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, most of my ranch projects were put on the back burner, as I caught up on tax paperwork. (Uggghh!) I did get the snow plow re-mounted on our pickup, and I had to use it for the first time since last February. It is nice to be able to slow down a bit. I’ll finally have the chance to catch up on scheduling long-promised podcast and radio interviews. And there are still umpteen indoor repair and upgrade projects here at the ranch that need my attention.
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
Well, the week started out very rainy then switched over to snow. Yes! If it’s going to be winter, let it be very snowy, so we can do outdoor winter sports!!! Cross Country Skiing! I also like wild ice skating when the conditions are right.
So this week, I was not as active in exercise as last week. I wanted to be, but other things grabbed my attention.
We had a terribly high propane bill last month, so I am now getting very serious about not using our propane dryer or our propane kitchen stove as often. I have been hanging our damp clothes on racks in the Great Room. Then some of the clothes get a brief low-heat fluff run in the dryer once they are dry, for just a few minutes.
We recently bought a number of additional cast iron cookware for more outdoor cookery. This week I built two fires one afternoon and stir-fried spaghetti meat sauce, baked spaghetti squash, and boiled pasta. It was a lot of fun and took about an hour and a half. I did the food prep in the kitchen, put the food in their respective cast iron or stainless steel pots (water, and carried out the jar of pasta), then took them outside. It was snowing the whole time. I built the fires and cooked over them. I cooked the meat sauce in my cast iron wok and put the cast iron pizza pan over the wok to simmer. I put the squash in another cast iron pot that has a lipped lid that can hold hot coals. I put this pan on the edge of the fire and heaped the coals on its lid and then turned the pot every few minutes for even heating of the squash.
I boiled the water over the other fire for a while, but it wasn’t burning as well, thus not heating the water fast enough. Therefore, once the meat sauce was cooked, I switched the pots and kept the meat sauce warm on the low fire, and put the pot of boiling water on the hotter, bigger fire. While waiting for the water to boil and the squash to bake, with an ax, I chopped a small stack wood. This is some smaller pieces — available to burn the next time I want to cook outside. I covered this small pile with a tarp. So now I won’t have to run back and forth between the fire pits and the woodshed. This week, I also bought a small slab of wood, a two-foot by three-foot board to make a small outdoor table to prepare food on or to put my pots on, after they’re done cooking, instead of on the ground where the dogs can get to them. They loved having me outside with them and kept stealing my freshly chopped pieces of wood. I had to retrieve the pieces later around the yard. The dogs kept trying to find the good-smelling food that I was cooking. Thankfully, cast iron is too heavy and it was too hot for them to get into.
Our food that night had a slightly smoky taste to it that was quite nice.
The next day, I had to go to town for an appointment and then did some shopping. I got home late and did some deep house cleaning until about eleven at night. The puppies really mess up our home quickly, and I had, had enough of the mess! I cannot live in a smelly, dirty home. My nose is much too sensitive. So Miss Violet and I worked hard vacuuming and then scrubbing the floors, and doing laundry.
The pups are not yet completely potty trained. 🙁 We are all guilty for not getting them out in time, sometimes, with all that we have going on. Miss Eloise is now working more hours leaving K. in our hands, and well, I get busy and miss his asking to go out sometimes. He’s actually quite subtle about it. It’s usually when I’m studying something, or doing dishes, he comes up and greets me, I say “hi” and pat him and go back to what I was doing, a moment later I hear “water” splashing and turn and see him weeing on the stone tile floor. I yell. He stops mid-stream. I run to the door and let him out. He runs outside and finishes his wee. With a puppy-size bladder, he has to go about once an hour! And we clean it up. Sometimes it’s easier just to leave the door open for them to come and go when they want. They love playing in the snow, anyhow! We heat with wood, so when it’s in the high thirties it’s not a big deal to leave a door open for a while. It airs out the house and cools me down.
I overworked myself and couldn’t get to sleep until after 1AM and then woke up at my usual time of around 4:30. Before the clock Fall Back it was 5:30. My body kept with that schedule this year. So I’m just going with it. Most of the time, we go to bed between 8:30 PM and 10 PM, these days.
Then the next day, in the morning, I cleaned out the hen house and washed its floor. (I’m crazy to do that, I know, but it’s so brand new! I want it to still look brand new and nice! I think that most of you can understand that! 😉 I then rested and only did the most basic chores for the rest of the day. I had tired myself out. I read a book that I had ordered by mail: “Diary of an American Boy 1805” by Eric Sloane. It is very interesting.
