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:
This past week, we’ve had a blur of activity with our four grandsons visiting here. So we made only limited progress on our prepping and self-sufficiency projects.
[2]The oldest of the boys is 10 years old. The youngest is just 3. Admirably, and despite their young age, the three older boys stepped up to help us gather manure mixed with hay from one of our sheep pens, using pitchforks and our electric ATV and trailer. The boys look for any excuse to operate our Bad Boy Buggy. (We let the older boys do so only on level ground, and only under direct adult supervision.) Together, we hauled most of that rotted-down manure to our orchard, and fertilized the bases of our fruit trees and berry bushes.
[3]I replaced the broken treadle drive strap on Lily’s Ashford traditional spinning wheel. This is one of the two spinning wheels that had belonged to my late wife, Linda. (“The Memsahib.”) Just a piece of thick scrap leather was all that was needed. The wheel’s first treadle drive strap lasted 30 years. Hopefully, the new one will last for another 30.
I’ve been quite busy boxing and shipping out Elk Creek Company [4] orders. (We are presently running a sale on all of our pre-1899 sporter rifles.)
We recently received a new steel beekeeper’s hive combination tool, by mail. Oddly, it arrived with some very rough edges. Rough enough to break skin if it was handled hastily. Two of my grandsons helped me smooth that up, using our trusty old hand-crank grinding wheel.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was sunny but cool only high temperatures of eighty degrees Fahrenheit, with some clouds at the end of the week. Last weekend the rain that we received dumped eight tenths of an inch. I was praying for at least an inch more. But of course we’ll take anything the good Lord sends us.
Yes, I have been super busy with the boys here. We did get in a hike back up to the little lake with crayfish in it. The boys caught a number of them and we took home a few to put in one of our ponds. The boys are having fun feeding them bits of hamburg and watching them devour it. These boys love God’s creation. This time of the year our ranch is teeming with small critters for them to chase down and catch. Our meadows hatch and nurse little baby tree frogs and little green frogs. On several occasions, the boys and I went down there to catch them. We also have baby Garter snakes about and lots of Damselflies and Dragonflies.
Also during our hike we saw for the first time ever, wild onions. They strongly taste and smell like onion. We also found some ripe Service Berries, the first of the year. We picked our first quarter-gallon’s worth. Those, I made into a Service Berry Cobbler. It was fantastic.
Even though it has been on the cooler side this week, the boys have gone swimming several times. Again this year we have the Green Frogs taking up residence in the pool as soon as the chlorine dissipates a bit. The boys love catching them.
We have two Humming bird feeders hanging on our porch that buzzed with the activity of adult and juvenile Hummers. the boys each stood on the railings and put their hands around the sugar dispensers awaiting for the little hummers to alight on their fingers while trying to get a drink. They delighted in the feel of those feather light little jewel bird beauties.
The boys spotted our semi-resident Great Blue Herons this week sitting in the top of one of our Fir trees. The Great Blue engendered a lot of excited conversation around the breakfast table.
We struggle with mosquitoes at this time of the year. The boys are constantly in and out the sliding glass door to our porch where the hammock is located. They love playing on that hammock and the skeeters take every advantage of that open door. To protect us from the mosquitoes while sleeping, the boys are also sleeping in two tents in the guest bedroom. They think that indoor camping is kinda cool.
We spend quite a bit of time tracking down and killing mosquitoes in the house, with the battery-operated hand bug zappers.
One of our dinnertime sports is to slap at those blood sucking terrorists when they harass us at the dinner table. I taught the boys the song “Another One Bites the Dust” [5] and sing it each time I killed a mosquito while eating dinner. The lyrics tickled their minds and soon, each time they successfully smacked one of those blood sucking terrorists dead, you’d here them exalt, “Another one bites the dust”. 😉
Earlier in the week before the boys came, I harvested the Garlic scapes, chopped them and froze them for future ingredients in some of our meals.
This week, also before the boys arrived, I cleaned out the Henhouse, the Cowshed and the Meat and Fiber sheep’s pen.
This week, added a pallet to the wall in the Dairy cow crush stall to narrow it so I could put our cow into it to milk her. She is a smaller cow and without that pallet narrowing the stall, she could turn around in it and move everywhere that she wanted to. I had been trying to milk her free-standing. She would let me milk her some, but when she wanted me to be done she would kick at me. It frustrated me, so now she needs to be in the crush stall. Also, I put a padded hobble on her left rear hoof that gets hooked onto an eye bolt to lock her leg down. She also thinks that when her grain is finished that she is finished being milked and will also kick at me then to get me to stop milking her, but now, no more. I will dictate when we are finished with the milking, even if she does finish her grain, before I’m done. 😉
I’m still milking three of the Meat/fiber flock ewes. They are so cute about it. Now the two that are milked on the stand jump up there by themselves when it’s their turn to be milked. They are so cooperative. I love them very much.
This week, I did a lot of cooking and baking, making yogurt, and clean up, laundry, etc. I started to read a book to the boys: “Brighty of the Grand Canyon”. They are enjoying it.
We had a campfire one evening (S’mores, of course) and we plan on canoeing/kayaking the Unnamed river with the boys and their Dad on Saturday. We are looking forward to that paddle.
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.