To be prepared for a crisis, every prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. Steadily we work on meeting our prepping goals. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors will share their planned prep activities for the coming week, ranging from healthcare and purchases to property improvements and food storage. We also welcome you to share your planned activities for increasing personal preparedness in the coming week in the comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
JWR
Hello SurvivalBlog Readers,
This coming week’s weather in the American Redoubt is forecast for lovely: sunny and warm weather. We so need it! This week Lily and the children have two mornings of Homeschool obligations away from the ranch so not all of her ambitious prepping plans will be accomplished. These are our plans for prepping this week:
In the Garden
Strawberries need to be mulched with composted manure and straw.
Lily will be planting the garden: French beans, yellow wax beans, green beans, purple pole beans, red, white and fingerling potatoes, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, various lettuces, chard, spinach, et cetera.
In the Greenhouse
Warm weather plants do much better in the greenhouse. So this is where we grow most of our peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, lettuces, herbs and other crops that we wish to eat earlier in the summer.
She hopes to harvest that spinach and freeze it, this week.
Planting watermelon and butternut squash in the greenhouse.
Barns, Sheds, Coops and Corrals
Our large livestock spent the winter out in our mixed forest/pasture. However, they spent the last two weeks in the barn stalls and corrals which now need to be cleaned.
The chicken coop needs to be cleaned out (a monthly chore).
The small hoofed-critters’ shed needs spring cleaning.
Jim needs to drop a hollowed tree that hosts a wasp nest every year. This tree will be dropped in the early morning chill when the wasps are very lethargic.
Jim has some plumbing projects. He also plans to limb and buck some trees that were dropped three weeks ago. And he plans to plant eight saplings. As time permits, he will to continue with felling trees, limbing, bucking, stacking, hauling slash, and burning.
We pray that the Lord will be with you and will bless all of your endeavors this week, and keep you all safe.
HJL
The Latimer Homestead plans to continue with projects that were not completed last week due to weather.
Gardening For Livestock
While we have already put in approximately 100 linear feet of cow pea cover crop that will be used for chicken feed, we still have another 300-400 linear feet to plant. Additionally, we have about the same amount to plant in black oil sunflowers. The soil needs to be loosened a little after the rains last week before we plant, so there will be more ground preparations as well.
Hugh will also be working on the drip system to automate the garden watering.
Freeze Dryer
The freeze dryer move and shelving will hopefully be completed this week. We dehydrated chamomile last week, but we have a whole new batch ready to pick and dry as well as eggs, calendula, and other herbs. Even if we don’t get the shelving done, we really need to get the freeze dryer working again.
Sewing Room
Sarah’s sewing table and machine need to be set up so her sewing area is operational again. We will work to get the basics up and running this week, as she has some projects on hold waiting for her attention.
How is the cow pea cover crop prepared f
or chicken feed?
What a wonderful series of articles! I live in a suburban area and always dreamed of moving to a rural area to begin a more self sufficient life, but I never imagined the weekly tasks associated with it. This bring insight and a sense of organization required to be successful. Thanks for the education.
My truck being down this week has me delayed on a lot of my plans at the remote location. I’m hoping to have it repaired early this week so I can make the long trip to Tennessee to visit my father on his small farm. Otherwise I can use some of this time to work on reloading data. Good luck to all and gave a safe Memorial weekend.
Well, unfortunately work has taken from the homestead in TN to a mandated conference in San Antonio, sonthere will be nomorogress this week. It was all I could do to get the lawn tractor up and running to handle the grass before i left. So I’m just planning this week, mostly of clearing the trees and brush outside my barn that I want tonfence in as my barnyard, and making plans for a retention wall and brush clearing. A disappointing setback this week. Oh well.
It is interesting to read the different approaches that work in the different parts of the country. Because we live in the Deep South, we have to be very selective about where we plant our tomatoes because they do not like heat above 90 degrees. This is mid May, and we are having temps up to 90 already. So I have learned that, even though all the official instructions on growing tomatoes say to plant them in full sun, I plant them in full shade. Most people’s tomatoes die back about this time of year, but I can grow them all summer in full shade. Peach trees also require full shade down here. They are naturally an understory plant, so that makes sense.
Great idea planting tomatoes in the shade. when we lived in California the tomatoes grew wonderfully well but always got sunburned. I should have thought of planting in shade!
There are so many different ideas and ways to fix things. That’s why freedom is so awesome! I’ve also tried many ideas that didn’t work, like trying to grow a cucumber trellis as shade for tomatoes. Only problem…tomatoes don’t like cucumbers!
After rain delays and other setbacks, we finally finished the north pasture fence this morning! In the meantime, I learned that wild lupine is poisonous for both cattle and goats and the pasture has a fair amount, so I will be out pulling plants before I let the cows into their new digs.
The rabbit had 2 kits… 2 babies and rabbits doesn’t seem to go together… think that doe will be dinner in about 8 to 10 weeks.
Our next projects will be completing the perimeter fence on the west property line,(I ask you, does fencing ever end?) re-arranging the barnyard to accommodate the goats and planting the orchard that is still in pots and bareroot bags on the back porch.
Living the dream!
Hello Michelle,
Seeds are living organisms and should never be vacuum packed. They need to breathe. The best chance for viability is to store in a cool, dark, fairly dry place. The best germination rate will occur within the first year of their harvest. In the following years the germination rate will steadily decline. So by year three you should be planting roughly two to three times the number of seeds to achieve the same yield that would normally result from fresh seed. As a side note: some two thousand year old wheat seeds found in the Great Pyramid of Cheops were successfully sprouted, albeit at a very low rate.
Avalanche Lily (Mrs. Rawles)