As part of the continuation of house cleaning and organizing, on the following day, I deep cleaned our pantry hallway, dusted, washed floors, washed buckets that we store water in for emergencies. I also washed some bussing trays that were holding stuff that I consolidated, I washed three pairs of black rubber mud boots that I’m no longer wearing now that we have snow, and put them away in my armoire until spring. Actually one of the pairs is very old, the other pair are my newer ones and the third pair may be Miss Eloise’s. Now, I’m wearing insulated winter rubber boots for chores.
I dusted, consolidated several paper bags filled with paper bags, consolidated some boxes of potatoes, and collected the seeds I had been drying on paper plates and towels, since August, stored in four paper grocery bags and put them into labeled and dated seed envelopes: six kinds of tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, Delicata squash, a winter squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, Honey Dew melon, Carrot seeds from dried carrot flowers, and Jacob’s Cattle Beans that I grew two summers ago, they were still in their pods in a paper feed sack sitting in the pantry hallway. I threshed them, by jumping on the bag. Then, Miss Violet and I picked through them and collected the healthiest looking beans and put them in a mason jar — two cups worth.
Miss Violet is studying flower arrangement. We ordered her a book that arrived this week. It is Judith Blacklock’s Flower Arranging: The Complete Guide of Beginners. She and I looked through it together and are studying the names, Latin and common, of all of the flowers and foliages and the different styles, colors, patterns and ways of flower arranging, etc. There are a lot of flowers that I did not recognize, from overseas, and a few that I did, such as the Acacia/Mimosa, Strelitzia/Bird of Paradise, African Lilies, Anemone — from my time in Israel. As well as common names that I knew but did not know their Latin names, and some Latin names that I had knew, but did not know their common names. For instance, I didn’t know that Syringa was Lilac, and some flowers that I recognized from my childhood but never learned their names, such as the Viburnum opulus “Roseum” by its common name: guelder, snowball. That was such a cool learning experience. It is fun to note that some wildflowers, wild plants, and trees are also used in flower arranging, Solomon’s Seal, Yarrow, Snowberry, Delphiniums, Mountain Ash, Horsetails; and even some herbs, such as Oregano, and Marjoram.
I had not ever paid too much attention to garden flowers, choosing instead, to always study wildflowers. To be fair, I, also have not been around too many flower gardens. Thus, this book educated me on exactly what they are. For instance, for me, I wasn’t too familiar with Peonies, Chrysanthemums, and Dahlias. I’m now rounding out my flower education and filling in the gaps. 😉 I do know that there are other flowers that this book has not covered that are also used in flower arrangements. We will have to get a few more books in the future for Miss Violet.
At the end of the week, we are expecting a large snowstorm over the weekend with up to nineteen inches of snow expected and wind gusts up to fifty miles per hour. Therefore, in anticipation of the inevitable power outage, I have filled five large pots/water Canners, buckets, pitchers, camping collapsable water carriers, etc. This will give us enough water for drinking, dishes, showers, and the chickens and sheep. If the power outages last too long to refill the cows and horses tank, we’ll just let them out of the corrals to go drink from the river. I moved our frozen foods from the small kitchen freezer to the chest freezer in the garage. I washed our plastic dish pans for dish washing. And I set up our lanterns and battery-operated lights. The girls cooked up some food. I think we’re ready to deal with it.
I did Cross-Country ski, twice this week. One ski session was at high speed for a half hour and the other ski session was a slower one, for 45 minutes. We still don’t have a deep snow base, and in certain areas of the property, I hit the earth through the shallow snow. The earth is still warm, so the ski gets wet and then the next strides in the snow freezes to the bottom and then picks up more snow, so that my next stride gets stuck and doesn’t glide. It pulls me up short. I have to jog along on the skis until I get to the heavier snow section then rub the stuck snow off the skis by slamming them on the snow and forcing a glide to glide again. Grrrr.
When we get a good base and the temps drop a bit more, it should be much better all-around skiing on the ranch. By the way, my skis are waxless/plastic and are my “do whatever, bang-around skis”, so I don’t care if I go over a few rocks or pine needles, tree roots, or schlepp across the gravel driveway in them. I also have very nice wooden wax skis. Those, I am very careful with. Here’s a toast to the next snowstorm, may you drop nine to nineteen more inches and may it not rain on top of it!
Did you hear Brian Williams farewell speech? Very interesting!
On CD, I listened to the rest of the book of Mark and most of Luke.
I am watching the news and seeing all the Commie crud our “fearless leadership” is foisting upon us. I’m not happy about it, it makes me sick. Additionally, in the past few days, there are hotter than usual, rumors of coming wars, economic collapse, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, additional variant virus plagues. But we are not to fear. We are to trust in the Lord God to take care of us and to hide us from the evil. Keep praying, reading the Word, prepping and studying your wild edible plants books. Jesus is Lord! He is coming soon. Get ready!
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.