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 review their week’s prep activities. They also often share their planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, property improvements, 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 the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
JWR
Dear SurvivalBlog Readers:
This week I did some fence building, firewood hauling, and some more slash hauling.
I also did some gear organizing in JASBORR–preparing for a long drive to the gun show in Helena, Montana. Lord willing, today I’ll be at the show selling some autographed books, a few pre-1899 antique guns, ammunition, full capacity magazines, radios, a Panasonic CF30 Toughbook ruggedized laptop, and some sundries, at rented tables. I’ll be joined by my #2 Son, who is a Montana resident. He plans to sell a lightning-fast six core PC tower, two rifles, and a Saiga 12 gauge shotgun. Note that we won’t be at the show on Sunday.
Avalanche Lily Reports:
This week, we received two pear trees to replace the two that I had bought a few years ago that had died. I planted a Bing Cherry tree, six more golden Raspberries and 8 table grape vines\s.
In the garden, I planted yellow beans, mixed bush beans, French beans, Acorn squash, Hubbard Squash transplants, summer squash seeds, Basil, Cilantro and Oregano, orange, red, and yellow Peppers and a few more tomatoes. I am awaiting receipt in the mail of some Sweet potato slips. I have a bed almost prepared for them. I just need to add sand to the area and hoops to cover them with plastic. So, as of now, the main garden planting has been completed. There is some more planting I could do in the greenhouse. In there, I have one bed that needs some more composted manure, then I can plant some more tomatoes.
I had mentioned that we were going to try growing peanuts in a previous week’s update, but we have nixed that idea for now. I have a bed in the Annex garden that I will prepare this summer. That will be for next summer to plant either oats or spring wheat. There is also a bed in the regular garden I have another bed to build up for next year. I have two new beds set aside for strawberries that also need it’s soil to be built up in order to plant more Strawberries. I plan to take baby strawberries from the runners of my established beds and transplant those into the new beds I’ll try to work on that also, this coming week.
The sprouts of potatoes, corn, Cranberry beans and squashes planted in the Annex garden are beginning to show. Yay!
This week the plan is to weed all of the gardens, weed-whack the walkways in all of the gardens, bring in manure to the two new beds that need to be built up, and clean out the chicken/turkey coop. Actually, I’m not sure how much work outside, I’ll do this week. It seems our socializing last week gave us all colds. As I write this I’m in the second day of it. So far Jim has escaped the fun, this time. I think it’s the first cold I have had in a whole year! Usually colds bypass me, but this one didn’t.
Blessings, – Jim Rawles and Avalanche Lily, Rawles
HJL
This week at the Latimer Homestead, we have plans to expand one of our garden plots for additional planting. Also, it is time to do some replanting and fertilizing in the main vegetable garden. We harvested our first radishes as well as some herbs this week. These two projects will occupy a consider amount of our attention, along with weeding and keeping the plants and animals hydrated in the heat we expect.
An incident involving a four-legged visitor to our property this week reminded me of the importance of OPSEC. A small friendly dog showed up in our garden this week and when I caught it, I saw that there was a chip ID on the collar. Calling the phone number put me in contact with the dog owner within just a couple of minutes. To my dismay, as I described where she could get her dog, she blurted out “Oh, your the family with that huge garden!” Our garden isn’t actually that large though. It’s just that no one around us gardens at all. During the good times, the garden is placed where it is most easily managed, but if TEOTWAWKI occurs, there will have to be a more clandestine approach to gardening. That’s certainly something to think about.
o o o
As always, please share your own successes and hard-earned wisdom in the Comments.
Our garden is visible from the road also. The soil was built up there by the previous owner for 20+ so we didn’t reinvent the wheel and left it. Amazing how many know of it and watch our progress every year.
Two years ago we decided to move the garden behind the house and use the locations down hill slop and our roof as a water catchment. Next year will begin that journey.
For sweet cherry, I highly recommend planting Lapin Cherry, not a Bing. Cherry growers in the Flathead lost their Bings to a nasty freeze many years ago. Growers went to Lapins. Lapins bloom later thus getting past frosts. I had two Bings and lost the bloom several times to frost. I cut them down and planted two Lapins. They are fully mature trees now, have never lost a crop. Lapins are fast growers so you must pay attention to proper pruning. They produce massive amounts of cherries. We get so many I feed them to the pigs, they love them. Funny to watch them spit out the pits (same with Italian Prunes).
Another orchard tip: mix 50/50 white latex paint and water and paint the fruit trees trunks up to the first branch or a little higher. This prevents sun scald and slows the sap run in early spring. This also delays the blossom time a little therefore missing a blossom killing frost.
And another tip: When apples/pears are thinned, remove all except the “king” blossom. Look closely and you will see the blossom cluster in the form of a “star”. The “king” bloom is the one in the center. This forms a larger fruit. We start thinning when the fruit is generally an inch+ in diameter. We have over 25 fruit trees; apples, pears, sour cherries, sweet cherries, prunes, plums and nuts, a lot of work but worth it.
Tell the son to keep the Saiga 12! If it’s not running well, check the forum at Saiga-12.com for solutions. Rarely do they come perfect out of the box, but with a little work, they turn into sewing machines. I have 5 of them well tuned and ready in the bunker. Minimum power load for this gun is 3 dram.
