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, 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 packed several Elk Creek Company orders this week. Our current percussion revolver sale is going quite well. The big-bore percussion revolvers are very popular because .45 Colt and .45 ACP cartridge conversion cylinders are now available from three different U.S. makers. These are legal in even most of the “Blue” Nanny States. Two of the orders that I received this week were paid in pre-1965 silver coins. It you want to pay in Pre-1965 90% silver coinage, you can simply divide the total price (including postage) by 58. For example, with a 58 divisor, that means that a $640 order would be just $11.03 face value in 1964-or-earller U.S. silver dimes, quarters, or half dollars. (We’d round down to $11.00.) Note that our silver divisor changes frequently, as the silver market fluctuates. But you’ll get more in trade for your silver at Elk Creek Company than you would selling it for cash at a coin shop.
I helped Lily with some hay barn cleaning and pitchforking a trailer load of manure from our west sheep pen. I spread that in open areas in our woods. I also cut one pickup load of firewood. Most of it was white fir.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather this week was mostly sunny and warm with temperatures as high as seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and lows of about thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. We have been super dry and are in a moderate drought. However on Wednesday night, we had a very electrical thunderstorm. There was a lot of lightning occurring in very frequent succession. We received, according to my rain gauge, 0.4 inches of rain. Pretty awesome! I saw some crows steal a baby Stellar’s Jay from its nest this week. Sad! Neighbors reported seeing baby goslings on our Unnamed River this week. I have not yet seen them. I’m seeing lots of bald eagles, ospreys, crows while driving to town recently.
The Redneck Swimming Pool has seen temperatures up to Seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I have walked around in it and have gotten in up to my midriff, but haven’t yet taken the plunge! Soon though, soon.
This was another busy week. It was a week of cleaning up and wrapping up projects to prepare for the next ones. Here is the list of what was done:
- I painted with three coats of paint our new, bought last fall, Horizontal beehives, in preparation for the honey bees arrival in about two weeks.
- I washed the campfire-sooted canning pots used for boiling the birch sap, and washed all the sap collecting buckets and spiles and put them all away.
- I cleaned up the buckets used to clean out the swimming pool and the brushes used top scrub the liner.
- I had piles of books lying around the Great Room that I returned to their respective bookshelves.
- I scrubbed a bunch of empty essential oil jars for future use.
- I cleaned off our porch that had collected way too many objects thusfar this spring. Miss Violet swept it for me.
About three weeks ago we stopped burning fires in the wood heating stove. This week I cleaned out the last of the ashes. I still need to wash the whole thing and put it to bed for the summer. We may need to light another fire later if we get cold enough temperatures.
I finished cleaning the livestock loafing area, with Jim’s help.
I also worked on cleaning a bit more the hay barn. It just needs to be swept out at this time to get the small stuff that rakes don’t get.
The Meat and Fiber flocks shed has been cleaned several times. I’m keeping the cow shed clean. The Henhouse has been cleaned out twice. We still need to get back to the manure in the Dairy sheep’s pen.
I’m now milking two of the Dairy sheep for the needs of the newest Bummer, (‘H”). I tried to get him to bond with a foster mom, but it didn’t work. She may have a dead teat. I keep checking and watching her baby, who appears to be growing fine, so maybe it’s not? Maybe the babe just keeps emptying that side. I’ll keep checking. I need to check his mother’s teats, but she is quite resistant and I just don’t feel like struggling with her yet. I need to get a collar on her, first. There is too much else to do. I’m milking six sheep and one cow, these days.
Our latest bummer ram lamb “H.” is a real character. He follows us around little a puppy. He had never seen a body of water. One day, after he had been spending time with his flock, not with me, I went to check out the Redneck Pool temperature and was sitting with my feet in it. Just then the flock came around the back of our shop and came towards me. The pool was between us. I said something to Miss Violet and “H” heard my voice, then saw me. He ran right up to the pool’s edge and kept coming. He went in, struggled for just a second, and then found his swimming ability and swam right to me. Poor baby. He was only three days old. I scooped him up and ran him into the house to dry him off. Then heated up some milk for him, fed him and brought him immediately outside to warm up in the sun. The sun was wonderfully warm and there was no wind.
I sat with him in the sun for a half hour to make sure he was dry and warmed up again. The poor little guy had blue lips for about ten minutes. But he knows about water now — and he can swim now. He is my only sheep that I am aware of, that has ever gone for a swim. He isn’t bonded to the flock, and that has me bummed out. He is still small enough to squeeze through one slot of the gate of their sheep pen. I tied a lead in the spot to narrow the gap but he learned to move it aside. I cannot pen him up with the ram because he is not nice to him. So, he does come into the house for short visits. Otherwise he hangs out on the porch when I’m not available to hang out with him. Sometimes he will join the flock, and sometimes he will go back to the pen and lay down outside the inner pen where the ram is. When I am outside, he is my shadow. He is a cute one, too. Miss Violet will give him some lovin’ from time to time. I held him for a while in the hammock one day. He likes to be cuddled. I am certain that he is going to be trouble when he is older.
