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:
We’\re nearing what I call the “Contented” part of the Fall season here at the Rawles Ranch. The garden and orchard harvesting is done. The hay is in the barn. The stove wood and kindling are safe and dry in the woodshed. The pace of life has dropped from frantic, to just mildly busy. This week, I slaughtered, skinned, and butchered a 7-year-old ewe that could no longer produce milk. I also have about twenty aged-out hens to butcher, but there is no rush. I can wait for a cool, sunny day. There will surely be another short burst of activity for deer and elk season. But until then, we can appreciate the Fall colors and feel content. We feel ready for winter.
I helped one of our sons relocate from one apartment to another apartment in a different city, using our horse trailer to move the furniture. I took that opportunity to empty, vacuum, and reorganize the Tack Room section of the trailer. This turned out to be a bit of an archaeology expedition. I found some things that I hadn’t seen in years. For example: Buried under a bunch of assorted tack, I found some riding boots that were sized for our daughters when they were less than 12 years old!
This week Lily and I harvested the honey from our two unoccupied hives. We got a lot more honey than one may usually harvest, because both hives had swarmed and “flown the coop.” Both of the hives had Supers. We ran all of the frames through our big Dadant brand hand-crank centrifugal honey extractor. It can hold four frames at a time. Lily will give you some details on the logistics, and the yield. It was a sticky but very fun project that had me quoting Winnie The Pooh. When some honey escaped to drip a foot-wide puddle onto our stove hearth, I of course said: “Oh Bother!”
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,This week was very busy and flew by quickly. We had clouds and sun, and rain on Sunday. Temperature highs of only 52 degrees Fahrenheit.
This week we finally processed the honey. We have only processed honey once before, years ago, and it was a small amount. The loaded honey frames had been sitting under sheets in the great room for two weeks until I had time to devote to processing. Jim set up the Dadant extractor. We started a fire in the wood stove and put the spinner right in front of the stove to heat up the honey to speed its flow. Then we started out with the heat knife to open the wax cells. But we quickly discarded that method for the faster method of scraping the capped cells with a fork, instead. Then we loaded them into the hand-crank spinner and spun away. It took two to three people to spin it, one to spin while the others weighted it with our bodies to steady it. We filtered the honey through a double tray honey strainer.
It turned out to be a three day process to get the very last drops! In the end we collected over seven and three quarters gallons from the two hives. Very exciting. In looking up the price of a gallon of raw wildflower honey, we saw that the seven and half gallons of honey that we harvested just covered the cost of the bees themselves. So our project of raising our own honey is still in the red as far as paying us back. And to boot, our bees abandoned us! However, one of the hives is close by, because I had two different colored bees, and the darker set of bees keep returning to our porch and are currently cleaning up our hives and honey frames. I plan to track them down next summer and find their bee tree!!! In the meantime, using leftover money from selling my cows last year, we bought two insulated Horizontal Hives this week, to try again next spring. This time there ought not to be angst among the bees with this domicile.
This week, I processed a frozen gallon of elderberries into syrup. I got three pints and eight, 8-ounce jelly jars worth.
I husked the hazelnuts from their outer leaves.
Jim butchered a Dairy sheep ewe that had dead teats this week. Kinda sad for me. She was the friendliest of them all and had the most beautiful fleece. At least I have her twin ewe lambs from this year and her yearling daughter to continue her genes.
We rendered her fat and made eight pints of sheep tallow. We processed her meat and froze it.
The next day, I fleshed her hide and salted it in order to tan it. I had attempted to flesh out a cow hide in the distant past, but didn’t succeed then. I was too busy homeschooling, not in good physical shape, and the whole thing just grossed me out at that time in my life. But this time her beautiful fleece totally motivated me. And for the past two years, I had been watching videos of folks processing hides of cows, sheep, and deer. So I was ready. I did it. I was a bit hesitant about starting but I knew that once I got going, I would really get into the job. And I did! Once I start something, I don’t usually want to quit until it is complete. It was a lot of work and took a lot of arm muscle effort. Jim set up a 10-foot-long 12″ diameter log on a stump at an angle for me to work the hide on. I used a draw knife and a dull Ulu knife. The latter worked best for me.
It took me about three hours to finish the job. I am quite excited to finish the process. We have another hide in the freezer that I plan to get to very soon, now that I started this process. As for the little ramling that Jim butchered two weeks ago, Jim put Borax on it’s hide and put it outside near the wood shed. But it disappeared on us. We suspect something made off with it… Bummer! We had both thought that the other had put it away somewhere, but when we had compared notes, we realized we hadn’t. So something must have made off with it. This current hide went into the cold uninsulated shop to protect it until next week when I will continue the next step in processing. I will keep you posted on its progress.
I made sourdough bread twice this week. My technique is improving all the time. We had a beautiful fluffy loaf this week.
I got into a really nice routine with milking our cow this week. I took her extra milk and made Farmhouse cheddar cheese for Jim and Miss Violet.
I cleaned out the Hen house and the cow stalls. The cow stalls were thick with horse manure. Our horse liked to hide out in there all summer to escape the biting bugs. I had neglected cleaning it until this week. Now I put the cow in there and lock her in to separate her from her calf at night. So I needed to get it nice for her.
I raked the loafing area and carted that decomposing hay to the compost pile.
Miss Violet and I, dug out the weeds in the section of the garden where I grew the potatoes and the tomatoes. We still need to do a lot more, but hopefully this will knock the weed population down a serious notch in this section for next summer. There were so many weed roots that I hauled away three wheelbarrows worth from a four-foot by twenty-foot section of garden. I also spread weed fabric on three more sections of the garden. Jim rototilled the section that had had the weed fabric over it for the past month.
Jim and I hiked up into the forest and dispersed the last of the plum pits in sunny/damp spots. I also dispersed a whole bunch of elderberry seeds. These were ones that floated to the surface just as I started to heat and mash the berries as I was preparing to make the elderberry syrup. The water in the pot was still cold. Therefore, I quickly spooned them up to disperse them.
I wrote out the rest of chapter 22, and 23, 24, and I am in Chapter 25 of Matthew. I am reading Glynda Lomax’s book, “The Wilderness Companion: A road map through the desert times of your life.” It’s been quite interesting. She has some gold nuggets and advice to help one with their walk with the Lord Jesus. Everybody’s walk is different. But currently, I am examining my life and am working on some unsubmitted areas of my life. I wish to be ready to walk, not just to “stand” in the very dark days ahead.
May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,
– 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.