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:
With some recent fair weather, we got a lot of work done around the ranch this past week. We did a lot of rototilling and firewood cutting, splitting and stacking. I charged the battery on our summer-season runabout car, which had been in storage. I reactivated the seasonal waterline to our orchard. I also pulled four 100-foot rubber garden hoses from storage, and put them to use, irrigating.
I helped an ailing neighbor several times with wood stacking and running some errands, in town.
Sales have been brisk at Elk Creek Company. I had to make two trips to the post office to mail out order boxes. Part of this could be attributable to our current sale pricing. But generally, folks see inflation coming, so they want to put some of their savings into something tangible. And it might as well be guns that can be anonymously passed on to children, grandchildren, or even nieces and nephews who live in other states.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather was beautiful this week, bluebird skies with temperatures in the high sixties and low seventies. We had five light frosts this week. Mosquitoes have arrived during the daytime hours after they thaw out from the freezing nights.
This week was mostly about the Main garden. Jim rototilled all the manure that was brought in by our neighbor’s tractor and placed on the beds. Then I planted mostly our cold crop species because we are still in danger of frost until after Memorial Day. I planted the seedlings of our Brassicas: Cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage. I planted huge rows of potatoes: Red Adirondack (new to me), Purple Adirondack, Purple Viking, Red Chieftains, German Butterball (new to me), and Yukon Gold. I planted three rows of carrots, a row of parsnips, celery seedlings, a row of cucumber, and Sunflowers, thus far, as of Thursday.
I have to wait to plant all squashes, beans, tomatoes, etc. I have three beds to prepare more for them and another section to plow and prepare for more gardening. I’d also like to garden the Annex garden this year, I gave it a year off last year because of all of is thistles, I’ll try again this year…Except that our rototiller just died, yet AGAIN, this week after having it home from the shop for only three weeks….They’re not making engines and their parts to last anymore! The small engine manufacturing companies are acting like thieves.
I worked in the Greenhouse at the end of the week to transplant into large pots to grow in the greenhouse in case of any unforeseen events; such as chem trails, radiological events, or late hard frosts. These include seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, and zuchs. Also, I planted a large pot with cucumber seeds that I grew in the greenhouse last summer. I have many more seedlings that are awaiting milder night temperatures to be transplanted outside
I continue to milk my fiber/meat ewe. She is doing so well. I continue to average between a cup and fourteen ounces per milking. Mostly, I get them in the upper range amount of milk.
This week I made the usual yogurt, butter, and made yogurt cream cheese again. The cream cheese agreed with my stomach this week, so the culprit of my ills last week has to have been the Olive oil, that may not be true olive oil…
I also made Farmhouse Cheddar with the sheep milk, this week. We haven’t tried that yet. It is still airing out to dry its rind as I write this.
I’ve been experimenting with wild foods this week.
Miss Violet picked Dandelions for me and we made Dandelion Fritters that were a hit for the three of us. My recipe is as follows: two cups freshly ground Einkorn flour, two teaspoons of salt, a quarter cup chopped chives, three cloves of garlic chopped, a cup of sheep milk. With that batter, Mix, dip and coat freshly picked and rinsed Dandelion heads, approximately two cups, Fry in pan with melted sheep butter until crispy brown. Yum!
We also dehydrated two quarts worth of Dandelion flowers for future teas and fritters, next winter.
I picked and dehydrated nearly a quart’s worth of chives.
Since we are experimenting with wild foods this week, I additionally tried making a greens cream soup.
I picked Sorrel, Dandelion greens, Lamb’s quarters, and chives. I washed them, chopped them, put them in a pan with some water and boiled them until tender. I added salt, thyme, nutmeg, and sheep milk and four tablespoons of ground Einkorn flour. This was not as big of a hit because the dandelion greens were a bit bitter and Jim said the milk needed to have a creamier consistency. So, okay, otherwise it wasn’t too bad. I finished eating this soup over a two-day time. I’ll try this recipe again, but will pre-boil the Dandelion greens before adding them to the soup and will add sheep cream instead of sheep milk.
I made a really yummy sourdough bread this week that we all just devoured with the yogurt cream cheese spread on it.
An animal story:
This week one of my hens went to get a drink out of the cow’s water trough and fell in. I don’t know why she had to try and drink from it. I have low water containers that are kept full of water on the ground in easy reach. Anyhow, as I was doing evening chores, about 9PM, throwing hay to the cows and the horses, I glanced in the trough to check its water level and there was a hen, floating in the water. Her head was not under the water. I groaned and reached over the fence and grabbed her out of the water. Thinking that she was dead, I was going to lay her on the ground until I was done with chores and then dispose of her body. She was limp, not in rigor mortis. To my great surprise, as I held her, she struggled to move her head and I could feel her heartbeat as my hands held her chest. She’s alive! But she was soaking wet and freezing cold. Refrigerator cold chicken. Hypothermic.
Since we’ve had frosts the past few nights and the trough is mostly in the shade, the water is extremely cold.
I held her upside down to see if any water would run out of her mouth, but none came out, so she had not drowned. She was just exhausted from struggling for her life and hypothermic. But thinking that she would still die and still needing to finish the chores, I put her in a nesting box in the Hen house. I quickly finished the chores, which took me about another ten minutes. Then I raced to the house and retrieved a large old towel and ran back out to the hen house to see if she was still alive. She was. I wrapped her in the towel and prayed for her to stay in the world of the living and ran her back to the house.
I showed her to Jim, telling him what happened, took her into our bathroom, immediately turned on the electric wall heater and dug out our seldom-used heating pad from under the bathroom sink. I plugged it in and put the bird on the heating pad under the wall heater. I then prayed for her and kept rubbing her back and chest and urged her to stay in the land of the living and claimed recovery for her in Jesus’ name. Jim went and brought another dry towel to wrap the hen in. I changed to the dry the towel, then I sat with her for about ten minutes and then went and did some other things and got ready for bed. I checked on her one more time before going to bed. She was still alive. I was exhausted, so I crawled in bed. Jim checked on her about ten minutes later and he said her head was up and she was looking around. “Good!”, I thought.
A while later, Jim checked on her again and said she was sitting up. I mumbled ,”Good”. Then in the morning Jim reported that at 3 AM when he checked her yet again, and that she was dry and had moved off the heating pad and was crouched to the side of our toilet. In the morning, Jim arose before I did and checked on her again. Since she was dry and alert in the morning, he told me that he would bring her back out the the Hen house. I said “Okay, Thanks”. And that was that. I had suspected after she did not spew any water that she was just Hypothermic and exhausted and if the strain hadn’t been too much that once she warmed up slowly that she would be okay, and that is how it turned out with a little prayer help and the Father’s hand on her life. We are glad that she made it. Hopefully, she has learned her lesson, not to get up on and try to drink from the cow trough, again.
I wrote out most of Chapter 9 of the book of Matthew.
Keep prepping! Your life depends on it.
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.