Editors’ Prepping Progress

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:

In the past week I burned two of the six slash piles that I had been building since last April.  The other four piles are back in the woods, so for safety I will wait until we have more rainfall before i touch those off. Because I had kept all six piles tarped since early August, they should all ignite easily, with no need to use any “woof.” (Dyed diesel fuel.)

I helped Lily with vetting our sheep again this week. They have been getting Albendazole orally once every three weeks. We’ve been checking and logging their body temperatures — rectally with a digital thermometer.  While doing this with one of the ewes I foolishly turned my back on our senior ram. He quietly took a long run and butted me so stoutly that he knocked me off my feet.  Thankfully, he rammed the side of my left thigh a few inches above the knee. If he had hit my knee cap, I’m fairly confident that he would have dislocated it or even broken it. So, I’ve reminded myself:  Never turn your back on a bull or a ram! I am hopeful that I’ll only have some deep tissue bruising and soreness. I’ve upped my Vitamin C from my normal 500 milligrams to 2,500 milligrams per day for a full week, to minimize the bruising.

Now, Lily’s part of the report, with a bad news bear update.

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
The weather has been beautiful this week.  Sunny with bluebird skies and some white fluffy clouds.  Temperature high of 72 degrees Fahrenheit with a of low of thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.

This week we discovered that that bear found a way into our orchard, after all, and ate about a third of our apple harvest before we noticed.  I think it was only one night and a day that he was in there. We are pretty sure it was the same big black bear that we saw last week.  So it did not get in through the gate with the chain. Just one part of that twelve foot fence is attached to a very large — about thirty inch diameter –spruce tree.  That bear climbed the tree by sticking it’s paws through the five or six inch mesh just in that section, too, the rest has the two inch mesh, and climbed the tree, to up above the mesh, and crawled around the tree trunk and dropped down into the orchard.  He also egressed the same way.

That bear also broke two sizeable branches of our apple trees.  Bummer!  Thankfully, I discovered his raiding in time. Our dog was barking Sunday mid-noon down near the orchard.  I think she scared the bear away. So I went down to the orchard cautiously, and looked around and saw the damage and the tons of bear poop. I at first thought that it had squeezed through the chain of the gate.  But later found out where it had come in.

I immediately went back to the house and retrieved baskets and enlisted Miss Violet and we went down and harvested four large laundry baskets worth of apples and all of the hazelnuts. The bear had not yet discovered those. The hazelnuts were our last crop to harvest from there. I only left the bad apples and the ones on the ground.  We immediately brought the apples into the house as soon as a basket was full.  The next day I went back and looked and the bear had got in again and had broken the second branch and had devoured the rest of the apples on the ground.  I think he has to know by now that there is nothing left in there for him to get. So hopefully he won’t come back this year.

So Jim’s next job on his list is to detach the fence from the tree and move it out about four feet from around the tree.  It will mess up the straight line of the fence but we can’t have that bear come back next year and eat all our apples.  They have great memories.

This week many of the tomatoes that I had picked a few weeks ago had ripened, So those I froze.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it last week, but last week I harvested the last of the elderberries and made them into Elderberry honey syrup and froze it.  I only got a quart. There is definitely a smaller harvest this year of most things.

I cleaned the Dairy sheep pen this week. Jim and I are dosing them again with the Albendazole.  It is suppose to be every three weeks for a time.  But we got off schedule.  Oops.

I have been in the Word memorizing some scriptures that I need to declare and lean into these days. I have a few worries that have gotten into me and have induced some fear more than the usual.  Not good. When I’m in fear, I don’t feel love. That is bad.  So I need to remember Jesus’ love for me and trust that He will see me through all our difficulties.  (Perceived health issue and that which is coming upon the world.)

May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,

– Avalanche Lily, Rawles

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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.