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 busy week. I did some firewood hauling slash hauling, and slash burning. I touched off the burn pile burning just as it began to rain, for safety.
I also helped a relative with a camper trailer conversion project.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather was rainy and snowy and cold this week. Warmer in the beginning of the week and cooler later in the week. We had a trace of snow Thursday morning and snow showers Wednesday and spitting snow on Thursday. Jim and I took advantage of the colder rainy weather and drained the Redneck Swimming pool, scooped out all of the rotten leaves, worms and other nasties, scrubbed it out and refilled it and bleached it. There is still some stuff in it so we think we might drain it again next week in order to finish scrubbing out the spots we missed and to get out the last of the leaves and junk that were under the folds of the liner. It’s a big job. Next week, we are suppose to warm up. Maybe I will be able to swim in it even earlier than last year, this year. Time will tell. I enjoy swimming once the water temp is about 68 degrees and higher. Before we drained it the water temperature had gotten as high as fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit. That is still too cold for swimming but warmer weather is coming fast. We hope.
This week, I harvested chives, washed them and sent them through the dehydrator.
The rest of this week we had problems and challenges pop up that we had to deal with and troubleshoot. Life is not always cakes and roses on the ranch.
Well, we discovered that the hay we fed to our cattle in 2023 and 2024 was treated with Grazon, an herbicide that kills broad leaf plants that goes through the gut system of the cows and horses and survives in the compost and gardens for several years damaging broadleaf plants. The folks we bought the hay from hadn’t really said anything about it to us directly, but another person who bought hay from them did tell me. Later, I did ask them and was told that yes they had treated their fields with in 2024, but I didn’t think too much at the time of it and what it will do to garden plants until now. Thankfully, I discovered it through the tomato and pepper seedlings this spring. I think I have lost all of them. I have one tray that I will let grow a bit longer to see. The Grazon is uptaken into the broad leaf plant and affects the cell division in the plants so that the tertiary leaves and succeeding leaves all begin to curl up and not open up. It’s bad. So we have a huge pile of now contaminated composted manure that I had wanted to put on the garden last fall, but it wasn’t composted enough (Providence) and so I let it sit out until this spring. Last fall though, some had composted enough and I put it in pots in the green house that I used for my seedlings this winter. Thankfully, I know the pots that it is in AND I know exactly the compost pile that it is in. So we will be removing that pile of manure to another spot on our land to just let it completely decompose without affecting or contaminating much else, hopefully. Also thankfully, the hay we bought last summer had not been sprayed at all so that we will separate from the bad pile and let continue to decompose for the next year. So in the next weeks we will be removing it. Also thankfully, I have the kitchen compost pile that is completely separate that I can use to fertilize the gardens. Be careful that you buy hay from unsprayed fields.
Lord willing, this comin summer, we will get hay from the same unsprayed fields as last summer.
So I continue my journey of unplugging from the Internet. I have never been subscribed to Social Media, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. But I have had a presence on Youtube. I had channel and subscribed to hundreds of other channels and made frequent comments on other channels. A few weeks ago, I began unsubscribing from many channels and removed many book marked videos, etc. Anyhow, earlier in the week, I cleared the history on my computer. This always makes me have to re-sign in to YouTube. I decided not to re-sign in. After three days, I decided to PERMANENTLY DELETE, my channel. I did the research and found a video that shows you how to do so and followed the directions. It gets rid of, supposedly, all channels that one has subscribed to, all comments, all thumbs up/down, all content that one has made, etc. I never made any content. Now I will have to remember a channel if I want to see it and type it into the YouTube site. I also got rid of it’s Icon in my Toolbar. Now I won’t be as tempted to waste my hours watching stuff. I still will follow some folks, but it will be harder to get to them since I will have to remember them and type in their channel if I want to check in on them. I am lessening my cyber presence, because I feel like it’s bad for us and I feel that sometime in the near future we won’t be able to get onto the internet, anyway, without a Real ID/The Mark of the Beast. I want to not have that be a shock to my system. Since nearly all of us in this world are addicted to it. I also find that the less time I am on the stupid thing the clearer minded I am and more peaceful I am and the more work I get accomplished. I also study books more which is real learning.
I spent my time making meals from scratch. I always do that anyway. I make a lot of cobblers with our frozen berries and fruit, picking greens from the green house for salads, making cow milk Farmhouse Cheddar cheese and sheep milk yogurt after milking those animals, making Einkorn sourdough bread, etc. I continue to read through my Edible Wild plant books comparing the author’s experiences with certain edibles. I continue with the laundry, organizing, house cleaning, animal chores, holding down mothers for the Bummer lambs and just hanging out with the sheep, talking to them and petting them while observing the outdoors around us. The Dairy sheep are particularly friendly so it’s pleasant to be with them.
The end of this week brought some food storage troubles. Our newest propane freezer’s themocoupler died. We lost some plums and berries and some salmon and meat that were on the upper shelves. We didn’t really “lose” the salmon and meat. I cooked it and gave it to our dog. The salmon in the bottom of the freezer survived and was moved to another freezer. As well as some surviving berries. Other berries were quickly made into jam and cobblers. I had to scrub the Freezer also. Other stuff had to be given to the chickens also. This is the third time this winter we had a freezer fail for various reasons. We have lost a lot of food this year. It has really frustrated us. Jim fixed the Thermocoupler on Friday. This just makes me want to not rely on modern technology even more. I really don’t like canned meat. But I think we are going to have to do some of it. I also don’t like making a lot of jams because of the sugar content. I also don’t like fruit leathers because they stick to our teeth for too long. I will have to dehydrate the berries in general. I’ll be doing more alternative food preservation this year, for sure.
I’m trying to get back into exercising and working on strengthening my core muscles. So this week I rode the bike a couple of times and jumped on the rebounder. I also did planks, 30 secs. bent elbow planks, 30 secs. straight arm plank, 15-20 secs. side planks, 10 rocking bent elbow planks, 50 sit-ups, 15 crunches, 5 leg lifts, 15 air bicycling leg lift and some other exercises. I saw a young couple’s routine last week and am trying to do what they do. Umm, I’m pretty good but not as good as they are. So whereas they do a bunch of stuff for thirty or more seconds or thirty reps and all these in a row one right after the other, thirty of each. I do less as I showed, and I have to take a few breaks in between because my stomach muscles are screaming at me. But my goal is to do all of their exercises and for as long and as many reps as they do as soon as possible.
I read the first ten chapters of Revelation this week.
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.