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:
I have been busy packing a lot of Elk Creek Company [2] orders in the past few days. Folks seem particularly interested in snatching up guns and magazines — especially after the midterm election results were announced. I just had a consulting client call from Montana, asking to schedule a face-to-face consultation in a nearby town, this weekend. He sounded very anxious about buying buying some black rifles, a Glock, ammunition, a Vortex scope, and a pile of Glock and AR magazines. He is making a 400+ mile round trip drive, in part to see me, and I’m assuming in part to stop at several well-stocked sporting goods stores. He asked me to bring along several legally antique Chilean Mauser 7.62mm NATO arsenal-converted Model 1895s that he says he will be buying, to hedge his bets.
I’ve also been busy with various preps for winter. But no major projects. The next big project will be moving my office and my Elk Creek Company inventory into a more secure location here at the ranch. That process will probably begin in December, starting with some carpentry…
I’ve also organized my bins and display cases of merchandise for the Lewiston, Idaho gun show on November 21st and 22nd. I will have four tables there, with about 80% of my inventory.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We have been socked in with intermittent mist, wind and rain with short pockets of sunshine. The leaves on our Cottonwoods, Aspens, and Maples are all down. Our Tamaracks are passing their peak gold colors and will soon turn rust-color before their needles fall. At the end of the week the Tamarack needles are falling rapidly from their branches.
I did not hunt this week.
Well, I have to say that I am feeling somewhat better this week. I realized that I have been drinking far too much water, especially first thing in the morning, a liter and a half in the first hour, and then more throughout the day, nearly three liters a day, which may be contributing to my health issue. It had been off-setting my electrolyte balance. “Why?” You may ask, was I drinking so much water first thing in the morning? Well, let’s say “Fear”. I talked about dealing with “fear” by declaring scriptures last week in my part of this column. I wanted to make sure I flushed my body from any built up toxins in the night. I am worried about bladder infections, having had a doozy of one back in 2013, but none since, and finally since Covid and worrying about inadvertently being around shedding from the Covid vaccine. I didn’t get any Covid Vaccine, but it is said that if you’re around anyone who has been recently vaccinated, they will shed on you. We are not out in public much but one never knows. And I have had some dental work, since 2021. I have heard rumors that the novocaine may have the spike proteins added. Therefore, I’ve worried about blood clotting. So I kept drinking lots of water in the AM and throughout the day, which compounded another problem by messing with the electrolyte balance. Maybe? We’ll see what the blood draw tests say.
But anyhow, women should only drink about 1,600 ml of water per day. We also get more water from fruits, carbs, yogurts, veggies etc, of which I eat a lot of. Therefore, I cut back to that amount and only drink about 600 ml between waking and lunch and the remaining 1,000 ml throughout the rest of the day. I recently happened to buy a 1,600 milliliter Nalgene water bottle. So I fill that up each morning and sip it throughout the day. No more gulping water. I really do feel much better. And I’m not running to the loo so often. If I finish it and still feel thirsty, I will allow myself a bit more, of course in the evening. I’m just not going to drink so much in short periods of time.
And since I’m feeling better, I got back on some of the chores that had been somewhat neglected during the past month.
This week, I cleaned the hen house, the sheep shed, loafing area and inside of the hay barn. The loafing area is outside of the hay barn. Every time we carry hay to the animals, we drop some in the barn and in the loafing area. After a month of so of carrying hay through there and dropping bits. It accumulates and looks messy. So Every few weeks I rake both areas. It looks after those areas are raked, they look like a well kept farm yard. Plus if the hya accumulates, gets wet, it gets moldy and heavy for the next time one goes to clean it. Mold is not good for us. So I try to keep up with it.
I scrubbed the cows’ and horse’s watering trough.
During the past two weeks I have been spending a lot more time throwing the frisbee for our pup. She and I enjoy that pasttime. One day, I left the porch door open. I would throw her frisbee from off the porch and run into the house, while she ran after it, run to the counter where our hand crank wheat grinder (a Country Living mill) is located and turn the handle about forty to a hundred times to grind Einkorn into flour. The pup would retrieve her Frisbee and bring it into the house and drop it on the floor in front of where I was standing grinding the wheat. I’d make her wait for a bit to get a few more cranks in, and then scoop up the Frisbee and run out onto the porch, throw it and run back into the house to grind wheat. I had to wash my hands several times because the Frisbee became icky. But I decided to wrap a paper towel around the handle of the grinder, so I didn’t have to keep washing my hands while I did both things. We did this for twenty minutes. I was able to grind up seven cups of Einkorn flour of which I used to make rolls and an Apple Cobbler. Additionally we both got a workout.
Later in the week, the pup rolled in something gross. Not sure what it was, but smelled pukey, probably rotten meat. So she got the first official bath/shower that she has had in a long while. Probably the last official bath she had was the last time she was skunked. She swims in our swimming pool all summer so that suffices for us, most of the time. Now that she is older and knows us much better, she isn’t freaking out so much as she used during her bath/showers. She actually seemed to enjoy it a bit, especially the toweling dry part. She is a good girl.
In the garden, I pulled the spent broccoli, chopped off their roots with the hatchet, rinsed them and distributed them among the sheep and cows.
