made sheep butter.  It was so yummy.  I made lots of yogurt.  One day I tried making sheep yogurt cream cheese.  One just takes the coagulated yogurt, puts it in cheesecloth to drain off the whey over the course of a night, and then mix it up and smoothed it out.  I did not add any spices except salt.  It was so yummy. Additionally, I froze some milk and will continue to do so, for use in the fall and winter months when the sheep have dried off.

I cleaned the Hen house.  It had been two weeks since I last cleaned it.  I was too busy with the grandsons to clean it last week.  It was D.I.R.T.Y.  But all is nice in there once again.  I love it when my animals have nice clean domiciles.

This week I continued to collect sap from the birch trees.  Two of the trees’ sap turned cloudy, so I retired those trees for the year.  But the other two trees’ sap has remained clear.  I have been straining the sap and putting some of it in quart freezer bags and freezing it for future use and we’ve been drinking the rest in our water in the morning.  I really love its wild fresh taste.

I mixed up another batch of homemade laundry detergent.

I made another batch of fermented cucumbers for pickles.

I was running out of frozen sweet peppers this week.  So Jim bought half a dozen assorted sweet peppers that I chopped and froze.

The green seeds that I planted in the outside greenhouse have now germinated.  I harvested our first conventional salad greens from there this week.  I do have some winter lettuce and Claytonia growing in the garden itself under totes that I have been harvesting during the past few weeks.

I rototilled all of the main garden plots in the Main garden early in week and finished planting another section of onions — reds and Walla Walla sweets.

On Thursday our neighbor came over with his tractor and hauled composted manure for us and put it on all the various already rototilled beds where I wanted it in the Main garden.  What a blessing he and his tractor is for us.

Now that we’ve hauled in more composted manure, this next week, Jim and I, will be rototilling that manure into the beds and will be planting the cold crops: carrots, parsnips, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. Once those are all planted next week, I will start in seedling pots in the greenhouse, some of the warm crops, such as cucumbers, zuchs, winter squashes, and more herbs.

One day, I helped Jim with loading firewood in our pickup and trailer.

I got back to copying Matthew.  I finished Chapter 7 and started Chapter 8.  I read Daniel Chapters 1-7.

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.