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 did some more prepping for winter. I hauled and drained nearly all of our garden hoses, and stowed them in one of the storage lofts in our shop.
We did some hiking and broadcast-planted more than 1,000 plum pits. These went on damp spots on our property and some on our nearby neighbors’ properties (with permission.) We also broadcasted a couple of hundred huckleberries in some favorable-looking patches in the contiguous National Forest. We trust in God’s providence, and plan ahead!
I installed a new accordion door between our front hall and our laundry room. Previously, we had just tacked up a blanket in that doorway, in some winters. The accordion door will allow us to close off the hall when we don’t want to heat it. It will also allow us to isolate our house cats near their litter box, food bowls, and water bowl. They had been causing mischief at night, in our Great Room.
Now, Lily’s part of the report, where she will describe the harvest from her gardens and orchard.
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We have had frosts most nights this week with lows about 29 degrees Fahrenheit and highs of about 68. It looks as though our part of the American Redoubt will get its first snowstorm over Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The mountains around us could get up to eighteen inches while some valleys could get 2-8 inches of snow. Time will tell.
This week, we celebrated the first day of Tabernacles/Sukkot with a Shabbat rest. We went for a short hike up a local mountain to the first view and sat down in the sun and read the Psalms to praise and worship our Creator Lord God for his salvation and provision. Our garners are full.
I spent the rest of the week harvesting the last of the Honeyboat Delicata squash, the few volunteer pumpkins and acorn squash, cabbage, celery, cucumbers, zuchs, from the garden. The chickens destroyed most of the squash mounds that we had scattered around the ranch. I was very bummed about that. Last year they didn’t bother them. At least we are able to keep them out of the actual garden most of the time. But the compost mounds were outside of the garden.
I harvested the sunflowers. The few big headed ones were saved for seed, a totes worth of lmedium to large heads were saved in the green house for feeding the animals later, and all the rest of the small heads and stalks were brought out the chickens, cows and sheep to chew on
Then later in the week, I dug the last of the red and yellow potatoes.
I weedwhacked all of the weeds, the whole garden, except the areas where the carrots, broccoli, kale, and parsnips remain in the garden at this time.
I picked nearly the last of the plums and elderberries. The plums still need to be frozen. The elderberries were put right into the freezer on the branches — awaiting me to have time to get to them.
I have been drying out Onion seeds, Chive seeds, Garlic pips, some squash seeds since the middle of August. This week, I finally separated the seeds from their flowers and bagged them up. Additionally, I picked my cucumbers that I grew for seeds and cut them open, extracted the seeds, washed them and now I am drying them on paper towels on top of the wood cook stove. I still have to separate Dill seeds from their flowers next week. There are still a lot of food preserving that has to be done next week.
While we were out on our seed dispersion hike, I found Rosehips. I had been wanting to harvest a bunch of those. I was kinda late to the game, but I was able to harvest about a cup’s worth. I still will look for more in the next few weeks.
I did a lot of laundry, cooking, milking, housecleaning, etc. I reorganized our meat freezer in order to create space for future butchering of more chickens and a few sheep.
I picked up our Azure order. This time we bought more Salmon, Einkorn flour, Einkorn shells, Olive oil, and Maggie’s socks for all three of us. Those are so nice. I like them.
I rode my bike a couple of times.
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.