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 did some more roto-tilling in the near-house pastures, with our trusty old Troy-Bilt Horse. Lily immediately broadcasted the usual mix of fall cover crop seeds.
I also did some more manure hauling from the Dairy sheep pen. Lily and I finished that by scraping the soil with the tips of square-point shovels. Using our big propane torch wand connected to a 20-pound tank, I then thoroughly scorched the soil of the pen and the ground inside the pallet shelter, to kill any intestinal parasite eggs and/or any liver fluke plasmids.
I built a wooden storage shelf in the ranch house kitchen, to take advantage of some available cabinet space. I also cut 2″-thick blue closed-cell insulation inserts that are friction-fit inside the screened vents near the top of our new “just in case” outhouse. I expect that those insulation panels will be there for 9 or 10 months of each year.
After nearly 20 years here at the closer-to-the-border Rawles Ranch (our third ranch), I’m finally getting a few things properly organized. For example, some scrap lumber and extra Trex decking planks that had been stored under our east deck were moved to our workshop. I’ve also started organizing all of our stored lumber and lumber scraps. I started with the plywood, plywood scraps, and pegboard sheets.
We had our septic tank pumped. So, that should now be good for the next 7 to 9 years.
I shipped out several more Elk Creek Company orders. The recent jump in the price of silver brought our silver divisor briefly up to 48, though it is back down to 45.5 as I’m writing this. (This is the silver pricing ratio, for payments in pre-1965 circulated U.S. silver dimes, quarters, and halves. The ratio changes frequently, tracking the spot silver market) Two recent examples: I sold a $350 Ruger Old Army .45 Colt stainless steel conversion cylinder for just $7.25 in silver, postage paid. The same day, I also sold a $589 Mauser Model 1895 rifle for just just $12 in silver, insured postage paid. So it is still “the good old days” for prices, if you pay in silver. Keep in mind that it isn’t that silver has “gone up.” Rather, it is the Federal Reserve Note “dollar” that has gone down!
As most SurvivalBlog readers know, I do most of my consulting by phone, Wire, or Zoom. But last week I did some on-site consulting, at a client’s ranch. This was a fast-paced nearly three-hour preparedness presentation to three couples, followed by some Q&A.
This week, I plan to do some more firewood cutting and splitting. I’ll also be helping Lily bring in more of the potato harvest It looks like we may get more than 300 pounds of spuds, this year.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather has been quite sunny with the week ending in rain showers. Temperature highs about seventy-three degrees and lows of forty-four degrees Fahrenheit. Our new rain gauge arrived. Yeah!
I got skunked! This time, directly hit! Here is how it happened: Saturday evening, I waited a bit too long to go out to close the guillotine door. As went out the back door, I heard a chicken squawking. That is never a good sound when it’s almost dark. Skunks are our usual problem. Therefore, I ran to the coop yelling, to give the beast a chance to get out of the hen house for my protection. I had a flashlight, it was rather dim. I opened the main door and peered in carefully and flashed the light around the walls along the floor to the guillotine door. I was wearing shorts, t-shirt, and a zippy hoody. I didn’t see any skunk, so I entered in and went right up to the guillotine door. It’s dimensions are about eleven inches by thirteen inches. I stood right in front of it. I could not see outside it — too dark. I lifted it up carefully and moved the square piece of wood blocking the door from dropping, out of its way. Just as I had it ready to drop and was dropping it, I felt wet warm drops hit my lower thighs, knees and for an lesser amount, my lower legs as it slammed to the floor. I looked around thinking it came from the hens above me pooping. Then the smell hit me, full force. “Oh, you have got to be kidding”. I was worried that the skunk was actually still in the hen house since it was so dark, so I flashed around the light and up into the roosts, but no it wasn’t there. It had to have been out on the stone ramp just outside the coop’s guillotine door.
