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:
An update on my cataracts: My right eye (with a lens optimized for close distances) is healing slowly, with some residual fuzziness. So I’ve postponed my second cataract surgery to Wednesday, February 26th. That will be an operation on my left eye, with a new implanted lens optimized for driving distances (20 feet to infinity). I’m sorry that I’ve been missing a few blog posts, or posting truncated columns. Lord willing, l’ll be back to my full slate of daily posts by about March 15th.
As usual, Lily has been driving me to Coeur d’Alene for the surgeries and the “day-after” follow-up examinations. She is a saint!
I will have heavy lifting restrictions for another three weeks. I’m hopeful that I’ll be back to my regular ranch chores by March 20th. We have a pugnacious “spare” ram who needs to go in the chest freezer.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather was snowy with some rain with temperatures ranging from low of 18 to high of 42 degrees Fahrenheit.
This week, I cleaned out the hen house once again when the temperatures climbed high enough to melt the ice in their bedding. We also prepared the inner coop for the now three-week-old chicks that I had incubated in our incubator. (I had temporarily moved to our master bathroom.) In the inner coop of the Henhouse, we put in two heating lamps and built up a deep hay nest. I then moved the chicks out there.
Then I spent several hours deep cleaning our bathroom from their molting dust.
During the past few weeks I had been sanding, off and on, our Birchwood kitchen counters that we had installed three years ago, but never sealed. They were a mess. This week, we sealed them with Varathane and then Epoxy. Except for a few missed spots and imperfections, they look so incredibly nice. We plan to add another coat of Epoxy this summer, when we can be out of the house for a few days while it cures. As it was, it was bad — meaning that I am very sensitive to the smell and feel that my respiratory system reacts to it. I spent three days in our bedroom and the first night out with Miss Violet and our pup out in our guest cabin. When in the house, Miss Violet and the pup stayed in her bedroom. Jim felt fine sleeping in our bedroom the first night, but I did not. The cats were locked up in the guest bedroom for two days. We kept the windows opened in the Great Room and the pantry hallway for most of three days with a fan sucking air out of the house and the wood stove burning hot for the whole time. We ate canned and leftover food, so we didn’t have to spend time in the kitchen during that time. And if I had to pass through the Great Room, I held my breath until I was in our bedroom. On the day we poured the Epoxy in the morning, we did it as fast as we could, hence the few missed spots. I then spent the next two hours outside cleaning the Henhouse and doing other outside chores. I hate chemicals.
Of course, after sanding I spent three hours cleaning the Great room from the wood dust before coating the counters with the sealants.
Once the counters had cured, I pulled out Miss Violet’s sewing machine and spent some time troubleshooting as to why in the past, I was having trouble using it. It turned out that I needed to loosen up some thread guides. I then really understood how to thread the machine. After many failures and adjustments, I figured it out and we were “off to the races”. I had sewing lessons in the seventh grade and in my Junior year of high school. After I married the first time, I was gifted a sewing machine. I still have it, but it’s a fairly complicated machine. We bought Miss Violet a very simple sewing machine at one time. I made a few skirts for the girls very early on when they were toddlers. Then later. after I married Jim, I sewed a few more skirts when the girls were in Junior high. Then I didn’t sew again for some years. A couple of times in the past few years, I tried to use Miss Violet’s sewing machine and the top thread kept breaking and the bobbin thread kept seizing up. I couldn’t figure out why and very quickly gave up. But this week, I really sat down and studied the manual and didn’t budge until I had it working correctly. It turns out, the last few times that I tried to sew, I was misthreading the top thread and the tension had to be loosened in the bobbin.
So, this week, I sewed curtains for the kitchen sink window. They are simple and beautiful and go so well with the epoxied birch counters. I need to get one other curtain rod for the kitchen table window and small rods for two open areas under the birch counter and will make curtains for these spots with the same material.
Additionally, I taught Miss Violet how to use her sewing machine and we finished up a small nine-patch pillow that she had started to hand sew.
Further, we found an unfinished skirt of Miss Violet’s that we intend to finish and intend to finish hemming some Linen pants that were mine that I gave to Miss Violet. I am very happy to have that sewing machine working. I intend to be using it a lot more often in the future.
For some reason our laundry had really piled up this week, so I spent a lot of time taking care of that, too.
So very strangely, the onions, peppers, leeks, and celery seeds that I planted in the greenhouse guest bedroom, did not germinate. Only a couple of onions germinated. Some of those seeds were a few years old and were store-bought. I needed to replant everything again. I did that on Friday. Additionally, I planted tomatoes, Rapini, Batavia Broccoli, cabbage, white and purple cauliflower, Mignotte strawberries, and bush container cucumber seeds. Many of those seeds are from the ones I saved in previous years. We shall see how they do.
We cooked up more ground beef and cooked rice and mixed them for our pets’ food for the next week.
I spent some time studying dairy sheep care: herbal parasite mitigation, non-traditional feed, and how to preserve their milk. I learned that one can freeze their milk for up to six months. I learned that a fast freeze is best at temperatures of -20 Celsius or 0 to negative 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I learned that one can make cheese and yogurt from frozen sheep milk. Great! This is no problem for our three propane freezers.
I hand-copied Chapters 21:6-25:1 of Deuteronomy and studied and translated the Hebrew version of Chapter 20. I really enjoy copying out scriptures. I think I would like to copy the book of Isaiah next. Then perhaps Matthew or Luke?
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.