To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make 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 this column, in the Odds ‘n Sods Column, and in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
We had a very productive week, here at the Rawles Ranch. I helped Lily move and spread a ton of cow manure. (Literally, a ton.) We made the seasonal switch to summer tires on both of our main vehicles. Our youngest daughter collected four boxes of fir cones, to supplement the cedar that I split each year, for kindling and I constructed a new roosting bar in our hen house, using an 8-foot length of S4S 2×2 fir.
This weekend I traveled to a gun show, looking for pre-1899 cartridge guns, for my Elk Creek Company inventory. By American Redoubt standards, this show is “fairly close by” — across a mountain range and only a 4.5-hour drive, each way.
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week was very sunny and spring-like for the most part. We had one rainy and snow-showery day.
This week was all about gardening. I am loving it! I am a very happy and very busy girl, once again.
As Jim said, we, the girls included, spread literally about a ton of cow manure, that our neighbor had dropped with his tractor into our Extension garden, a plot adjoining our Main garden. We took the top layer of that manure which was a foot or more deep and spread it around three other plots in the main garden.
We spent much time raking leaves and rearranging rocks of an allowed-to-remain low rock wall, not garden- related.
On the rainy and snow showery day, the girls and I planted fourteen trays of seedling pots with Squashes: Delicata, Butternut, Buttercup, Spaghetti, Zucchini, Hubbard, Crookneck; Honeydew melon, celery, and a huge list of tomatoes: Green German, large Yellow sweet, Roma, Glacier, Willamette, Amish paste, etc. All of the trays, except two of the tomatoes are situated on the Bathroom greenhouse’s floor. We ran out of floor space. Therefore, I put the tomatoes in the outdoor greenhouse underneath large clear plastic totes. The totes ought to give them extra protection during our sometimes below-freezing nights.
I spent a lot of time sorting through two large totes of seeds, planning what to plant, when, and where.
I rototilled three plots of the Main garden and planted two hundred onion bulbs, so far…It’s just the beginning of the planting season.
In the greenhouse, I have prepared a few large pots to grow cucumbers in. Also, some of our other seedlings from an earlier planting, the peppers, had volunteer kale and tomatoes growing in them, so those volunteers, were removed from the seedling trays in the bathroom greenhouse and were transported outside to the outdoor greenhouse and were replanted in beds. I covered those tomatoes with clear totes. I had about seven tomato volunteers. I think that they are orange cherry tomatoes. Time will tell…
Miss Violet’s chickies moved out of her bedroom to be with the big chickens this week. They appear to be doing well in their new home.
I have done a whole lot of household chores, as per usual. It has been a very busy week and I have truly tired myself out. I’m looking forward to a restful Sabbath.
I have listened to the Book of Matthew Chapters 16-28 in Hebrew this week, while following along reading the English. The Word of the Lord Jesus is powerful.
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– 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 still want to hear from you.