I ran out the main door and around the back to look in the run, but I didn’t see it there either, it must have gone under the hen house. I ran to the house. I was trying to hold my breath and not breathe in that horrible smell. It was so strong that it was hurting my sinuses. I wanted to strip down outside before going into the house, but Number Two Son is staying with us for a time. So I just kicked off my shoes and took off my Zippy Hoody sweater and ran into the house and to the bathroom. I turned on the shower, grabbed a washcloth from under the sink, stripped and jumped in before it had even warmed up. I soaped the washcloth and started scrubbing my legs. Oh, the smell!
I soaped and rinsed my legs over and over and over. Then I washed the rest of me and then my hair with shampoo. I got out of the shower and grabbed a towel, grabbed the shorts, and t-shirt and ran them out of the bathroom, through the laundry room to the Pantry Hallway and the garden door, threw them out the door and into the garden, and then went down the Hallway to our bedroom and told Jim. We sniffed my knees and the odor was still there. I went directly into our shower and again scrubbed my legs with a different soap and washed my hair, again, with the same soap.
The strong skunk odor was still on my knees and lower thighs. I then came out into the bedroom and immediately got on the computer to see what else I could use to get rid of the smell: Dish soap, and baking soda. So I put on another pair of shorts and t-shirt and ran out to the kitchen and grabbed the baking soda and dish soap and put them on another washcloth and went back into our master bathroom to our shower and applied them to my legs and scrubbed just them again and rinsed them with the wand shower head that can be removed from it’s base. The odor still lingered, but was so much more faint than before. I then went out to the kitchen to look for my bible and to open up the house to air it out.
The Pantry Hallway, laundry room, guest bathroom and the rest of the house smelled so badly from me and my skunked shorts that had been in the house for too long, because I couldn’t strip and leave them outside before going into the house. Then we went to bed. Not happily, for me. I was pretty worked up. It took quite a time for me to calm down, relax and go to sleep. Jim didn’t care much about my still lingering odor, and zonked out almost immediately. I HATE SKUNKS! No weapon formed against me will prosper! In Jesus’ Name!
In the morning I went out and did chores. The area around the hen house still smells so awful! After feeding the animals, I re-blocked all four of the ingress and egress spaces under the hen house that the skunk had dug this summer to make a home for itself under the Henhouse. If it’s still in there, it AIN’T coming back out. Earlier in the summer, I didn’t want to trap it under there because I didn’t want it to die under there. But I am now willing to put up with it’s dead rotting carcass smell, to be rid of it. And, no, we can’t get under there to fish it out later. There is barely any space for anything to get under it. Update: It dug itself out that night. In the morning, I found and put even bigger rocks in the areas it had dug out. Hopefully it isn’t back under the hen house.
Then I took a bucket and filled it with water, a healthy amount of dish soap and baking soda. I put my hoody into it, it’s rather new, and retrieved the t-shirt from the garden and added it to the bucket to soak for hours. Then I took the shorts, ratty jean cutoffs, and the rubber Slogger shoes (very worn out) and threw them into the burn barrel. I then retrieved a brand new pair of rubber Slogger shoes out from my armoire to replace the skunked ones. Now I need to buy another pair so I can always have a spare pair. I love these shoes because they are waterproof and are easy on easy off. So very handy for working in the garden and cleaning the animal domiciles.
Regarding the chickens, we have roosts in their hen house of which the skunks can’t reach. If they’re too stupid to not use them, then if they get taken once in awhile by skunks, because we cannot always get out there in a timely manner to shut their door, then so be it. Survival of the fittest. I counted, we have thirty-four at this time. I still want to butcher about eight more, this fall.
Later, I had to scrub the guest bathroom walls, ceiling, toilet, sink, shower and floor. And yet it still stank, though not as bad.
I cleaned again the Meat and Fiber Flock sheep’s pen and finished up cleaning the area around their feeder. Then I locked them out of their shed and hosed the dirt floor down in order to scrape it. I have yet to finish that job. When it’s done we will burn that floor also.
I cleaned the hen house and the cow shed again.
The cows, calves, bulls and horse were brought up from the Open meadows. Then later I separated the bulls and horse from the cows and sent them back down to the Open meadows leaving the cows and calves in the corrals.
