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:
With winter weather fast approaching, I had a few outdoor projects to complete. One of these projects was hauling some rotted-down cow manure compost, to form mounds for future squash and pumpkin gardens. Eventually, we plan to have about a dozen of these mounds within 150 yards of the ranch house. They will all be either in sunny openings in our woods, or at the edges of treelines, alongside pastures. Each mound will be roughly 2 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter. By widely separating these mounds, we hope to minimize the cross-pollenation of squash varieties. Because our livestock and the local deer don’t seem to bother squash and pumpkin plants, we don’t plan to fence around these planting mounds. (Your mileage may vary.)
Because we want our 24′ x 24′ bullpen to be more versatile, I added welded wire cattle panels (typical hog panel gauge) to the existing heavy-duty tubular steel panels. So it is now truly “bull strong and sheep tight.” I also constructed a temporary 6′ x 8′ foul weather shelter in one corner of the bullpen. I built that out of pallets, scrap lumber, and four driven T-posts. The sides and top of the shelter were all covered with tarps to keep the rain out and also to help protect the critters from any high winds.
I did the semi-annual “drain and clean” for our Redneck Swimming Pool, this week. This was the latest in the year that I’ve ever done that chore, so it was a chilly job! It feels good to have that checked off my “To Do” list. It is now clean, re-filled, and heavily dosed with chlorine. The pool is ready for winter. It will probably start icing-over soon.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The early part of the week was rainy with temperatures in the low forties Midweek until Friday was very sunny and crisp. I heard and saw flocks geese and swans flying south over our ranch. I, again, heard a pack of wolves up on the mountain, for the second time in three months, one afternoon as I was working in the garden. Since it was getting quite late in the afternoon, I put all of the livestock to bed earlier than usual, just in case. Of course I had to wait until just about dark to close the chickens in. There is no getting them in to their hen house during daylight hours…
We have a small flock of turkeys that have taken up residence with us. They join my chickens in their morning rations. There is a Tom Turkey that likes to take on my roosters. It’s fun watching them challenge each other in a gentlemanly way. They are not violent with each other at all. There is respect between all parties. There is just a lot of squawking going on, on the part of the Tom and strutting with his feathers all spread out in full array. It’s beautiful to watch. We bought a frozen Turkey through Azure Standard some time back so all of our turkeys are safe from being invited to dinner, at least this year.
This week, I finally finished preparing the bed that I wanted for planting garlic. That finishing entailed hand plowing, shoveling, and digging up grass roots along with dandelions, chickweed, dock, and other sundry wild herbs/weeds. Once the soil was all turned over and de-weeded, I piled on fresh compost from the compost pile, mixed it in and proceeded to plant 226 cloves of garlic. I mulched the garlic bed with maple leaves that a friend from Sandpoint gave to us. We don’t have so many leaves from our deciduous trees yet, because they are still babies. I bought organic garlic and put in 163 cloves of that. Then I put in the balance with my own harvested garlic from this summer. Most of the garlic was planted after dark by flashlight, because dinner preparation and eating took a good chunk of the late afternoon. Days are short now. Last year none of my own garlic grew, only the store-bought grew. I’m hoping that I cured my newly harvested garlic correctly this summer so that they will be viable and will grow new garlic bulbs for me this next summer. We shall see. Gardening is always an experiment.
I put the Asparagus bed to rest for the winter by spreading compost and mulching it with leaves.
I did a lot of deep cleaning in the kitchen, cleaned bathrooms, rearranged the living room/added a new fabric/look to our couch. I did a lot of laundry.
I’m of course also doing lot of cooking.
We went to town for groceries and to get a few items for the house and for future winter projects.
We went shopping for another bred cow and another bull calf for genetic diversity to rebuild our herd. They ought to be coming home to our ranch within two weeks.
I continued to do a lot of walking this week.
Continue to prep and prepare, stock up, pray, fast, read the Word of the Father and witness of Jesus Christ from Nazareth. Beg the Father for Discernment and understanding of the days we are living in. That includes the political realm. There could be great deception. That includes Donald Trump and his choice of men and women for his Cabinet. Hopefully, I am wrong about my suspiciousness of him and his team, but please be watchful. Remember I don’t like or trust either party, at all.
Be circumspect in this world. It’s not our home and it will soon be incredibly inhospitable to all Christians!
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.