To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make 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 this column, in the Odds ‘n Sods Column, and in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
This week I mainly did manure hauling, cleaning out our bullpen. I also took our electric ATV in for a speering box repair and some brake work.
Lily will give you a full run-down on other happenings here at the Rawles Ranch:
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a partly sunny and dry week in the mid-sixties to seventies this week. It was a quite a lovely week.
This week I finished putting raw manure in the Woodshed garden, covered it with very composted manure and planted tomatoes and Delicata squash in there.
In large pots, I planted my cantaloupe seedlings, and another type of squash. I lost the popsicle stick label so am not sure what it is. Time will tell me soon enough.
On one end of our very large manure pile, I planted about 50 Buttercup squash seeds.
Now that it seems that the Jet Stream has moved north and it looks as though we are entering our dry summer season, I pulled out the hoses for the Main garden, Woodshed garden, and Perrennial gardens. I have raspberries, strawberries, and some volunteer plants in the Main garden that still needs watering.
I scrubbed and re-filled the water tanks for our large beasties.
I cleaned out the chicken coop.
I cleaned up the greenhouse and planted my seedling peppers, cucumbers, and a few tomato plants in there.
A Sweet Animal story:
Late one evening, I was still up past my bedtime walking around the ranch, checking gates, making sure they were closed, since we are now letting the cows and horses free-range the main ranch area and I didn’t want them to go into the orchard or into the northeast pasture. I had left H., our highly energetic pup who runs nonstop and loves to chase everything, in the house during this little excursion. I had just checked the gate to the orchard, it was closed. The horses happened to be near that gate and followed me around. I hadn’t seen the cows in a few hours, so I meandered into the south pasture, to look for them. That gate was open. The horses followed me all the way down the dirt road. I came around the bend and saw the cows in the meadow. The horses walked ahead of me. I heard some small pattering feet running behind me. I turned around and saw M. our female kitty running towards me. She could see that I was not accompanied by that dog that always chases her. When she reached me, I saw that she wanted to be picked up, so I did. I hugged her and pet S. our dominant horse at the same time.
S. our horse, was being irritated by the mosquitoes and wanted me to scratch her itchy spots, that she couldn’t reach under her belly. I put M. the kitty up on my shoulders while I scratched S. Then, I draped my arms over her back and leaned on her, and hugged her while I scratched her neck. M. who was still on m shoulders, had never been this close to the horse before. She put her front paws on S’s back. She felt the horse’s warmth, then stepped onto her back and laid down. S. turned her head back to see the kitty on her. I still leaned on S. but was on high alert for any sudden movement if she was to freak about the cat on her back. She did not, she just swung her head around to sniff the cat. M. was a bit tense with S’s big nose sniffing her, but remained calm.
It was so cute, I wished I had my camera. (The photo above is just an example, of a similar situation.) M. literally stretched out her paws on S’s back and relaxed for a few minutes, while I continued to scratch S. After a few more minutes, M. came back to my shoulders. I said goodnight to S. and we started to walk back to the ranch house. M. wanted down so I crouched down for her to leap off me and returned to the house.
The days are getting darker and more evil, keep prepping, reading God’s word, and praying.
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– 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.