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:
My report for this week will be just one line, as I’m very busy helping to prepare for a memorial gathering, and frantically busy, clearing out my late mother’s house. Now, over to Lily…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
As of Monday, I felt tremendously better from the cold. I didn’t have any Covid “telltale” symptoms, but took one dose of Ivermectin just in case–the horse paste that we always keep on hand here at the ranch. We have the pills on order. It didn’t taste like anything and I had no side effects. And, I didn’t notice that I passed any unwanted critters in/from my intestinal tract (Large ones, that is.) Being a mom (moms can do nearly anything) and an intensely curious and earthy person, I did investigate closely… I attribute, my much quicker than usual, recovery from this cold, to the 6-8k milligrams of Lipid C, and 75-100mg of Zinc, that I took daily. I laid out in the sun two-to-four hours per day for four days and ate and drank lots of water, fresh green and fruit smoothies, and lots of nourishing soups. I rested a lot.
I discovered in the past month that I really like eating beets. I have been eating them in Borsht soup, putting them in my smoothies and making raw beet salads. I had been eating a lot of their greens in the past two years but not the beet root itself. Yum! I will be growing them next summer for both their greens and roots, Lord willing, down in the Annex garden. The right side of that garden was not planted this summer, therefore it had it’s sabbath rest this year and will be planted next summer.
I did a lot of raking of leaves from the few deciduous trees we have near the house. Some of the leaves I put around the new black raspberries in orchard and I put three wheelbarrows worth in compost pile. I did not rake up all of the leaves, because I also want the earth to be replenished by their decomposition.
Later in the week, our cottonwoods dropped their leaves down near the open meadows. These we will be raking up next week.
I cleaned out chicken shed and put their manure in the compost pile.
I cleaned up manure around house, parking lot, in the house meadow, and loafing area and put this in the compost pile.
I will be spending a lot of time building composted soil for the future.
I spent time watching different foraging videos
In preparation for keeping the Shmittah in the beds of the Greenhouse, not the pots and bussing trays, I shoveled out almost all of the soil from the middle bed in the greenhouse and spread it on an area that I want to have better pasture grass growing. I say almost all of the soil, because I still have in the back corner two broccoli plants and a kale that I want to allow to keep growing through the winter, to harvest leaves and flowerets, until the hard, hard freeze kills them. The third bed is growing celery, lettuce, beets and Swiss chard, for this winter’s greens. Come spring, I will also empty it out. The plan is to empty out the three beds of their soil and allow the wooden frames to breathe for a year, and then the next spring refill them with fresh composted soil. The middle bed was the source of a mite problem that I had in the greenhouse. The other beds seemed to not have the mites, or at least the veggies, I grew in them, weren’t susceptible to them.
Anyhow, if I don’t have soil in the beds, I won’t be tempted to throw in some seeds. 😉
Two bussing trays where I grew green peppers this summer seemed to have mites. Therefore, I dumped the soil from these trays out on the pasture and scrubbed them and refilled them with the mix composted manure and kitchen scraps. I also topped off two pots that grew the greenhouse cucumbers with the same.
I replanted three of my healthiest greenhouse pepper plants in pots and brought them into the house for the winter: two sweet and one jalapeno plants. We shall see how they will fare in the house. Other years, I did not have much luck with them…
I ordered a large amount of mixed grass and other seeds: clovers, buckwheat, turnips, mustards, alfalfa, etc to build up our pastures next summer.
Jim and I are researching tractors and manure spreaders to improve our pasture’s health for our animals. It’s difficult to spread manure with a wheelbarrow and shovel. We have around four to five areas of pastures in which we can rotate our animals through, but they are fairly large pastures and I am interested dividing them up further by buying some moveable electric netting to create smaller grazing areas in which to graze the animals in rotation, thus allowing other areas to grow more and to not be grazed down too much.
The bull has been released from his bullpen for the fall breeding. The cows and horses have been released from a meadow that they had been grazing for the past six weeks. Now all of our big beasties are back together in one big happy herd. The bull is so happy to be reunited with his cows, heifers, and his little steers, and is currently behaving himself. He gets his daily chin, ear and cheek rubs and scratches from me and he is now allowing me to pat his back and scratch the root of his tail. He never let me scratch his back or tail in the past. He always had to face me. His trust of me is building. Now the cows and heifers are beginning to become friendlier towards me also. I just now, have to work on becoming friends with the steers that were born this summer. Because we had to neuter and dehorn them, they are very wary of us…
I did some bike riding.
I have listened to the book of Exodus this week.
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 want to hear from you.