The Dairy sheep were moved back to their regular Dairy pen after Jim finished burning it’s ground.
I harvested all eleven rows of potatoes. I did not get the volume that I thought I would. But, I think we have enough to see us through to next year’s harvest. I harvested some Kennebecs. I baked them on Sunday night and we tried them comparing them to the others. They too, are dry and mealy, baked. They are a boiling potato for mashing. Jim liked them enough, but Miss Violet and I don’t. I will boil them and see if we all like them that way. So we are narrowing down the potatoes that we want to grow next year. A row and a half that is left to harvest is planted with the Kennebecs. Update: I boiled the Kennebecs and mashed them. They are better tasting boiled than baked. I’ll grow them for mashed next year.
I harvested the tomatoes while most were still green. They were not trellised. So the riper ones get munched on by insect critters and a few will rot. We may get a frost in the next week. I would rather just harvest them green and put them in boxes and let them ripen slowly in the dark, safe from frost and munching critters. I will have more than if I leave them out.
I harvested, blanched, and froze more broccoli.
I harvested, chopped, and froze more Zuchs.
I harvested cucumbers. I need to pickle or relish them ASAP.
I harvested spaghetti squash and some Delicata squash. I have them curing on our porch. I left the squash vines in the garden to see if any more will grow and mature before we get our first frost.
I harvested our Jacob beans. They are drying in the green house.
I hand ground in our Country Living gain mill a gallon’s worth of Einkorn berries into flour and made three apple cobblers from some left over store-bought Granny Smith apples and apples from our own trees. The apples from our own trees are still ripening, so it will be a few weeks before I do a mass harvest of them. I also made a dozen dinner rolls.
A few weeks ago on our way to a local town to run errands, we ran into some road stripe painting work that slowed us down, majorly. Neither Jim nor I have much patience for that stop and go business. So we stopped at a community garden to see what was happening there. I met a person who kindly gave me one of their acorn squashes. Of course by the time we left the community garden, the road had cleared all the way to our destination. We ate the squash a couple of weeks later, Oh, man it was yummy. I saved the seeds and dried them. This week I packaged them in envelopes for next year. I didn’t plant any Acorn squash this year, only Delicata and Spaghetti squash for winter squashes.
I de-headed carrot flowers that had gone to seed from the carrots that were planted a year ago and overwintered to this summer. I pulled up many of them and gave the stocks and roots to the cows and sheep. I now have five paper grocery bags full of the seed heads. I will de-seed the flowers later. Some of those seeds I will plant next summer and some will be used to feed to the sheep. I hope to finish that job next week.
While cleaning our Pantry Hallway this week, see paragraph below, I found dried out bean pods in a basket that I had grown and harvested last year, that still needed to be threshed out. So Miss Violet and I, put them in a pillowcase and stomped them a lot to break the pods to release the beans. Then we sifted through the pods and picked out the beans that were released, and also broke open the parts of pods that had not released the beans. The job took about two hours. When we had finished, we had exactly a twelve ounce mason jar full of dried purple, green and yellow bean seeds. Lord willing, I will plant them next summer.
I pruned all of the spent Gold and Red raspberry canes. A huge job, that was. I’m so glad that job is done. Then I weedwhack paths around different parts of the Golden Raspberry patch. I forgot to do the Red Razzes because I weed whacked the potato patch and got onto digging them out. I will hopefully get to the Red razzes patch paths this week.
I am trying to get as much of the summer garden harvested as possible this week and next week. I kinda want to be done with it. I want to get the weeds and roots pulled, rototill it and spread compost on the beds getting them ready for winter. Though, I still have a lot of stuff growing, squash, sunflowers, cucumbers, Zuchs, etc. A lot of the other stuff growing can handle frosts and cold temperatures. So I am not too worried about them. But I want to be done with all this work, so we can do other things that we’ve been wanting to do.
