Editors’ Prepping Progress

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:

This past week I had to re-establish an electric fence hot wire. Our bovine delinquents — especially our bull — have been disrespecting our fences too much. So the electric fence now goes entirely around the perimeter of our ranch. That required adding more than 500 insulators. Since some fir saplings had grown up and some cedar limbs had dropped down to touch the hot wire’s position, it also meant doing a lot of chainsawing and pruning. It was quite a chore!

We’ve had a larger number of Canada Geese come visit our pastures this spring. Not only are they messy, but they also graze prodigiously.  So, nearly every morning I have to hop on an ATV, and chase them off. I don’t go full Clint Eastwood (no swearing!), but close to it. Get off my lawn!  

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
This week has flown by.  The weather was warm and gorgeous all week until the last few days when, finally and thankfully, we received some much-needed rain.  No, it won’t break our drought, but it definitely gave our region a much-needed drink. Our meadow did flood with the warm weather causing the snow in the high country to melt.  But it is not at all at the level of previous years.  The geese who like to spend time out on the open meadow have come up onto the near-house meadow because they need to get a break from being in the water and they like to eat our grass. Jim doesn’t like them in the near house meadow, hence the chasing them off our “lawn”.

In light of the wet meadows and the fence-hopping bovine delinquents, we have been keeping all of our large livestock in the corrals to keep their hooves dry to lessen the chance of abscesses. and to give our pasture grasses a chance to grow.

The farrier came recently and took care of the hooves of our horses.

Jim and I recently celebrated our anniversary.  We’ve now been married for more than a decade.  It has been a wonderful time full of love, friendship, partnership, work, and adventures.  We celebrated with a picnic lunch during a bushwhack hike up the very steep (often 45 degrees angle, 1,800 feet elevation gain), Unnamed Mountain, across the river from our ranch.  It was a lot of fun and nearly inaccessible. But it afforded beautiful views of our valley.  We were pleased to also realize that with the strenuousness of the hike, that we were in better shape physically than we had thought. Since my recent diet change of not eating any grains and in addition to that, not eating any dairy for over five years, and eating a ton more greens, my health and sense of well-being has improved greatly. I am not keto or exactly paleo, because I will eat, squash and potatoes and sometimes, beans.  I eat meat, fish, greens, and vegetables, fruit, potatoes, and lots of seeds and nuts, Olive and coconut oil, etc.

A change in plans concerning the new greenhouse build. Jim mentioned it to Number One son and he expressed an interest in building his first greenhouse at his property. Therefore, Jim offered to him the glass panels, and he accepted.  It’s all good. Everyone needs a greenhouse!

This week, I have weeded the cabbages in the Main garden and re-mulched the onions planted there.

I am waiting a couple of more weeks, before planting my seedling squashes, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans and a few peppers outside, because we are still having occasional frosts.  We had a light frost this week.  It didn’t harm the cold weather crops at all, but would’ve hurt any warm-weather crops.

In the greenhouse, I have transplanted many orange peppers and mixed pepper plants into long shallow totes to grow in the greenhouse this summer. I also transplanted a group of peppers, tomatoes, cabbages, and celery into larger pots to give to a friend.

I have been cleaning up the greenhouse and pulling weeds in all of the beds and trays.

In the Annex garden, I have been pulling thistles in the onions, beets, carrots, kale, parsnips, and Einkorn.

I mowed a path through the orchard, but need to finish mowing around the fruit trees. It’s becoming a jungle in there.

I am in the process of raking manure and chucking rocks that have appeared over the winter in one of our corrals.  I took the manure from there and added to my compost pile.  Miss Eloise is raking the manure in another corral.  I helped her move six wheelbarrow loads of it down to the Annex garden in a section between the two wheats that I am growing.  I plan to plant my leftover potatoes and some squashes there, in the next two weeks.

I have been getting up early in the morning and listening and reading in Hebrew to the book of Luke which I finished. I have begun the book of John.

Our weekly Bible study group has been studying the book of Psalms.  During the Bible study I have been checking out certain verses in Hebrew.  It frustrated me, because I felt like I wasn’t getting the full benefit of the Psalms during our Bible study with only being able to only look up a few words during the study. I hadn’t been studying ahead.  I had that “unprepared” feeling/being out of my depth.  So I have added the translation of Psalms to my morning routine to study ahead and will also bring my Strong’s Concordance from now on.  We do not have Internet access there.  I am using two sources to help me, e-Sword with it’s parallel and comparative scriptures, and the Mechon/Mamre site which has the Hebrew and English side by side and has a link to hear the Psalm read aloud in Hebrew. I started with Psalm 33-35 this week, so far as of the time of writing this, which is a review of last week’s Bible Study. And will continue with 36, 37, and possibly 38 which will be the Psalms we study this coming Saturday.

This week, I have also begun studying the Greek Alphabet. Hah!   I want to be able to read the New Testament in Greek.

I am working on memorizing the Greek Alphabet song, the letter shapes, dipthongs, and their sounds. I have already spelled out English words using the Greek letters.  It’s fun!  I have been using the book Song School Greek that I bought years ago in the anticipation of someday studying Greek , and I have been listening to some YouTube Kid versions of the Greek Alphabet song. Did you know that our founding fathers in order to go to college, Harvard, had to have working knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, in order to even apply to the College?  And some of them went to Harvard as young as the age of thirteen? Today, we mostly expect that we will learn those languages while in college! (The girls and I studied some Latin for a few years during their homeschooling years.)

On that point, I have a few biblical points that I would like to make concerning the days we are currently living in and are approaching. These points were brought to my attention by other bible scholars, through their translation of Greek Words in the Book of Revelation. These scholars gave me the impetus to start studying Greek.

I want to say that words have distinct meanings. YHWH-God’s Word is very literal and spot-on concerning the days we are living in.

What I am showing you, please take to prayer to see if this is so…

First let’s go to Revelation chapter 6 which describes the Five Seals being broken.

In verse 2 we see:

“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.”

Now go into Blue Letter Bible and look at Revelation 6:2 and click on the book and scripture number and the Greek words of this verse will show up with the Strong’s concordance number of their meaning. Look up the words “bow” and “Crown”.  “Bow” is the Greek word “Toxon”  and “crown” is the Greek word  “Stephanos” but it’s synonym is the Latin word “Corona”.

Synonyms:

Now look of the definitions of those words in Merriam Webster’s Dictionary.

Toxon, in English is Toxin:

toxin

As a few other scholars were saying, paraphrased by me, the Greek Word Toxon meaning Bow also can mean an object whose tip is laced with poison that is shot into someone to cause harm. To me, this is very reminiscent of a Vaccine for the Corona virus…Hmmm?

It seems to me that we are very close to, if not in, the beginning of the Breaking of the Seven Seals spoken of in the book of Revelation.

This is for thought and study for you all.  Take it to the Lord God and be Bereans.

One other note of interest of a similar topic in Revelation 18:23

May you all have a very blessed and safe week.

– Avalanche Lily, Rawles

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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.