I pulled up volunteer PigWeed/Amaranth that I allowed on purpose to grow in certain areas of the garden. I distributed some of their seed around the property. It is edible for us, birds and livestock. Then I threw the bunches into the chicken run for them to clean out any remaining seeds.
I pulled all of the volunteer sunflowers in the Main garden, chopped off their roots, gave some to the sheep and some to the chickens. The rest, I chopped the heads off and put them on top of the chicken run, to protect them from rats and mice. I will feed them to the chickens over the next few days.
I still have a full three rows of intentionally planted sunflowers I have to harvest.
We are preparing the house for Thanksgiving guests.
We bought a twenty pound turkey from the Winter Ridge market in Sandpoint, ID this week.
The local turkeys have not really returned to winter close-in at our ranch. They spent years roosting in our trees near our corrals. But those trees are not so bushy and healthy now. So they are roosting elsewhere. But I have seen them way out in the open meadow foraging on our ranch a few times in the past two weeks. So they are nearby. Just not roosting here, that I’ve seen so far.
Jim and I re-situated and reorganized the book shelves in the boys old room/guest bedroom. Most of the books in there were school books: readers, math, science, Creation science, languages, kids fun books, etc that I want to keep, some law books, states natural history/tour guide books, arts and crafts, etc. We removed a book shelf from the room that had some of Miss Eloise’s old school notebooks. (She may enjoy looking at them again in the future.) and workbooks and a large amount of new unused notebooks that we were keeping on hand for our future use. Those we boxed and put in the shop. We culled some more books. Most of the culled books were put in a box for the boys to look through and claim at Thanksgiving. Those not claimed will go to the thrift store. We just have too many books! (We have bookcases throughout the house.)
I laundered the curtains from the kitchen and dining room windows, and washed the walls and ceilings near them. I dusted and washed windows.
We have an upper corner cupboard in the kitchen that I reorganized and wiped out. Also I cleaned out the refrigerator and wiped parts of it down. I really dislike seeing an overstuffed refrigerator with dirty shelves. One can’t find anything and stuff that is forgotten quickly goes bad. Plus, I run out of storage containers if too many are storing left overs.
I dug out our small strings of snowflake lights, put the batteries in them, and put them up on the kitchen/dining room curtain rods, on our piano, and on an old fashioned wood saw hanging on the wall behind our wood stove. I also pulled out little white plastic decorative houses (with snowflake walls and a battery-operated yellow light) out and put them on window sills and on the piano. In a few weeks we will bring in some balsam branches to further decorate the lights for winter decor and ambiance.
This past summer we began to lay soiled hay and manure around the openings in the woods of our ranch, because there are a lot of grass seeds left in the soiled hay. Our ranch needs to grow more grass. We have done this in the past out in the House meadow. As I was walking around the ranch all of those areas where we have already laid down the manure are now sprouting a beautiful grass. So we are continuing the practice. Every wheelbarrow load gets dumped in open areas in our woods and spread out in hopes that they will grow more grass in those bare spots this coming spring.
Late this past summer I had a lot of trays in the greenhouse that had grown greens during the past winter, spring and summer. I dumped a lot of those trays of spent soil in an area near the greenhouse in the woods. Now that we have had rain, a number of those piles of soil are sprouting Miner’s Lettuce everywhere. (See photo, above.) I’m so happy about that. So this week, I took Miner’s Lettuce seeds that I have in my seed bank and went out and spread even more of them in many other areas where we had spread soiled manured hay. Hopefully this spring they will sprout even more Miner’s Lettuce. I really enjoy harvesting and eating it.
I continue doing my Calisthenics, Rebounder jumping, planks, sit-ups, wall sits. This week I added back lifting six pound weights into my routine. And instead of taking Vitamin D supplements, I visit a local tanning booth a couple of times a week. I tend to use it just for the months of November-to-January. It has really helped my mood and health during the darkest months of the past couple of winters.
I did not write out any Isaiah or read Exodus, but I did read Zechariah again, and I read Isaiah from chapter 9-24, Revelation 1-11, plus chapters 20-22. I am still working on Memorizing Isaiah Chapter 11 and 12, Psalm 46, 121, 103, 97. I read many other scriptures, also because I am working on cleaning up the teaching on why we think Jesus will Return in 2028. I have published parts of it in the Blog in the past. Still working it is always a work in progress. Understanding of different points become stronger.
I used to love, love, love worshipping and singing to the LORD. And somehow, got away from it when we stopped attending a regular church service. I like being quiet and I “forgot about” many songs. When I was outside working around the ranch trying to remember songs, I couldn’t, except for the Messianic ones I love to sing often. Recently, I felt like it was time to return to worshipping. I dragged out my old CD’s and our small portable CD player and have been playing them again. Currently I’ve been playing Terry McAlmon’s, “Sound of Heaven”. I love several songs in that CD: “I stand in Awe”, Here I am to Worship, “O the Glory”. And of course others that are being brought back to my memory. “O Lord God of Israel”. “I Exalt Thee”, “The King is Exalted on High”, “Agnes Dei”, and “Ancient of Days”. My voice had been quite rusty. But now is returning. 😉 Many of these songs I am singing out loud while swinging on the hammock out on our porch or while walking around the ranch doing prayer walks.
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.