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:
I slaughtered and butchered another yearling ram, just a few days before our Passover (Pasach) dinner.
I helped an ailing neighbor select and purchase a used SUV, because his 23-year-old one was falling to pieces. This necessitated making day-long trips down to Coeur d’Alene, on two successive days. Those trips set me back on my writing and editing schedule. But it also gave me the opportunity to buy some more light fixtures for our shop. But installing most of those will have to wait, since Lily has a fencing project planned. I also have a few more deadfallen trees to cut up.
I mailed out five Elk Creek Company orders this week. Surprisingly, four of those orders were paid in silver. I also mailed out another 14 SurvivalBlog Old School (S.O.S.) newsletter envelopes, to new subscribers. As new subscribers, they each got both the March, 2026 issue, as well as the two previous issues from 2024 and 2025.
I finished up the waterproof AC outlet mounting and wiring on a replacement post near our bullpen. I constructed a demi-roof atop the post using scrap lumber and a scrap piece of roofing tin, just to make the outlet even more weatherproof.
It is really starting to feel like Spring here at the Rawles Ranch. Our pastures are starting to green up. The treefrogs are peeping in the evenings. And our little lambs are running around, kicking up their heels.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Dear Readers,
This week was rainy and cool with temperature highs up to about fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit with a couple of frosts, and lows in the high twenties Fahrenheit. One morning we woke up to a scant snowfall. Snow was slightly accumulated on cold surfaces. It melted very shortly afterwards.
This week I set up the ranch animals’ feeding chores for summertime. I am now letting the Chickens out every morning to free range the ranch. Generally speaking, they like to hang out in the open barn on the hay bales which irritates me because they poop all over it. But now our hay supply has dwindled enough to be able to cover it with a large tarp. So my hens who like to hang out in the open barn on the hay can no longer mess up the hay. (This is the primary reason why I don’t let them free range much after the hay is brought in, in the summertime.) This also means I’m no longer feeding and watering the chickens inside their Hen house. I am spreading their feed out inside the grain storage section of the open barn. If they want to eat then they have to come outside. Also, their water containers are situated around the spigot so I can easily fill them up while filling up the cattle water trough which is just on the other side of the fence in their corral. So overall the feeding set up is much easier to manage. It also helps with the hen house clean up since they are in it only to lay eggs and to sleep at night.
I started incubating about forty eggs in the incubator this week.
This week, I did a lot of house cleaning, organizing, etc for Passover. We had our Saturday Bible study grloup over for the Seder meal Thursday afternoon a few hours before the real the actual Passover began which went from Sundown on Thursday and all day Friday. It was a wonderful time of remembrance of how Jesus died and shed his blood for our sins and represented the blood of the lamb that was on the door lintels of the Hebrew Children the night of the Passover before the Exodus. They were protected by the blood from the death angel that came to kill the firstborn of all Egyptians who didn’t trust in the blood of a lamb. Jesus, by his death, fulfills and IS the Passover. He is our unleavened bread, and the first fruits of the resurrection of the Dead. He will raise us up from the dead on the last day of the Age of Grace when He comes in the clouds. Amen and Amen and Amen.
Baby bummers and the rest of the lambs are eating a lot more hay these days. This allows me to spread the feeding times out even more. And it decreases the number of times that I hold moms down for them. The younger lambs are now three and four weeks old. The ones born in February are already six weeks old. Time is going by, very fast!
I’ve begun to memorize Deuteronomy 32.
We are working on finalizing some of our preps during the past few weeks in light of world events. We had to order a new water pump for our Redneck swimming pool. The other one, though being a beast, and was still working, had broken its inlet screens and somehow we misplaced it last fall, and we can’t find it now. And I’m telling you we have torn the ranch apart, looking for it.
We’ve ordered three more folding 100-watt solar panels to charge our mobile backup power system. We do not have the very large solar array of our dreams. We still use grid power. The El Grande system was one thing we didn’t get to, choosing to use our money on other prep items.
Jim bought me a big Katana Boy Silky Saw for my birthday. Soon, I will try it out.
Even though we have propane appliances, I am really studying and getting into my mind/collating information that I’ve gleaned and setting ourselves up to mostly either eating really fresh foods or to preserve foods without refrigerating, canning, or freezing. I don’t feel well when I eat canned foods, whether store-bought or home-canned. I am bothered by chemicals, lack of nutrients, and too-concentrated flavors. These days, I prefer to dehydrate or freeze or Lacto-ferment, use salt or sugar, or oil and, or cold storage or in the ground.
This winter I kept carrots and parsnips in the garden and they did super well. I am still harvesting them whenever I want them. This summer, I need to troubleshoot my cheese aging process to preserve milk long-term. We have a cold cellar room that we can put fresh milk in to keep for a few days, instead of using the refrigerator. However, most of our sheep milk either gets turned into yogurt or we drink it quickly.
I’m also thinking a lot about how our forebearers and the native Americans stored foods in what containers, etc. They dug holes in the ground and put their dried meat and squashes in baskets in the ground, and also put dried berries, pemmican, dried greens and herbs, etc. in clay pots. Middle Easterners put water and soured milk in goat skins. Probably also grains, beans, etc.
One day this week I spent a considerable amount of time flipping through Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America.
Each time I flip through it, I learn more and more plants both those that are in the east and central North America, but also those that overlap into the western North America. Also, every time I read up on a plant and review a plant that I already know the plant doesn’t seem so strange or worrisome to try to eat someday. I’m also going to be trying a lot more new plants this coming summer. Familiarity boosts confidence.
May you all be safely hidden in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, – Avalanche Lily