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:
With some recent rains, I safely completed my fall slash pile burning, without incident. There were five piles of mostly small limbs. One pile was atop a pair of stumps that I wanted to remove, so I kept those stump fires going with additional limbs and chunks of pine wood, for an extra 18 hours. (We never burn pine in our woodstove. It is only used for campfires, bonfires, and stump burning.
I did some more weed-whacking.
I also reorganized two bays of our shop and moved in a box trailer, our spare car, and and our electric UATV, to be ready for winter.
It is still mostly dry weather, but I took our pickup and SUV to the local Les Schwab tire shop for their seasonal studded snow tire swap. Both sets are already on rims, so that was quick and easy. And the shop did the switch free of charge. (A good reason to keep your snow tire mounted on rims.)
And I rolled up and stowed most of our garden hoses, for winter storage.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week we had lots of sunshine, more gorgeous fall weather temperature high’s in the mid fifties and lows of about twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Our aspens, cottonwoods and maples still have their leaves on them, though I suspect they’ll fall off in the next week, especially since rain and snow showers are expected starting this evening. Currently their coloring is also gorgeous. The Tamarack (Western Larch) trees are coming into full color. Many other trees and bushes in our valley have lost their leaves, but I suspect it’s because they are a bit lower in the valley and in a natural wind tunnel area.
This week was a quiet week for me. I spent a few days removing the now dried hazelnuts from their “husks” I don’t know the correct term for it. I decided to count the nuts as I put them in a gallon jar to have a nut number guessing game for the kids at thanksgiving with a door prize for the closest guesser. 😉 I’m not finished de-husking them yet but the jar is at least 3/4ths-full.
I cleaned out the Dairy sheep pen.
I’ve been cooking lots of food for us to eat and keeping the housework up.
Jim and I walked up into the adjoining National Forest to hunt, this past weekend. It was a beautiful four mile hike. Very interesting to me, as we sat very quietly, I could hear the rumble of the train on the tracks nearly 15 miles away as the crow flies and hear it’s horn blow at a couple of road crossings. Sound can carry so well through the mountain valleys during certain weather patterns or the from the direction of the wind currents. We saw some sign of deer, moose, coyote and bear and a grouse. I have my bird hunting license but wasn’t carrying the right gun to take it. Oh well, another time.
I have been spending a lot of time relaxing and enjoying the hammock and porch swing soaking up the last of the fall sunshine, walking and bike riding around the ranch, plus doing my calisthenic exercises. It’s been nice to relax after such a busy summer.
This week I have been deep into the Word reading the Book of Exodus up to chapter 15 and writing out the book of Isaiah, chapter 15 I am working on memorizing Isaiah 57:15 and Chapters 11 and 12, Psalm 97, Proverbs 3:24, 1John 4:18-19, 2Timothy 1:7, reviewing Psalm 121. Our bible study is studying Zechariah. We are in Chapter 4. I’ve been praying a lot. Honestly, I became, allowed myself to become, very stressed this summer with the Bummer lambs and the sick sheep and a needy person that we helped in the past year and a half that drained us and didn’t make good changes for themselves despite our help which frustrated us to the utmost. I did not play much this summer nor did I enjoy it like other years nor did spend deep quality time with the Father. I believe this was the cause of guilt from frustration and anger towards our mother sheep for not caring for those lambs that were theirs, and anger directed toward a local person not manning up. And now I am paying a health price for it and then fear entered in from health issue compounding it manifold. (The brain-body connection.) So, now I am relaxing, praying, studying the word, claiming and reciting, declaring and standing on scriptures, worshipping, and studying Henry Wright’s book, A More Excellent Way. It has helped me deal with some spiritual issues in my life. So my health and vitality will be restored. I have good days and worse days. I’m hoping for them to be all good days in a few more weeks. Bodies do recover once the stress is removed. Gotta stop worrying about the future. The LORD IS IN CONTROL.
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.