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 prodigious week here at the ranch. Despite a few chainsaw frustrations, I was able to cut up a used 35-foot power pole and haul it for use as fence corner posts here at the Rawles Ranch. That pole came to us courtesy of our local power co-op.
Lily and I finished constructing the interiors of our pair of Layen’s Horizontal Hive insulated bee boxes. That included mounting plastic hex-grid foundations in the frames, and power-screwing a plywood divider into the middle of each box. I also used screws to mount protective steel corner reinforcements on the bee box exteriors. I had already mounted four carrying handles on each box, after Lily laboriously painted them. Our bee swarms are due to arrive today!
We did a lot of manure shoveling and hauling this week. Just as in politics, it tends to pile up, so it must be dealt with, regularly. I suppose that we ought to call our manure pitchforking days “election days”.
I packed and mailed out some Elk Creek Company orders [2]. Many folks are taking advantage of the recent jump in the spot price of silver to pay for their order with pre-1965 U.S. silver coinage. We are now taking “junk” silver at 54.5 times face value, in trade. (The FRN-to-silver divisor changes frequently, as the spot silver price fluctuates.)
To celebrate our wedding anniversary, Avalanche Lily and I did a high country driving tour in the Selkirk Mountains. We saw some peaks including Chimney Rock (pictured) and a some beautiful cascading snowmelt waterfalls. (The Zumi Creek crossing was one of them.) This was supposed to be a hiking trip, but we kept running into snow. Lily will fill you in on the details.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had beautiful weather in the beginning of the week with temperatures as high as seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. Mid-week until the end of the week we had rain showers receiving up to six tenths of an inch of rain. It was seriously needed since we are in a drought in our part of the Redoubt. Dear Lord God Creator of the Heavens and Earth, please send more rains to our region.
At the end of the week, we had a large weather cool-down which neccesitated building another fire in the wood heating stove. I guess I cleaned it out last week prematurely. I saw four moose in a forty-eight hour time frame this week. One very close to home and three up in the Selkirk Mountains on the east and west flanks of The Roman Nose, farther down in the Panhandle of Idaho.
Yep, we celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary a bit early because of the weather forecast. It was very sweet time of getting away from the ranch for a time and spending alone time together — not at home. We had never been up to the Roman Nose — near where Boundary County and Bonner Counties of Idaho meet — so we decided to drive up and see what that area was like. We first drove up Ruby Creek Road via Highland Road but we came upon a road washout maybe five miles from the Roman Nose Lakes trailhead.
We saw a mama moose and her yearling on that road and several mule deer and lots of wildflowers. Then we drove back down and went back to Highway 95 and drove south to the Upper Pack River Road and drove up that. We saw an young adult bull moose up there and more mule deer. The Upper Pack River road is about twenty miles long and ends at the trailhead to Harrison Lake. We managed to get up a bit more than sixteen miles before hitting snow. We could see Chimney Rock at one point. We ate lunch below the Roman Nose, at Zumi creek. We definitely plan to go back up there to hike this summer, Lord willing. Such a beautiful area of the state! We plan to do a lot more road exploring and hiking all through the northern Redoubt, this summer.
This week in preparation for the arrival of our bees, I finally dug into my bee books that I said I would read over the winter. Oops I have a lot of catching up to do. I am currently reading George de Layen’s book: “Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives; A Complete Guide to Apiculture”. It is very interesting.
Also, since I am no longer on the computer watching people do what they do, I am now reading the book: “The Art of Fermentation” by Sandor Ellix Katz. I’m currently very interested in other ways of fermenting milk and having a perpetual culture, since I can only perpetuate Bellwether Farm’s sheep yogurt culture about three or four times before it needs to be refreshed. This means I have to keep buying it every few weeks. To me, that is not sustainable.
I am also reading Carla Bartolucci’s book, “Einkorn: Recipes for Nature’s Original Wheat”. This book was bought also last fall and I didn’t get into it until this week.
Yep, we did more animal domicile cleaning this week. I scrubbed two water tanks and refilled two water tanks.
This week I feel like I have finally got into a fairly good milking routine with the two flocks of sheep and the cow. It is a lot of work and I was getting very tired and frustrated with dairy sheep behavior. They can be incredibly pushy and unruly when grain is in the equation. I was ready to send off a few flocks for a couple of weeks. Now I think I’m regaining my peace with them. Part of my frustration is having two bummers that need the extra milk that I am taking. So, for the past two weeks I have not been able to make sheep cheese or yogurt. I just have been “stealing ” one small glass of milk from them a day for myself and the rest goes to the bummers. Bummer! I did mix cow milk in with the sheep milk for the bummers for about a week and a half, but they bloated and acted starved even though they were getting a large quantity of milk. When I reverted to just the sheep milk, their consumption dropped rapidly and their bloating went away.
Hopefully, this coming week I will put in the garden. Well, we might have some frosts too this coming week and snow showers. Outside gardening really isn’t viable until after Memorial Day around here.
The rest of the week I made Einkorn Sourdough bread, cleaned, did laundry and animal chores — all the usual keeping house stuff.
Don’t believe the Hantavirus hokey pokey. I have read some unsubstantiated claims that it was placed in some of the the Covid vaccines along with other horrible diseases such as AIDS, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), etc., that manifest after certain time periods. There are still people dying from those series of shots that cause Turbo cancers, blood clots, neurological diseases and dropping dead suddenly from heart attacks and strokes and other sudden causes of death. Just be wise and alert to what is happening, take some precautions if it seems near you. Pray and believe Psalm 91. Above all don’t be in fear. Take the neccesary steps to be prepared and ready to hunker down, if need be.
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.