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:
Now that I’ve transitioned to a weekly posting schedule for SurvivalBlog, I’ve had time to catch up on some projects around the ranch. I have just a couple of weeks to handle many projects before hay-hauling season begins in July. First up will be cross-cutting and splitting the firewood logs that I’ve been gathering in the past three months. Typically, I cut the large-diameter logs to stove length, but the smaller ones I cut to two or three stove lengths. So, those I’ll have to be cross-cut before I can split them.
I padded, packed, and mailed out several Elk Creek Company [2] orders. That always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to deliver some nice anonymous small arms to good homes. And I enjoy the friendly feedback that I get from my customers. They are always pleased with the quality pre-1899 cartridge guns that I sell, and they often remark that they were pleasantly surprised with the bonus items that I’ve included. I’m expecting a lot more orders this week, since spot silver is back above $70 per ounce and we’ve correspondingly raised our silver divisor to 50. (You can take the total for your order and divide by 50, if paying in pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver coinage. For example, a $345 order would cost just $6.90 face value in 1964-or-earlier silver dimes, quarters, and halves..)
After an unexpected fence-hopping entry by our yearling bull, I had to reinforce one side of our main garden fence with several 16-foot-long welded-wire livestock panels, to keep the cattle out. Those Bovine Delinquents! Oh, speaking of them… Yesterday, I completed construction of a 4-foot wide “friendship gate” on our north property line. It is mostly there so that we can escort errant fence-jumping cattle back onto our ranch. There will eventually be two such gates on that property line.
Last week, we had a setback when the clutch failed on our 15-year-old pickup truck. Thankfully, this happened when I was close to home, and only just heading back from a short errands trip when I didn’t have a trailer in tow. I can only imagine what it would have been like if that had happened when I was a hour away from the ranch, with a load of 30 hay bales in the trailer. The pickup will be at the dealership for about 10 days. They tell me that the repair work done before we need it for hay-hauling. That work will cost $2,500+. Ouch.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We have had a decidedly very cool June up to now, temperatures only up to seventy-one degrees this past week, Monday we got up to eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit. It felt lovely! We had lows around 37 degrees Fahrenheit and one very light frost. Thankfully it didn’t hurt the tomatoes.
The Rose Petal Jello that I made for the boys last week, was okay. It tasted very strongly of rose petals and was way too sweet. I had put too much sugar in it. If I ever make it again, It will have far less sugar and less rose petal “tea”.
Right after the boys left, Jim roto-tilled the Main Garden and helped me pick out rocks and mounded two more planting beds a total of nine thirty foot mounds. In those beds, I planted: onions, broccoli, beets, cucumbers, Dill, Cilantro, Delicata squash, Jacob beans, thus far. I still have more beds to plant, soon. I am late this year, but I blame the coolish weather and my hand injury which is still has about five millimeters divot left to fill in. It has a scab and is now left open to the air 24/7, unless I’m doing a task that could get it really dirty. It is still very painful if the area gets bumped.
I cleaned out the Dairy Sheep pen. And Jim mucked out their night-time ewe separation pen. It was awful mucky from the recent thunderstorms and depressing to be in there for them and me. I am so thankful, Jim cleaned it this week. Now that we have had dry weather their pens and loafing area are so much cleaner and more pleasant to be in.
The day that the boys were heading home, after they had taken down their tents and packed up all their gear, the older boys started cleaning and sorting, and returning to proper game boxes, our game/toy closet boxes that had about eight years of accumulated miscellaneous toys and game pieces: puzzles, marbles cards, etc. So after they left Jim and I continued to organize the games and all of the book shelves in that room and in the Great Room. Ten book shelves in all. Whew! What a job. But it feels good to be more organized. We have a total of fourteen bookshelves in the house. Most of which are eight feet tall. All full of books.
Now that Jim has more time, he is knocking out project after project that we had put aside for years. It feels good to get things fixed and organized once again.
We are still bottle-feeding one bummer lamb. He now weighs close to 35 pounds. I got the scale out and picked him up to weigh him. Hopefully, in about three weeks we can wean him?
The other Meat and Fiber flock ramlings are just about four months old and are nearly as large as their parents. We will begin butchering them really soon.
Now that I’m spending far less time online, I’ve found time for a lot more reading. For example, I recently read the books “The Prequel: Before Anne of Green Gables” and “Anne of Green Gables“. Very sweet light reading. I am also reading Andrew Murray’s book, “Humility“.
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.