I cleaned up all of the paraphernalia that was under our back porch and then Jim took care of the Trex planks under there. I still want to remove some large rocks and leaves that are still under there. But It feels really good to get things mostly cleaned up. We usually try keep a pretty neat clutter free, nearly picture perfect ranch, because it is so beautiful here. We don’t want to mar the beauty of our ranch and surrounding National forests area by our accumulated stuff. But there are a few spots that have gotten away from us over the years that we are dealing with now..
I seriously rearranged the Pantry Hallway. It holds all of our Mason jars, food preserving equipment, extra canned and storage food, hat mittens, craft equipment: for wool, leather, knitting, sewing; bee equipment/gear, kitchen camping gear, house cleaning equipment, garden seeds, grow lights, egg incubators, etc. Some stuff was gathered for the thrift store from it. It created space to consolidate all of our medical supplies into one place instead of three different places around the house. Because of the removal of the medical supplies, our Master bedroom bathroom is nearly decluttered. I only put the Medical stuff in the Hallway. I still need to go through it, cull too old stuff, and organize it at a later date. And I still need to reorganize and clean our Master bedroom bathroom, also.
While cleaning the Pantry hallway, I ended up moving some stuff around in the kitchen. One of our drawers, the knife drawer, couldn’t handle the weight of all of the knives and some other kitchen utensils I was storing in there. So we culled out any extra knives and stuff, put the extras in a small easily accessible tote in the pantry hallway and then shifted the basic set of knives and other to a smaller drawer between the stove and the refrigerator. That which was in that drawer before hand was put into a big jar on the counter next to the stove, cooking, utensils. This actually brought my cooking utensils and knives much closer together in the kitchen causing me to be able to take even fewer steps when retrieving stuff for cooking.
On Sunday, we had rain showers and temperature highs only in the low fifties. The air temp in the house was feeling cold, so I built our first fire in the wood stove to take the edge off in the house. So very pleasant!
On Saturday, we observed the Biblical Holiday, Rosh Hashana/Trumpets/ The Day of Blowing. It is a Holy convocation, a Shabbat day of Rest. We blew the Shofar a number of times, observed the Sabbath rest, went to our Bible study and ate the traditional sliced apples dipped in honey. I later read on my own Leviticus 23 to review God’s Holy Convocations. Our Bible Study started to read Hosea. We have also been comparing the books of Romans with Ezekiel and the story of the Prodigal Son Luke 15:11-32, being Israel and the good son being Judah. And how God is looking at these two groups of His, today. He will be uniting them as the two sticks, very soon. Because The Father will keep and fulfill all of His words/prophesies, very shortly. The enemy, Satan, hates this promise of God, therefore he is pitting true Christians who are of Israel against the Jews, some who are true Judeans, and other’s who are the Synagogue of Satan. Please, Father, give us the wisdom to discern who is who. Whoever denies that Jesus is the son of God is a liar and an anti-christ. Satan wants us to destroy each other to prevent this promise of the Father and to prevent the return Christ. We must resist this ploy. We must pray for the Salvation of the tribes of Israel and for true Judeans.
I suggest reading this excellent article from the Lamentor: The 1909 Deception: From Footnotes, to Foreign Policy to the Noahide Trap. (Note that the article’s illustrations are AI-generated, but the text is not.)
And This weekend the world experienced a major black flag event in the bombing of the Saudi pipeline. There is now no oil flowing out of Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world. In just a few days we are going to see gas and oil and diesel prices skyrocket to heights never seen before. Everything moves on Diesel. I think that if you have the cash, it’s time to do some serious last minute stocking up, before items are priced too high out of one’s reach or are simply no longer available. This is it folks. Famine could be less than six months away. Travel lockdowns because of unavailable fuel and wicked high fuel prices will coming shortly to all countries in this world. Stock up on food, meds, fuel, and spare car parts if you can fix it yourself and any other things you would need to complete projects around your homes. Please check out our Lists of Lists if you need help in deciding what you might need to acquire in the coming weeks.
Please listen to David Dubyne’s take on this event. “Saudi Arabia Just stopped Exporting oil a Global Energy Crises during Harvest Season.”
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.