We had 4 days of rain this week so this morning we were outside working by 0630. Got the usual homesteader chores done early; gardening, taking care of animals, collecting eggs, treated a couple of animals with bites from too rough play. Corn and grapes seem to be growing 4 inches a day, other fruits and veges doing well. Picked about a dozen early plums, will process them and freeze them until there is enough to make jelly and sauce. Later this afternoon I’ll be making bread, processed the last of the honeysuckle into jelly and cough syrup.
Ordered a few necessary items and replaced a few old tools. The gas powered chain saw finally got too heavy for me so I bought a 20V battery saw. The large outdoor deep sink arrived and we got it placed but still need a plumber to add a line for it. Filled up the truck at the feed store; picked plantain and chickweed for the rabbits and groomed another dog.
Watched a few WW2 movies, which reminded me of what a hero my dad was. He was wounded at Pearl Harbor and then again in Europe, but lived to come home and serve 28 more years in the Army. They were truly the greatest generation!
Animal House I’ll bet your father was actually wounded up at Schofield Barracks, not Pearl Harbor. Jap planes flew through Kole Kole Pass and thoroughly strafed the barracks, Wheeler Field as well. When I served with the 25th ID, you could still see a few buildings left unrepaired, showing the bullet holes. Army soldiers would very rarely be on a Navy base at 7am on a Sunday morning.
Our garden is also visible from the road, but as far as gardens in the area go, ours isn’t very big. However, we are pretty well known as to what we do around here. It’s relatively ok, since this county is very rural, and I believe in being in a supportive community. So even though it’s weird, we have to be real with people. I don’t spread all the little details around, but people have a pretty good idea of what we do. I mean, the gossip groups in a small county will talk no matter what you do, so you may as well plan on it. It’s safer than the TSA gathering data on you. At least they have bad memories, lol. The truth is, what I do isn’t that weird to our family, which has been well known to the community for well over 50 years. And so it isn’t too surprising that I milk a cow and have chickens and a garden and can and make butter and cheese, since my mother in law did the very same stuff all these years. We hadn’t really changed from that. We still have beef cows, like she did. My father in law had a herd of goats that roamed the area before fences were mandated. So for me to have a few goats isn’t weird. That’s just our family. It’s what we do. So the gossip groups probably don’t really enjoy discussing what we do. It would be same song, third or fourth verse.
got baby chicks and baby ducks in. had to water raised beds, very hot here. got another raised bed finished and planted
I know of an old homestead on public land with cherries and walnuts that have gone feral. For long term thinking my first choice would be copies of these not a grafted cultivar from a nursery. If they died under my care, but carried on in the wild then I’m really goofing up.
Ditto the comments about OPSEC.
We purchased our land about a year ago, finally getting around to building. We’ve done some clearing and ‘work’, but the dozers and excavators have really brought out the neighbors. Several have asked to ‘see’ what we’re doing back there behind the woods. “We’re building a home, but the missus and I are kind of private people….” is hardly a deterrent, they still want to be nosy, or curious, or… whatever. I’m rather certain a few have ventured on our land when we were not there, despite ‘no trespassing’ signs and being asked to stay away. We’ve met several neighbors who are like minded and understanding, yet some are decidedly not-welcome, and obviously don’t like the idea of being held at bay.
While on the one hand, I can understand curiosity, but the persistence of one individual in particular has me concerned (the open beer can in his car doesn’t help).
Husband and I had a session with our firearms instructor at his club. I had sent him a list of guns we wanted to try based on recommendations from this blog. He brought all (or similar) guns. Interestingly, he had just bought the Ruger PC9 9mm carbine which, by the way was terrific for this elderly woman. Another club member loaned us a speed loader—wow, what a difference it made for arthritic fingers! We have not yet even purchased our first firearm but, having taken two different courses with this instructor and been to the range with him several times, we are ready. He also urged me to sign up for an all day women’s instructional course at the club and I did. Looking forward to that in late June. Women are divided into five groups with instructors and we will rotate through trying every kind of firearm (allowable here in MA). $40 for the day, includes lunch! He also showed us a couple of videos of competitions and said we were good enough to do that.
Planted pole beans and set out more tomatoes at our house in the People’s Republic. Then we loaded our clandestine chickens into cat carriers (they are getting used to this) and came to our house in the Redoubt Northeast. Up here we met roofer and agreed on repairs, cut branches that were shading woodpiles, went to town rummage sale at the firehouse and got lots of kitchen equipment and canning jars, got soil test kit and daily sun evaluator from garden store, cleared leaves from a little stream on property to assess its flow in case of well problems, researched log splitters after a session with the maul, had dinner with my family who live near here. A good week!
Beautiful weather this week for working the gardens, as long as we start around 0700 and wrap it up by noon. Really starting to warm up and need to exercise caution with regard to heat. Jade and Yellow Wax progressing smartly and had to use sections of fencing (2-3′ high) to prop up the plants. Herb and tea (new this year) gardens looking great and been harvesting for a few weeks. Had some false starts with new hydroponics system, but kinks worked out and things are looking up. Six baby chicks aren’t really chicks anymore will soon shift from chick feed to layer pellets and then release them into general population. Honoured to attend full military funeral for a 95- year young 1LT, ANC (Army Nurse Corps) who served in WWII. Gosh, not many of those greatest generation Vets around, can never, ever, forget them.