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:
We took a trip to once again visit Glacier National Park. (The photos herein were all taken by Jim or Lily.) This time, we decided to enter the park via the little off-grid town of Polebridge, Montana, up near the Canadian border. Here is a description of that park entrance at SmokyBear.com:
“The Polebridge Entrance is the third Glacier National Park Entrance on the west side of Glacier National Park. It is a remote entrance and used mostly by the locals and hardy visitors. To access this entrance, travel about 35 miles north of Columbia Falls, Montana on the North Fork Road (Hwy 486), along the west side of Glacier Park (a mostly gravel road), then turn into the village of Polebridge. At the Polebridge Mercantile, turn left and the dirt road will take you across the North Fork of the Flathead River to the Polebridge Entrance.
This entrance will take you to some of the most pristine areas of Glacier Park, i.e. Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake. Both of these glacial lakes are roughly 7 miles long and sit in bowls surrounded by thick forests and the towering mountains of the Livingston Range. The entrance is open 24 hours a day all year around but closed to vehicular traffic from mid October to mid May depending on snow cover. Our favorite areas of Glacier Park are accessed through the Polebridge Entrance.”
The North Fork Road (Hwy 486) makes a unique sudden transition from a 70 MPH speed limit paved highway to a 35 MPH gravel road. The gravel portions of that road demand your full driving attention. Once inside the National Park, the road is mostly one lane, and quite rough in spots. I do not recommend it for low ground-clearance vehicles. We were surprised to see a lot of grandfathered private property in-holdings inside of Glacier National Park. It was odd to see FedEx and UPS trucks transiting the park to reach those private cabins.
Back at the ranch, I cut and hand-split some more firewood. Our daughter expertly handled the stacking.
I mailed out a few more Elk Creek Company orders. Our big sale on blackpowder guns and single-shot pre-1899 rifles and pistols will be keeping me busy!
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a very lovely sunny week with summer temperature highs up to eighty-four degrees and lows of about forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. This week in the evenings I have been hearing the “Peent, Peent, Jarrr” calls of a pair of Nighthawks hunting over our meadows. This is always a fun bird to hear. Additionally the Wilson snipes are calling throughout most of the nights while hunting in our meadows.
This week Jim and I set up our three-man tent out in our meadow and made up a cozy sleeping nest for ourselves and have been sleeping out at night. I love it! I love seeing the stars, hearing the birds and night animals calls and feeling the breeze on our faces while sleeping.
This week I finally put in a large part of the garden. Jim and I established fifteen rows of a plot on the north end of the Main garden. I planted Siberian Tomato seeds, a short season variety of tomato. We shall see what happens? Generally tomatoes don’t produce here unless they are started indoors earlier and are transplanted. But if we have a strong El Niño this late summer and Fall, this usually means that our area will be extra warm and dry which means that we may not have a frost for a long time which would extend our growing season this year. We’ll see. You may remember that most of my seedling tomatoes died because of the manure that I used that had come from hay that had been treated with the Herbicide Grazon.
I planted Collards, lettuces, and mustards, dill, purple carrots, parsnips, Rutabagas, Yellow Crookneck squash, Spaghetti squash, French beans from seeds over eight years old that I had soaked for four or five days before planting. I saw very little signs of life in them. So, we’ll see if any actually germinate? I planted them with the Rutabagas, so it they don’t make it, I hadn’t wasted a whole row on them. I also planted four more rows of potatoes from potatoes that I had ordered from several different companies for this spring: German butterball, Kennebec, Purple Adirondack, and a purple gold. (I’ve forgotten it’s real name).
I have been weeding the potatoes and the rest of the garden quite regularly this week.
We bought two large packages of Organic Dark cherries that I cut up and froze, about a gallons worth. This is a start. I like making smoothies with frozen cherries. I will be acquiring more in the weeks ahead and will freeze more and also dehydrate many.
I reorganized my Bugout/Sustainment Mystery Ranch backpack.
I reorganized our leather crafting box, our excess fishing gear box, and our sewing cabinet.
I’ve been seriously reading up on wild edible plants.
I loved going in on the West side of Glacier National Park earlier in the week. We went for a day trip, a very long day trip. We left about seven thirty AM after all animal chores and milking had been completed and we got home at 8:30 pm with still daylight enough to do the night time animal chores. Our last bummer lamb is now getting fed twice a day, morning and night. He also is nursing from his mother first thing in the morning and sometimes in the evening. We hold his mother down for him. She is getting used to the routine and is not fighting as much at all. Finally!!
We drove up the North Fork Road and saw the Big prairie meadows and the Round Meadow. I had Jim stop the car numerous times to get out and look at the flowers that were currently blooming in the meadows. Native Americans camped in these meadows every summer until Glacier was declared a National Park in 1910. Then they were forbidden to camp and hunt in it after that. So sad! Anyway, the meadows were full of edible plants: Lomatians/Biscuit roots, Prairie Smoke, Strawberries, Yarrow, Elk Thistle (a new plant for me to learn and identify.), Sheep sorrel. The two big lakes were beautiful. We had wanted to hike along the lakes, but we had brought our pup with us. We soon discovered that dogs are not allowed on any of the hiking trails.
When we stopped at the Polebridge Mercantile, I bought three books. The first book was “Montana Before History: 11,000 Years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Rockies and the Plains” by Douglas H. MacDonald. This was fairly interesting and gave all of the Archeological sites that had evidence of Native American presence.
