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 were recently without grid power for six days. That provided the opportunity to practice and fine-tune a few of our preps.
During a break in the weather on Monday, Lily and I mucked out part of one of the sheep pens and all of its attached sheep shed. That was about 30 wheelbarrow loads.
While one of our sons is traveling, we’ve been dog-sitting for him. Lily will tell you about how we’ve been getting our visiting “Grand-Dog” settled in, here at the ranch.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We have had another very unusual warmish winter week, here at the ranch. Our temperatures are running in the the low thirties to as high as forty-five degrees Fahrenheit all week. We have had snow showers with a bit of snow on the ground that quickly melts. We have also had a lot of rain. We are mostly snowless thus far this winter. Hopefully, that will change soon.
The Tundra Swans have been thick up in the seasonal ponds in the open meadows.
Grand dog is getting settled in, “N” is learning quickly to leave our cats alone, both from us telling her “No!” Cats are not toys”, “Leave the cats alone” and from the cats themselves hissing and spitting and slapping. It’s been a little bit stressful for the cats, but by Friday they were working out their peace. Our “Pup” is learning to play with her. They come out with me to do evening chores and to go for a walk afterwards. They are playing chase more often together than during her other previous shorter visits.
This week, of course, has been about maintaining that which we have. As Jim mentioned, we together tackled mucking out the Dairy sheep pen’s pallet shelter. I had not cleaned that out in about three months. It was a foot or more thick with compacted hay and manure. Now it is clean with fresh dry hay to bed upon. Also, I raked much of the pen itself. Only under their hanging manger, is there still a huge pack that we still have to get at. Maybe… It creates a nice island for the sheep to rest on when everything else is wet and muddy, so we may leave it for the duration of the winter, or I may take at least half of it away next week. Anything that we can clean now before the snow, if it comes and covers it, makes spring cleanup that much easier.
We had some green tomatoes from the greenhouse that were ripening in a box in the house since October. Those, I squeezed the seeds out from and put them on paper towels to dry on the top shelf of our Wood Cookstove, for part of next year’s tomato crop. I bagged up more dried squash seeds that we had dried from squashes that we’ve been eating.
I sorted through my seed tote to decide what to order for seeds from High Mowing for this coming spring. I placed my order for the ones that I needed. I bought only heirloom seeds and just a couple of organic open pollinated and just a few new items to try for next summer.
I cleaned out the hen house and the milking parlor stall that our milking cow spends the night in. I need to tackle the other stall where the cow’s mates hang out at night, to be near her.
In line with ongoing winter deep cleaning and reorganization of our home, Miss Violet and I went through her clothes drawers to reorganize and cull out clothing she doesn’t wear, etc. I also went through our two bed linen closets and reorganized our sheets, pillows and blankets. A few really bad sheets were culled. Don’t worry we still have enough to cover multiple beds and to make clothing from and to cover the garden with etc. But they are all old and heavily used bed linen So it’s actually time to get a sheet upgrade for ours and Miss Violet’s bed. We are planning on doing so in the New Year.
Over the past few weeks, I reread the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s last four books from her “Little House on the Prairie” series: “The Long Winter”, “Little Town on the Prairie”, “These Happy Golden Years”, and “The First Four Years”. This week, I finished the last two books. There is always so much to learn from her books. This time I looked up a few of the songs that I had not ever heard on YouTube that she mentioned Pa would play on his fiddle.
We do not celebrate Christmas, but on Christmas day, unplanned by any of us, but because of second son’s very sudden travel plans, we found ourselves at our oldest son’s house visiting during the afternoon. So we joined them for dinner and then had an impromptu wonderful choral worship session, singing traditional Christmas songs, from their church’s hymnal. My soprano voice, with daughter-in-law’s alto, oldest grandson’s soprano, son’s bass, and Jim’s bass. It was so much fun! I hadn’t sung like that in quite awhile. My favorites: “Lo how a Rose E’er Blooming”, “Angels We Have Heard On High”, and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. It’s always wonderful to spend time with oldest son, his wife, and the grandchildren.
This week, I wrote out just a few verses from Chapter 6 of Isaiah. I spent most of the time working on memorizing and still in the process of doing so, Psalms 1, 2, and 19. And fine tuning already memorized Psalms 8, 23, 91, 121, and Ephesians 6:10-18. I read many more Psalms to find the ones that I am familiar with to work on memorizing those and to find new ones to memorize that I have not been so familiar with.
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.