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 ram lamb. We are getting faster and more efficient with home butchering. Many years ago, I found that using an ATV cable winch with a stout rope tossed over a beam in our barn is the best way to have a quickly-adjustable gambrel height, for suspending a carcass. If I want to save the hide for tanning, then the whole process (from “blam!” to freezer) takes me about two hours. But if the hide will be discarded, then that saves me at least 20 minutes. (This is because I can work faster and not worry about nicking a hide.) Of course we usually prefer to keep and tan the hides, so I usually take my time.
We retrieved our pickup from the “nearby” dealership (80 miles away), following a clutch replacement. This was much more expensive that I had anticipated, because the transmission input shaft also had to be replaced. In all, it was a $6,000 job. Ouch.
I’m nearly done with my summer firewood cutting. My latest woodcutting project was a 78-foot tall dead-standing fir. It was 23 inches at the butt, and bone dry.
This past week I also had a day-long-trip to do some on-site consulting with a client.
I used some heavy cream to make pint containers of ice cream. Part of it was chocolate chip, but most of it was flavored with huckleberries.
I’ve been busy packing and mailing Elk Creek Company orders. Because the spot price of silver has rebounded, there were a lot more orders in the past week. About 40% of our orders are now paid in pre-1965 circulated silver coins.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather this week was warm and sunny, just as the summer should be, with temperature highs reaching eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit and temperature lows about forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. This week the hummingbirds and their now flying offspring mobbed our two feeders. There must have been about forty plus hummers vying for a sip. I’ve had to refill them three times this week. I love the sound of them and watching them.
Well, I’ve been seeing the baby frogs that I thought had been eaten a month ago by the crows. Nope, there weren’t any then because they hadn’t matured enough yet to be out. We were a month too early. I keep seeing them in the garden and am nearly stepping on them. When I see one, I usually scoop them up and gently toss them into the raspberry bushes, to get them out of harms way. currently they are the size of my thumb’s fingernail. Just wee little creatures, so cute.
Jim and I put the tent up in the meadow once again and have been sleeping out all week. We really like it. For some reason being in the tent is far more comfortable and more conducive for communication and closeness. I am sleeping much better out there than I do in the house.
On Independence Day we traveled to celebrate with our #1 Son and our five grandchildren. On this trip, we brought them very last of their furniture and memorabilia that had been stored in our shop. So, now, just the household goods and a spare car belonging to our #2 Son — our Perpetual Traveler — are still stored in the shop.
At their gathering, Daughter-in-law’s father and four of six sisters and their families joined in the Barbecue. She also has three brothers who were off doing something else with their families this holiday. There are a total of nine children in that family and in September when the latest grandchild is due, during the past twelve years, our son and Daughter-in law and her siblings will have produced twenty-nine grandchildren for her Father! We joke with our grandsons that they have “Cousins by the Dozens”.
We are familiar with many of Daughter-in-law’s siblings and their families, many of the grandkids/cousins, they are real quality folks, strong Christians, with very conservative values, and we enjoy being included in some of Daughter-in-law’s family get-togethers. So this holiday fifteen of the current twenty-eight grandkids were in attendance. They all get along really well. They jumped on the trampoline with a sprinkler running underneath it. Son and Daughter-in-law recently bought this house and finally closed on selling their old house last week. They are making this new house into a fun, functional, comfortable home and backyard, so they bought a four foot deep aboveground pool that all the bigger kids played it. There is also a kiddie pool for the under the age of six set of cousins and a Saucer swing. We adults kept an eye on the children while they swam, jumped and did their swinging. And we had many wonderful conversations with each other. A very enjoyable time was had by all.
Afterwards, the families all left and went to their respective fireworks displays. We decided not to go with Son and Daughter-in-law, since that would mean not getting home until about 3 AM. This time of the year, on the far eastern edge of the Pacific time zone and at the latitude we are located, full enough dark doesn’t arrive until 10 PM. So we started for home and decided to catch some fireworks in a little town on the way home where we have other friends. We visited with them for about two hours before leaving to find a good spot to watch that town’s fireworks. It was a very good display. Afterwards we had a an hour drive home and arrived home at 12:30 AM because of some traffic. It was a very happy 250th Independence
Day celebration. We hope that you all had an enjoyable day, too. May we not let our Independence and Liberty slip away.
I dehydrated much of the hind leg meat of the ram lamb. That yielded a full quart, dried. It is quite good. I put a baggie’s worth in my daily/emergency bag. That is the bag that i take on day hikes around here or when traveling to town. I collected a pint worth of bits for the dog, and a quart’s worth of stew meat for us. The two front legs were frozen for roasts at a later date. Jim cut in half the neck and ribs and roasted them for future doggy bone snacks, and froze them. The heart and liver were cut into smallish pieces and stir-fried and added to chopped chicken, rice and ram broth from last week’s butchering. That was then jarred and frozen for the dog and cats. Again, we ate the back strap for dinner. This time, I marinated it in Balsamic vinegar and oregano and salt and fried it up, I served it with baked red potatoes, broccoli, and an Apple Cobbler. Yum! Thus this was how this ram lamb was processed this time. We have many more to process in the coming weeks.
I continued and finished weeding all rows of potatoes. I re-weeded the garlic, and continued to keep the new garden patch in the main Garden weed-free. This is the first year in many, that I have such a “clean, relatively kept-up garden.” It feels good. I also began spreading soiled hay between some rows of potatoes for mulching. I will continue in the the weeks ahead to mulch the garden.
I rototilled a second time the last patch in the main garden. I will plant it for this fall and winter garden soon. I also rototilled between many of the potato rows, then I finished weeding right up next to the plants as mentioned above.
I have harvested two bowlfuls of red raspberries thusfar. Many more to come!
At the end of the week, we’ll begin picking up hay bales from the fields that the gentleman cut and baled for us.
This week, I read the book, “The Silence of the North” by Olive Frederickson with Ben East. This is about a young lady who was about nine in 1910 whose parents went to Canada to go up into the Northwest Territory to homestead. Her mother died in 1910.Then her Father took the rest of the family up from Edmonton into the far north trying to reach the Peace River. They ended up settling in the Tomato Creek somewhere South of Peace River along the Athabasca River near Smith’s Landing. The book is about Olive’s childhood, meeting her first husband and living in the wilds of Canada her whole life and all of her struggles, nears death from starvation, and encounters with wildlife etc. It was a very fascinating read on northern living.
Please listen to this Dr. Naomi Wolf interview from 2024.
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.