The second book which I really enjoyed, found fascinating, and gleaned a lot of information from this week, was “People Before the Park: The Kootenai and Blackfeet Before Glacier National Park” by Sally Thompson, Kootenai Culture Commitee, and Pikunni Traditional Association. This book explained how the Three Native American groups lived in and around Glacier National Park, how they procured food, what plants and animals they ate/medicinal, how they preserved and stored it, Parfleches bags) and prepared it, how they made their clothes and tools and how they used them, how and where they traveled and hunted and gathered year round, how they kept time and calendars, their spiritual practices, etc. This is a gem of a book. I highly recommend it. Our forefathers stole so much from them! I could say so much more about this, but I won’t!
The third book was yet another wildflower book for my wildflower reference arsenal. “Wildflowers of Montana” by Donald Anthony Scheimann. He gives hints as to which of these flowers Native American’s used for food and medicine. Some of his information is new to me. So I’m super glad to have his book. I have been flipping through it most days this week and cross referencing it with about five of my other flower and edible plant books. I’m learning a lot.
About two months ago, I got a sliver in the palm of my hand from an old rake handle that was beginning to split. I pulled out a sliver from my palm a quarter inch long from the palm at the time. But it felt as though there was more in there. Just in case of infection or God forbid, tetanus, I squirted in the hole caused by the sliver, using an irrigating syringe that I had when I had my tooth pulled a year or so ago, with Hydrogen peroxide. Ooooh, boy howdy, did that hurt! It caused my palm to immediately swell up and go numb all the way down into the top of my wrist. Afterward, I thought that that plan of action may have been a mistake to do. I guess, generally speaking, Hydrogen Peroxide is only for surface skin issues, not internal. By the way it was the same hand as the thumb that got sliced from the exploding mason jar, which occurred two weeks later.
The sliver injury festered for weeks. I did not want to go to the doctor because I felt that the Father told me that he would take care of it. Also, Jim and my friends told me stories of slivers and thorns coming out when the body expelled them after a time. (Sometimes a whole year later, in the case of Jim’s grandfather.) Our bodies always heal themselves when we give them the right things to do so. Our bodies are a creation miracle. So I waited and prayed. And I don’t want any more injections of any kind, if I can help it. But on one occasion, I thought about going and looked up the phone number to one and just as I was a thinking about what to say before calling them, the power went out from a windstorm that came up suddenly. That surprised me because I wasn’t expecting any storms that day. I went out from the office and saw dark clouds coming in and the trees waving around furiously. That came up fast! I had been on the computer for about an hour catching up on the news, since I am generally not on it hardly at all anymore. I guess that was Providence. The Father wanted me to continue to trust him and not reach out to man for help.
As I said, it festered for weeks though, not truly infected, but not happy either. It swelled some and I thought, “Either there is still something in there or the Hydrogen Peroxide killed a whole lot of cells in there which is causing the hardness and pain. Well three weeks ago the area of entry swelled to a pimple and burst, I was hoping that if there was still a sliver in there that it would come out. But it didn’t! It just weeped pus and some blood. I decided to use a drawing salve on it, last week. So for about a week, night and day I had salve on it under a Band-Aid. Then I also soaked it for about four days in hot Epsom Salt water. I kept squeezing out the pus every day trying to force something out of it. It was very painful and I felt like I was being stabbed like there was a sliver in there but it extended above and below the hole that had formed, so it could not come out.
Well, on Saturday night, I noticed something poking under the skin above the open hole. The skin was very soft at this point from all of the soaking and salve treatments. I pushed from the bottom and that pressure opened up another hole that leaked pus about two millimeters above the original hole. I touched it and it seemed to hurt extra like it was the sliver. I pushed the area of my palm below the hole and lo and behold a piece of wood appeared. I kept pushing and more wood appeared and then more wood. I called Jim over to the sink where I was doing this to keep rinsing the pus and blood away, to see it. Jim leaned over, saw the piece of wood, grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a half-inch long! But was very thin, almost needle like. It was a sight to behold. Either the original piece broke in there, or two separate pieces of the rake handle had entered my palm. To say that “I am so happy to have that out” is an understatement!
The area around the hole is white and hard and still painful and still leaking when I squeeze it as of Sunday afternoon. I hope nothing else is in there and that it’s just damaged cells from the irritation of the sliver being in there for so long or from the hydrogen peroxide injury, too. Now to just heal up the hole area where the sliver irritated my palm for two months! By the way, that rake handle was immediately taped up with duct tape an hour after the injury. I was so mad at it. I should have been wearing gloves, though, because the rake had tried to give me a sliver a week or so earlier and I did nothing about it, then being in too much of a hurry to get stuff done and forgetting about it. Then about three weeks later after the injury, as I was raking out the Dairy sheep pen, I snapped the handle in two. Well, that was the end of that rake handle. Jim replaced the handle with a new wooden handle with a foam wrap a few days later and the rake is like new again.
My thumb injury is just about completely healed. Just the tiniest bit of scab is left, though it is still tender when any pressure is applied.
Anyhow this is why, having two injuries on the same hand for two months caused a slow down in the garden planting, well that, and the really colder weather this year. It really dampened my spirit this spring.
Because our Saturday Study had been canceled went on a hike up the back side of The Un-named Mountain, and had a family Bible study. We also spent a lot of time looking at plants and flowers and identifying them, as well as studying the various mountains around us and trying to pinpoint their names. We have so many mountains that are named and we only know some of them.
I have been reading Ezekiel chapters 1 and 2, Isaiah 22-26, Psalms 60-68.
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.