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 am slowly getting back to my usual level of activity, while recovering from my cold and bronchitis. Now that the snow has mostly cleared here at the Rawles Ranch, I’m starting to cut up this winter’s wind-fallen trees.
Now, Lily’s part of the report, where she will bring you up to date on lambing season at the Rawles Ranch…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a coolish week with almost an inch of rain at the beginning of the week and some sun and temperatures in the forties Fahrenheit. Almost all of the snow that we received at the beginning of last week is now melted. I’m so glad I went for that ski up the National Forest road last week.
This week was actually more of a resting week. I did not catch Jim’s cold, but my body got tired and stressed and I was fighting it off for a few days. I tend to get cold sores instead of colds and that was what happened. As unpleasant as those are, I’d rather get them than have a full-blown respiratory infection. So I had to rest for a lot of the week. Such a bummer to have to slow down. GRR! 😉
So this week I puttered around the house doing some stuff.
I cleaned out the refrigerator, and I cleaned out a food cupboard that had some canned beans and other stuff that were four to ten years past-date. I gave them to the chickens. I don’t like keeping too many things around that are way past date. Besides, I need to make room for fresh stuff that we are canning and acquiring, stuff that we will actually eat. I no longer eat beans, so never make anything with beans, as of at this time.
I reorganized the food side of the pantry hallway. I had some nuts and peanuts in Mason jars that had gone rancid as well as some coconut flour, regular flour, we eat Einkorn flour these days, and some other things out there that I dumped in the compost pile. The last two jars of old Knudson’s fruit juice were dumped. Every time I drink it, I have stomach issues. So I won’t be buying it anymore. The new overhead company is untrustworthy anyway.(January 31, 2022, Smucker’s sold the brand (Knudson) to Nexus Capital Management LP. Wikipedia) Much of our packaged food is compromised in some shape or form to harm us in the long term. Some of the old dried goods I gave to the chickens. Then I washed all those jars. I had Jim go search for Mason jar boxes since we are needing them to store the jars. I am even further trying to fine tune our food consumption to just what we grow. It’s very hard to do, but we are well on our way.
I checked on the apple cider vinegar that I started back in January. It had a layer of mold on top. I removed it and the few moldy apples. The fluid underneath was nice and clear, and smelled really good, so I washed off the plate that was holding the apples down under the fluid and replaced it. I will check on it again in a few more weeks.
I planted in multiple Bussing trays in the outside Greenhouse lots of: Green Kale, Lacinato Kale, and Pac Choi. I am also harvesting kale, Pac choi, and Miner’s lettuce from the Greenhouse for smoothies and salads this week. When the sun is shining, now that we are at the end of February, and the sun is getting up to above thirty degrees above the horizon, the temperature in the greenhouse has been as high as eighty-three degrees. Greens are growing again!
I also reorganized the green house by rearranging some giant pots and Bussing trays. Since the temperatures have been quite warm in there recently, I had to water everything on Friday. I have a water trough filled with soil that contains my mint in the green house. I cleaned out most of the dead mint stems from out of it. My mint is growing again already, growing new baby shoots. This is such an unusually warm winter.
Because the cats used my onion trays in the green house bedroom as a litter box while the grandsons were here, I had to replant them. So this week, I filled two more trays with fresh soil and planted onion seeds that I raised and harvested, plus a red long onion seeds that I had bought recently. Those trays I brought into the house and put them under the grow lights in the Guest bedroom. By-the-way after having about twelve to sixteen hours of grow light exposure this week, my tomatoes have recovered and are taking off again, after two weeks of very low light, because the grandsons occupied that bedroom while visiting here, because of their frequent in and out of that room. We keep the toys, children’s books and games in there. Therefore we had to keep the lights off most of the time so they could safely go in and out of there.
I cleaned out our hen house.
We had another Meat and Fiber Flock ewe lamb this week. She birthed a single ewe lamb. So far just my senior ewes have lambed. I find that interesting. Now I’m looking for the younger ewes to begin lambing during the next few weeks. Definitely, my one senior Dairy Ewes is bagging up. She will probably lamb within the next two weeks. I’m happy about that. She was my best milker last summer. I’m really looking forward to fresh sheep milk, yogurt and making sheep cheese again.
I’m still feeding our neighbor’s hens and cats while they are away. But that only takes fifteen minutes of my time a day. They will be back home very soon.
At the end of the week, I swept all our floors and washed them. I washed all of the bed linens from when the grandsons were here and have gotten caught up with all of our laundry.
I removed some limbs that I trimmed in the orchard from our fruit trees this past fall to the burn pile and some other limbs that I had trimmed in the woods near the house two years ago that I had just left there.
Since the snow has melted again, Jim is thinking about getting an early start on our next year’s winter wood supply and I’m beginning to chomp at the bit to prepare our garden soils for this year’s gardens. I ordered some more potatoes: Kennebecs. I haven’t grown them in a few years. I want them again in our diet. Also, I want to start a new strawberry patch, so I have ordered a hundred strawberry plants.
I’m not much into turnips and Rutabagas and haven’t grown them too much, but it was recently brought to my remembrance that they store really well. They don’t need to be frozen or preserved in any way and are a “fresh” vegetable. So I will concentrate on planting them and more root crops this year: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, Rutabagas, onions, and beets.
Speaking of which, I did not harvest a couple of rows of carrots this past fall. Those I have been pulling all winter when I need carrots. They store well in the ground under mulch. They are wonderfully sweet and flavorful.
I did some stretching and a lot of sit-ups this week. I also did some planks, a bit of rebounder jumping, and some walking about the ranch, but not the usual amount of exercise.
I got out of my personal memorization practice these past three weeks. (I worked with the grandsons’ on theirs for two of those weeks.) I did look at Psalm 46 a few times and one day reviewed Psalm 19. Disciplining myself with a self spank to get back on it. 😉
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.