To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both 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 the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
We had another week of nice weather. Apparently, the Jet Stream has decided to park itself down over California, so the storms are missing us. Locally, we are already at 90% of the normal snowpack for the winter, so I’m not complaining.
I finished laying one of the floors upstairs in the shop. That was 3/4-inch tongue-and-groove plywood screwed down to some hefty engineered joists that are on 16-inch centers, so the floor has plenty of strength. The plywood looks decent, for a utility/storage room, so I’ll probably just leave that “as-is.” No need for paint. And I also did some more insulating wall/ceiling backing board carpentry. So I’m now ready to hang the ceiling over that room. Those will also be plywood. A guy tends to get set in his ways on construction techniques. With so much plywood, the storage rooms are starting to look just like the way that I finished the JASBORR interior: Sturdy, plain, and utilitarian. The wiring will all be in steel conduit, with steel junction boxes. No style points will be awarded there, either. My construction won’t win any beauty contests. But I’m confident that someday my grandkids will say: “Gee, Grandpa sure built things stout.”
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
Well, the weather is “warmish”, low thirties, during the day with rain and snow showers and fog. It feels like early March! At least the above-freezing temperatures have melted the snow layer and some of the ice, there is an ice base layer under this but for now, we are now walking around on slush layer in the driveway and parking lot. This is a far better condition to have than walking around on straight ice.
I continued with my deep cleaning of the house. This week I let the wood cook stove go out and spread the ashes out in the Main garden. I scrubbed its stove top and its oven, chopped more kindling, and rekindled the firebox. I continue to cook on it quite regularly. I like it lots and lots! Only when I am in a big hurry and have to go somewhere in the early morning, am I using our propane stove these days…
I continued washing with Murphy’s Oil Soap the rest of the wood cupboards in the kitchen and wood surfaces in the Great Room. I then oiled them with Scott’s Liquid Gold wood treatment. They look so super nice. I need to do the wood cupboards in the laundry room and hallway, next.
I washed the ceiling fan blades and light globes. I dusted all surfaces and washed all windows and mirrors.
I cleaned out the cold cellar room, took out any rotten squash and carrots, sorted through the few rotten sweet potatoes, and washed the containers that they had been stored in. Even when stored at 38 to 42 degrees, squash from our garden seems only to be good until early January before going bad. Next year I will try to dehydrate and can more of it.
I cleaned the hen house twice this week. It is so much easier to do it frequently. It keeps the moisture and thus bacteria down and minimizes the mold that I react to. I put their compost all around one of my raspberry beds in the Main garden, now that the snowpack allows for easier movement. It is very crusty and hard, now, allowing me to walk on it with very little post-holing. I will continue to be putting future hen house cleanouts around all raspberries until finished and then move on to other perennials as the snowpack allows. It is raw manure, but it is going on top of the snow, so the nutrients will leach out and seep down into the snow and into the soil during the winter and spring rains and by the time spring comes, four to five months down the road, the bacteria content will be nil.
Recently, from curiosity, I have watched videos on the wild and agricultural harvesting and processing, both by hand and industrially, of pistachios, walnuts, almonds, dates, olives, wool, and flax. Additionally, I have watched a few videos of folks practicing traditional skills from Iran and from the Tirol Mountains of Austria. I like the simplicity and no use or very little use of machinery — very hard work. I am gleaning a lot of information from watching these videos.
This week the three of us went to town to check the mail and do some shopping. We received a large amount of mail — most of which was your subscription donations to us for the Ten Cent Challenge. Thank You ever so much for your generosity! We really appreciate it. While Jim drove, I opened the envelopes and sorted between the checks, cash, and stamps, recorded the amounts for Jim to account for the government’s piece, and read aloud the notes that you folks included with your donations. We love hearing from you, our readers. To be very truthful, many of your notes are very encouraging to us in this season of needing that encouragement. So many of you are so faithful to subscribe every year and there are also many new people deciding to give. We really, really appreciate these gifts and are very happy that you enjoy what we are doing and gain so much benefit from it. Some of your cash donations were immediately put to use in buying about four hundred pounds of layer pellets for our chickens and to buy Lixit buckets for our cows, horses, and sheep. (An annual winter treat for them.) We also bought cat food for our kitties. (Our older daughter ordered about twenty fifty-pound bags of dog food a year ago, that we paid for, so our dog is still well stocked with that for the foreseeable future.)
Many of you mentioned in your notes to us that you miss our comments section. I do too. I miss your positive feedback and all of the information that I also gleaned from your experiences. And I also miss your camaraderie. But I am super glad not to have to “moderate” comments because of the time sink that it was, and because of having to deal with the evil trolls that harassed us. That upset me the most. To think that there are people out there who just want to stir up trouble, cast doubt on our convictions, not respect our views, nor our commentor’s views and choices. I’m just shaking my head.
