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:
We had a three-day respite from the Pineapple Express series of rainstorms. But now they have resumed — this time with some high winds — and now The Unnamed River is back out of its banks. It is time to chuck another log in the woodstove.
After making an adjustment to its mount, I now have our pickup’s snowplow blade ready for annual duty.
I have been configuring a newly-acquired Starlink Mini, as a backup and mobile option to our original post-mounted Starlink, that is still in service. That is one of the old First Generation round Starlink dishes, but it is still working quite reliably. But, since “…one is none”, it was high time to have a good working spare. WalMart seems to have the best price on the Starlink Mini system. The new Mini draws less current and it is easier to operate from mobile power or a DC off-grid power system. (I also bought a clever “3-in-1” 16.4-foot long DC power cord from WalMart.) After bolting it on a four-magnet vehicle roof mount and testing it twice, I tucked the Mini away in a spare waterproof Pelican 1500 case. After my 7-Day trial of the 50GB Roam plan, I visited the Starlink website and switched the Mini to the $5-per-month “Standby” plan. Henceforth, I can quickly bump it up to full bandwidth in case our main dish ever fails, or when we make any extensive road trips.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather this week, here, has been quite warm. This week, we had another atmospheric river come through and dump another four and seven-tenths inches of rain since this past Sunday, according to our rain gauge. Additionally, we had a very strong wind event and lost grid power on Wednesday morning, about 6:20 AM. The power is still out as I write this on Jim’s computer. Our meadow is flooded at the average spring melt level at this time, which is not into the house meadow any longer.
The storm devastation in our region was extensive. Less than seventy-five miles east of us in Libby, Montana, a washed-out bridge somehow made national news. Speaking of that area, we also heard “through the grapevine” that Ross Creek Cedars Grove near Troy, Montana, which was closed during the summer for some serious trail work and upgrade, had those nice new trails and bridges destroyed by the flooding that occurred there last week. It had only just reopened to the public around the end of September. We brought some guests there in October to see the new upgrade. It was really nice. Well, the Lord sent the rains and washed away that upgrade, so it seems Perhaps millions of dollars, washed away….
During the wind storm, we lost one medium-sized tree in our south pasture, and just a few three to four-inch diameter trees.
Most of this week, since it was raining so hard so many days, Jim and I spent most of the time cleaning and reorganizing the house. We cleaned, organized, and culled the drawers in the master bathroom. We defrosted and cleaned one of our propane freezers and transferred most of the frozen berries and produce from the electric chest freezer to that freezer. It had held a lot of our meat, which we have substantially reduced over the past two years, so that was put into our older propane freezer. We also spent time reorganizing the pantry hallway and the garage.
The ram lamb we mentioned last week that had hypothermia, is doing super well. He is with his flock which is now located in a new pen in an open bay of our hay barn. This week, a few days later after putting him in with his mates, while I was feeding them, I stopped to observe them. He came up to me and nuzzled my hand and let me pet him under the chin and under his eyes. It was as though he was thanking me for helping him and for my kindness to him.
What a sweetie. I LOVE those sheep.
We also put the other two hides that I had been working on in the freezer after they sat out on the porch for three weeks. Those were a deer hide and one of our ram skins. I will have to get back on them sometime in the future.
Yesterday, we took our dog on a four-hour hike up into the adjoining National Forest. There were a lot of blown-down trees and limbs, so it was more of a “working hike”, doing trail maintenance. But we walked all the way to the end of the road, to the parking area where there is a hiking trail up into the mountains of which we have hiked a bit in the past, but not too far, because it goes for more than seven miles one way. One day, I’d like to get all the way up it. Anyhow, there is a creek right at the parking lot. I wanted to see how much the flooding had changed its course. Boy howdy, it did change a lot. Actually, for the better! All the way up we cleared down trees that were small enough for us to move without the aid of a chainsaw. There were just a few that we would need a chainsaw for. We may go back up and clear them if the Forest Service doesn’t get to them first.
This week, I worked on writing out the rest of Chapter 3 and 4 and am working on 5 in the book of Isaiah. I continued working on memorizing Psalms 91 and 121. I also spent time reading Job 38 and Daniel Chapter 9. Those are chapters I may try to memorize in the future.
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.