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 week, I finished all of my seasonal firewood cutting for our home woodstoves. Now I’m working on a much smaller pile to supply the woodstove in our greenhouse. That stove is not operated throughout the winter. We only use it to extend our fall growing season and sometimes to get an early start on our spring gardening season.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had lovely sunny weather this week, with highs of about 84 degrees Fahrenheit and lows about forty-six degrees Fahrenheit.
Early in the week, Miss Violet and I went to the Spokane Valley to pick up a couple pieces of used furniture for our living room. Afterward, we dropped in to visit with our daughter-in-law and the grandkids for a few hours. It was a lovely visit. Granddaughter Rawles is now in her fifth month and is reaching many milestones. What a sweetiepie.
This week back at the ranch we continued our regular animal chores and milking. Now that we have cleaned out the manure packs in the shed and the runs it is easier to rake them out once a week to keep them clean. I cleaned the Meat and Fiber flock’s shed and pen, the Dairy flocks’ shed and pen, and the hen house.
Next week, I need to clean out the cow stalls. They have the run of the ranch at the moment, and still have access to their corrals and stalls. They seem to enjoy spending some of the night in the stalls. So they need some cleaning.
In the garden, I harvested cucumbers and fermented three pints worth. I chopped and froze three gallons worth of Zuchinni. I harvested elderberry flowers and dehydrated them on the windowsill. Also, I harvested (and hung to dry) Sage, Mint, Comfrey, and Tarragon.
I picked Transparent Apples and made more freezer apple sauce. At the end of the week, I picked the last eight or so Transparents from the tree and made a sourdough apple cobbler of sorts with Einkorn. It was very yummy.
I restarted a sourdough bread culture at the beginning of the week. I have made two loaves of sourdough bread with the starter. It was so yummy.
I completely weeded the broccoli patch and most of the cabbage. I still have two rows left to weed and thin.
I tackled more of the carrots and have thinned one row. There is still more to do, though.
We started two incubators of chicken eggs to hatch. We will be butchering quite a number of older hens, soon.
As soon as cold enough weather arrives, we will be butchering some lambs and adult sheep from both flocks. Then we will be separating out certain ewes to be bred to certain rams.
We continue swimming laps and using the kickboard this week. It looks as though we have about ten more days of warm enough weather for swimming and sunbathing. Get as much sunshine vitamin D as possible. It looks like it’s going to be a long, dark winter.
I read 1 Kings up through Chapter 21 this week. Additionally, while driving to Spokane Valley, Miss Violet and I listened to all of Kings and Chronicles. Now I will continue reading them slowly.
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.