I want to share a couple of notes with you all that we received that encouraged us or put a smile on our faces. Honestly, these notes of feedback are greatly needed by me. Because some weeks, I think: “How can I keep these folks entertained”? I’m just writing about our day-to-day life experiences of just living here isolated on the ranch. It’s kinda boring to me, humdrum the same stuff every week, sometimes, and often I haven’t done much “prepping” or have anything new to share, and feel like: “What is the point?” Our life is mostly just maintaining that which God has given us, animal chores, cleaning, housework, gardening, some food preservation. Sometimes it is the same ole schtick each week, unless our critters do something unusual or we have a wildlife encounter. Speaking of which, our neighbors have had a Mountain Lion family hanging out about their ranch during the past two weeks. They don’t have any livestock as of yet, thankfully. And thankfully for us, those big cats are there and not here! Armed as usual, I have walked the ranch perimeter this week, looking for their tracks and did not see any. Our neighbors sent us pictures. It was fun to see those big kitties. 😉
Anyhow, I am thankful to hear that you like hearing about what we do, during the week, and that knowledge inspires me to try to find something more, that I want to do towards prepping to tell you about. I am very honest and I only want to tell you what we are doing and I don’t make up anything and if I start something and you don’t hear anything more about it, I probably wasn’t consistent in doing it, like I haven’t trained the dog since I last mentioned it when I showed the grandsons what she was doing…I just haven’t gotten back to it. Poor pup. She is so bored with me being bent on cleaning the house the past few weeks… 😉
One card we received was a photo of a 1920s truck with a HUGE load of hay on the trailer behind it. The hay three was times the truck’s width and twice its height. The card said, “Hay there” and the writer wrote, “Hope you don’t have so very heavy loads in 2023.” Jim and I, laughed because we had just literally overloaded our SUV, with grain, cat food, 60-pound Lixit buckets, and groceries. Our vehicle was very heavy at that very moment. Seriously, though, we hope and pray that the Lord God will not give us any more loads than we can bear this year. He promises not to give us more than we can handle. This card is going to be displayed on the refrigerator for a season.
Several folks wrote in to say that our Saturday posts of what we are doing on the ranch were a blessing to them and helped “ground” them.
One of you kindly wrote:
“Thank You for your work on SurvivalBlog. We especially enjoy the weekly notes on your life and progress and Mrs. Rawles writings of Faith and Family.”
Someone gave us $50 dollars cash and wrote, “Inflation” and, “Keep up the work of God.” We had a good chuckle at that comment.
A few mentioned that they were very happy to pray for us when we published specific prayer requests for our family. For those of you that did and do pray for all of us, we are forever grateful and thankful. Miss Eloise, our daughter, is doing much better these days. She still needs lots of prayers, mainly that God will continue to hedge her in and give her boundaries in pleasant places and that He would open the doors He wants her to walk through and close the ones He doesn’t want her to walk through. The rest of us are doing quite well, at this time, thanks be to the Lord God…
Finally, we received notes from “Sis” and “W.”, whom many of you may remember from the now-defunct comments section. It was good to hear what they have been up to during the past few years. They are doing well.
Jim was delighted to receive a package with a couple of old license plates for his collection. One of them was a Texas plate that included the digits “6666”. That is very cool, given the history of the famous Four Sixes ranch. Those plates will go on display in our newly-remodeled shop building.
That same day, my new LL Bean sleeping bag came in the mail. It is a beautiful navy blue with the soft Dress Tartan flannel inside. I love its colors, softness, and loft. I immediately put my old shredded sleeping bag in the laundry and will put that one away after laundering. I put out the new sleeping bag on our bed to use as a handy quilt blanket. (It is a rectangular cut, so it lays flat, when it is unzipped.) We usually have a nice comforter on our bed. When it is made up for the day, I don’t want to disturb it if I get cold and want some blanket warmth, thus I use the sleeping bag. Of course, I also have lighter hiking bags for backpacking, etc. This new bag is for everyday use and for any traveling-by-car type camping etc…
Also, last week I ordered two new Hebrew Bibles with both the Old and New Testaments and a mini book of the Psalms from the Bible Society in Israel. I bought a regular Hebrew Bible and a Hebrew Pocket Bible to carry around in my pocket. They came in the mail this week, I was simply amazed to get them in only about a week by airmail. I thought it would take at least three weeks to receive them. The price was very good, eighty-five dollars for three books and airmail postage, and the service was top notch. One can order on the Internet and can pay with PayPal, or call them directly. I called them direct and ordered over the phone, using my credit card. The young man, Beni, who answered, speaks excellent English. They will answer the phone in Hebrew, but just ask them if they speak English and they do and will. Check out their store and their website. To call them one must dial, from the USA, 011 then the rest of the phone number: +972-2-6251849. Keep in mind that they are seven hours ahead of the Eastern time zone of the USA. They have the Bible with both English and Hebrew if you want that and in most of the other languages of the world. I prefer just the Hebrew. Please check them out. They serve the whole world.
I spent time reading Psalms from the mini book and spent time skipping around the pocket Hebrew Bible.
I went for several walks around the ranch. Late in the week, I finally got back on my skis and cross-country skied around the perimeter of our fence line and out in the meadows. Along the river, I did see some large suspicious tracks, but they were so marred from the weather I couldn’t be sure if they were from a Mountain Lion or from something else.
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.