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:

Our shop insulating/partitioning/pegboarding/shelving project is still in progress. After I get all of the rivet shelves in place, the next steps will be to better organize our tools and supplies. That surely will keep me busy for several weeks, this winter. But, hey: “What’s time, to a hog?”

Speaking of our shop, we will soon be in the “decorating” stage. As long-time SurvivalBlog readers may recall, I’m a collector of license plates. With the new shop partitions, I will have room to add a lot more plates to my collection. So I’m making a special request:  If you have any spare old plates, then please box them up in a USPS Flat Rate Box and mail them to me. I would really appreciate getting them!

I might want to now branch out into collecting foreign plates and really old plates, but presently my license plate collection has four major themes:

  • Bible verse custom plates.
  • Permanent plates or plates with “Perm” stickers.
  • Custom plates with references to hunting, guns, cartridges, or calibers.
  • Wildlife theme plates — especially deer or elk

The inspiration for starting my license plate collection dates back to around 1974, when I saw one of the first “vanity” plates on a Jeep in my hometown of Livermore, California. It read:  “7MM4ELK“.  (California introduced custom plates in 1970, in a law signed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan.)

Our mailing address:

SurvivalBlog.com
P.O. Box 303
Moyie Springs, Idaho 83845

Many thanks!

Now, over to Lily…

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
We are continuing to have very unusual gorgeous sunshiny weather with high temperatures in the seventies and lows in the thirties and forties.  I love the sunshine, and warmth, but we are in abnormally dry level on the drought monitor, now…

This week, I picked apples from two more of our trees.  Only four of our seven trees grew apples this year. The others must’ve needed a rest this year. I have one more tree that I am going to allow the apples to grow until just before a forecasted hard frost hits which seems to be arriving around the 23rd of this month.

I harvested for the first time ever, hazelnuts, from our young hazelnut bushes. Exciting! I am in the process of drying them out and will let you know more about them later.

I harvested half of my celery, washed and chopped most of that and dehydrated it, the rest I put in the refrigerator.

I am a newby in most herb growing, since planting some last year and this year. Previously I had only grown a few varieties of mint, parsley, and cilantro. I harvested sage for the first time, ever, and put it in the dehydrator, along with mint, oregano, and the celery.

I also harvested dill, horehound, and rosemary — also firsts for me.  (Well, I picked and used dill earlier in the summer). Until the celery, mint, and sage are done in the dehydrator they are sitting on a windowsill.

All of these herbs were grown in our greenhouse, except the sage.

In the greenhouse, I prepared five more trays and planted: Corn Mache, claytonia, Winter thyme, basil, and Winter cress

We had another light frost two mornings in a row this week, therefore I decided that the squash growing in the woodshed garden and on the compost pile were done for the season. So I harvested the rest of the squash, I had harvested after the last light frost a month ago most of the large squash but left the small ones, to grow if we had nice weather which we did. I cleaned out the vines, in both areas and rototilled and prepared that soil in the woodshed garden to plant planted 218 cloves of garlic and five short rows of potatoes: Viking, Yukon, Red, and Banana Fingerlings.  We shall see how well they overwinter in the soil and grow next spring.

I also plan to plant a few more vegetables in the coming weeks to get a jump on spring: carrots, beets, peas, turnips, onions. (See the recent article from Garden Therapy.)

I began breaking ground (rototilling) in the Main garden after a Shmittah year rest, this week, to prepare it for growing next spring. A Shmittah year begins and ends on the Biblical Holiday of Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonemment. After rototilling it, we will be spreading the compost all over it and will rototill it in, etc.

I cleaned our henhouse.  The chicks are growing well.

Here are some videos I watched this week that are pointing towards Biblical prophecies taking place in the coming seven years, the next Shmittah cycle of which very well could be the last Shmittah cycle during which Jesus may return and the Millennium begins, see the books of Revelation, Daniel and Matthew 24:

Remember that modern Israel is the timepiece.  Israel was born in 1948. She will be eighty years old in 2028.  Psalm 90 states that a man’s life is seventy years and eighty if there be strength.  Jesus said In Matthew 24:that the generation that sees, the “Fig Tree” blossom (Hosea 9:10 states: “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved.”) will not pass away before he returns. Israel is that Fig tree.  Therefore I believe we are most likely in the time frame for the window of His return.

Matthew 24:32: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Everything happening in the world, geologically, economically, agriculturally, culturally, morally, and geopolitically, all appear to be fulfilling the prophetic scriptures.

Let’s keep watch and continue to pray for the Lord God’s protection of us and for His provision and wisdom and guidance in the treacherous times ahead.

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.