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:
I finally completed the latest woven wire cross fence. I included a hot wire on top. The time-consuming part was constructing cedar log H-braces and hanging two new tube gates. This past week we also dropped an 80-foot dead-standing fir. I probably won’t get the chance to split that wood until the third week of August, or even later.
I’m pleased to report that the shopping cart glitches at Elk Creek Company have been fixed. Mark your calendar: On Monday, August 9th, 2021, I’m starting a special sale, in honor of the birthday of gun designer James Paris Lee. I look forward to your orders.
Avalanche lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The week’s temperatures started out very hot, but cooled down on Thursday for the weekend. What a wonderful respite from the heat. No rain though came through, as of yet.
I weedwhacked the orchard. The tops of some of the grass heads were five feet tall.
Jim joked, saying, “I recommend that if you would enter that orchard that you be issued a machete, a pith helmet, and a Webley .455.” He was only half-joking. It was a jungle in there. Even though it’s fenced in with an eight foot fence, when I walked into it for the first time in a few weeks, I was a bit apprehensive that something could be in there, like a Mountain lion. I definitely made some noise as I picked my way through the grass to the back of it, to assess the situation, before starting to weed whack.
I didn’t mow the orchard earlier in the summer because I was foraging there for herbs: dandelion, Heal All, Red clover, Lamb’s Quarters, etc.
I also finally weeded two rows of the Annex garden. I have a lot more to do. It had Bull thistles five feet high. I hate Bull thistles.
I harvested from the Main garden most of the Yellow onions, more cabbages, and more raspberries. As I pick the last of the raspberries, I have begun pruning out the spent canes. I have made rapid progress in the Black Raspberry and Red Raspberry patches. I have left the few canes that are still producing. I have many different types of raspberries that ripen at different times in the season. The early ripeners are just about done. The mid ripeners are going full bore right now, and then I will have some go through the fall to the first frost.
During one afternoon, in the heat of the day, I harvested two rows of potatoes. The Reds and the Purple Vikings were ready to be harvested. These potatoes, growth period is 90-100 days and we were at day 95. I had to check the Blog in the month of May’s Preps of the week, to see when I had planted them. 🙂
The potato greens were beginning to turn yellow and fall limp on the ground. The potatoes were beautiful and large with no blemishes. I really enjoy “digging” for potatoes, (I pull the plant shake it out, then use my hands to move the soil to look for the rest of them). It’s like digging for gold, but more nourishing. It was very hot and I had beads of sweat dripping off of my forehead. This scripture out of Genesis 3:19, kept going through my mind as I worked:
I am very happy to report that for the first time ever, outside, on the black layment row cover, I have decent-sized cantaloupe growing. It helps of course that we’ve had a very hot summer with most afternoon temperatures in the high eighties and nineties.
This past week I dehydrated raspberries, mint, carrots, zuchs, and cabbage.
I ordered and received twelve Black raspberry canes to replace the ones that I seem to have lost in the past year. Those I need to put in the ground this coming week.
One early morning this week, Jim began to plant another one of our trees that we bought, after our neighbor had come with his tractor and dug oversize holes for them. Later, Jim came to me and asked me to finish the job, because he needed to work on his fencing project before the heat of the day drove him inside. He told me that there were too many rocks in the soil and I would have to sort out most of them. I went out to the tree and the soil was filled with rocks. Therefore I got on my hands and knees and began picking them out. You know, I really do enjoy getting my hands in the soil and on rocks. After a bit, I shoveled in some of the soil, then got my wheelbarrow and filled it with some well-rotted kitchen compost and put that around the tree, then put more of the now smaller rock-filled soil, then went and got a wheelbarrow load of cow manure and straw from the corrals and put that around the tree. We had some salmon carcasses that we had saved and I also put that into the hole near the tree. Then I finished sorting the rocks out of the rest of the soil and shoveled that in to top the hole. Afterward, we drenched the hole with a lot of water. We hope that tree has a great start and will grow huge and beautiful in the coming years.
I did swim and ride my bike a few times.
I have been in serious Bible study for more than 18 hours this week, and collating all of the prophetic teachings that we have received over the past three years. I am planning on sharing them with you ASAP.
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.