Only seven chicks survived the hatching process last week. A hen was broody, so I put the chicks under her. It worked. She is bonded to them and is caring for them beautifully. I am incubating another eighty plus eggs. I am more on top of the turning of them and their humidity in the incubators. I’m sure we will have a better hatching outcome this next time around. I seem to have poor results the first time each year that I incubate with better results in successive incubations.
Our neighbor came with his tractor and moved that bad, Grazon herbicide-poisoned compost to a low spot in the woods on our land and re-fluffed the good hay and manure compost that we will use next year in the gardens.
I made the dandelion fritter this week with beef bacon. It was quite tasty.
Warning: Rant Ahead.
This week, the trackpad on the latest computer that I had, died. Yes! Now I am truly computerless. I don’t care! I told Jim that I don’t want another one. We decided that I would use his computer to type this post each week, which I am now doing, and to check my regular e-mail and the Lily account and to check on the weather and a few other things. But this frees me up even more to not be chained or tempted to consume internet time. I am rewiring my brain and my outlook on life. I am rewiring my habits. I habitually looked at the computer first thing in the AM and during Breakfast, lunch, and snack times and when tired and bored, because I am too tired to do anything more but want my mind to zone out. Now I will go outside and eat my food looking at God’s creation or read his word or something I am studying. I will have to find something else to look at when stressed and find my comfort elsewhere: books, nature watching, and journal writing. I have been chained to the computer/Internet for a bit over twenty years and I want out. It is an Idol and an addiction for me. It is a selfish activity to watch videos on one’s own. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the loneliness the Internet causes. I am so guilty of participating in this. Yes, I’ve learned a lot from other people doing the things I want to do and learn. But it’s time to say “Goodbye” I very much dislike it when I’m busy around the ranch and I think about the people we would watch, whom we have never met, yet feel a connection to them because we watch them every week, instead of doing our own bonding activities. I am so guilty.
I’m trying to remember the days before the Internet when I was a kid and how I occupied my mind and how free we were. I rarely watched television then. Why did I become a news junky in the first place? Because I wanted to be up with what is going on, to appear smart and aware, not ignorant, to follow events in Israel, to be a Watchwoman on the wall. Now I know we are at the end of the age and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Events will continue to happen and we know they will get worse and worse and “worser”. It will be a time like no other. Why should I watch for them anymore??? For what purpose? We have done the job of Watchmen. (Heads up: Drudge headline, Thursday: “Hantavirus on Cruise ship. Lock downs coming again???” Paraphrased) I have warned you and warned you and warned my friends and readers to prepare physically and spiritually. Time is running out for preparing. After that it’s between you and God if you survive and if he will miraculously provide for you.
Most of us will die in what is coming upon the earth. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking that you alone will survive. There is also martyrdom just around the corner. The mainstream Internet and social media are being used to enslave and entrap us and I want nothing to do with its diversions. The big Internet sites read us and knows almost everything about us and the algorithms entice us to spend more time on them and to be consumers. It ruins our thinking abilities. Somehow, I believe that it puts thoughts in our minds to control us. It is THE BEAST SYSTEM. And soon You will not be able to buy or sell without being hooked into it one way or the other.
I don’t want anything in this world but Jesus, to have control over my being and my mind. We are in the very last Days of the age of Grace and these days are wicked evil and evil will wax worse and worse. Jesus is the only way for the Salvation of our sins and to save us from the Father’s Wrath. I have told you that many times in the past and if one doesn’t believe… Well…? If you’ve read this site and still refuse Him, we are no longer responsible for your eternal soul. We have done our job that has been given to us.
Jesus is the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, Creator God, but through HIM. We all have that choice to make and time is running out. Jesus Loves you all! Jesus is KING of the Whole world and Universe! He will reign in all glory and majesty very shortly! Get a good Bible and start reading and praying. Confess your sins and ask Jesus to take over your life. Surrender unto Him! Get saved from your sins and from His WRATH that is coming. COME OUT OF THE BEAST SYSTEM! Get in the Ark of Jesus! Time is running out!
One more thing to warn on: When the Anti-Christ Beast system comes into play, It may deceive the world into thinking it really is the Messiah by declaring a Jubilee forgiveness of all debt, the true God’s mandate not done by his people ever, to all countries and individuals who have huge debts if they will join its system. Don’t fall for it! It is not Jesus. For he comes after this all takes place, not before.
Learn to live off-grid and all that that entails.
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.