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:
Two more calves were born last week, with no assistance. We are so thankful that our cows have all been “easy-calvers.” The first calf born this week is a quite vigorous little heifer. On Thursday, we rodeoed her into the milking parlor and dehorned her. As usual, we used the “dehorning paste and duck tape” 5-hour method that was taught to us by our friend Patrice Lewis of the great Rural Revolution blog. The full round-the-head wraps of duct tape keep the cows from licking off the paste from their calves. Next week, we’ll be dehorning the other calf.
Earlier in the week, with the help of our #2 Son, we dug 450 feet of trenches with a rented Ditch Witch. So, now we will finally have underground-piped water to our orchard (no more cobbled-together hoses!), and an underground powerline to our remodeled shop.
I was a bit shocked (pardon the pun) at the present-day price of 10-gauge underground-rated 3-conductor power cable. A 250-foot roll cost $349. Ouch. This shows how much copper has gone up — or should I say how much the Dollar has gone down, in recent years.
As long as the trench to the shop is there, I’m also laying two underground-rated Cat 6 Ethernet cables. That could come in handy, if we ever add a security system, or need Internet for some future office or other accommodation out in the shop. By the way, I plan to lay down at least six inches of soil between the power cable and the Ethernet cable, to minimize inductive power coupling or 60-cycle hum on the smaller cable.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather was hot clear and gorgeous earlier in the week with a massive cool down and rainstorms mid-week. The cool down and rain were very welcomed to continue the growth of our pasture grass and gardens and to give the mosquito populations a hit. Knock them down a bit. They are quite bad this year…We’ve been sleeping under mosquito nets for two weeks now.
Babies, babies, babies, everywhere, some expected, two unexpected.
The calves born this week were “unexpected”. I wasn’t expecting calves from our cows “so soon” this year. I have a little notebook that I write farming and weather notes in. I looked up when the calves were born last summer. Our calves from last year are not even a year old yet, having been born at the end of July and beginning of August. I wasn’t expecting their mamas to be so fertile just a couple of months after giving birth to them…They and our bull are very fertile. Duh! LOL.
I did write down that I saw the bull mount “F.” on August 15, 2022 so this is about nine months later and F. birthed earlier in this week. But I wasn’t expecting “A”. to give birth at all. I didn’t see the bull do his deed with her last summer. Anyhow since this is the case, I am now expecting one more calf to be born in the coming weeks from “E”. “E”. gave birth to her first calf in July last year. So she may also give birth in the coming weeks. “F”. skipped a year, last year after her first calf was born. So I was kinda thinking E. would skip, but she may not. Now that I’ve been alerted, I looked closely, and she is looking rather round this week.
Also, I missed the telltale signs of impending birth. When they went out into the meadows and were eating all that good grass and herbs, they “fattened” up but I was thinking they were gaining the weight and nutrition they needed to after the winter of being on hay “rations”, not the fattening that occurs in the last weeks of gestation. The cows, also are not noticeably bagging up a few days before birthing, like they used to. A friend said that was probably because I’m not milking them/using them for milk production, anymore. They only feed their young. The other reason is that their calves from last year are still nursing from them. Another telltale sign of impending birth is that their vulvas usually swell. I honestly have been so busy and since I wasn’t expecting calves, I wasn’t looking at their rear ends. And anyhow, the cows were out in the meadows for a week where I didn’t have a closeup view of them. And I had not checked on them in over a week. I’d just cast an eye down there to see their backs to make sure they were still there. I had not seen them up close in about a week. “F” gave birth out in the meadow. On Monday, I felt like I needed to go check up on them. That is when I saw the new calf. On Tuesday, I was able to get the whole herd into the corrals in order to see what the calf was and to get it dehorned — which we did on Thursday. “A” gave birth in the corrals Thursday afternoon while they were waiting for the dehorned calf to recover and be reunited with the herd. We kept her in the stall for six hours with tape on her horns to keep her from getting the paste on her mother and for easy access to her to remove the tape once the paste neutralized.
So the two new calves are heifers. Since last summer we’ve had four heifers born. What a blessing. However two of them are born from their mothers whose father is their father, so they are destined for the freezer. Too much line breeding! We do need to get another bull…It’s okay if the plan is not to breed the second generation, I think. I guess I need to research this more. I would never sell these second-line bred calves, not that I will sell any of them anyway. We haven’t yet and never intend to. Our animals are not used for our financial gain, only for our family use. We have given meat away to our extended family members and we give eggs away to folks at our Bible study and that’s the extent of others outside our family who might benefit from our food production. But regardless, these heifers are extremely healthy and vigorous, walking around in just a few minutes, nursing within ten minutes of birth, and playing/walking around their parents an hour later. I love it!!
We have more chickies hatching this week The one hen left from the forced brooding is hatching out her chicks. Thusfar she has hatched out one. I have a group of eggs in the incubator that were actively hatching that I slipped under her. SHE IS SUCH A GOOD MAMA SO CONCERNED FOR HER BABIES!! I am really enjoying interacting with her and observing her. She is so accepting of my interference in making sure her first hatched is getting plenty of food and water while she is attending to the others. Earlier in the week, before the eggs began to hatch, when I gave her recess, she would come out and eat rapidly and then return to the pot on her own. So dedicated. The eggs are not all hatching out in the same two days. It’s continuing through the weekend. One of the hens that I was forcing to brood ate some of her eggs at midweek. I retired her and took her remaining eggs, put them in a deep bowl filled with warm water to look for life in the eggs. When I saw slight movement, I knew they were still alive and viable. Some of those I put under the hen that is super broody. These are supposed to hatch this weekend which is extending her brooding time. Those that did not move, I put in the compost pile. I also checked the eggs in the incubator and culled out a few of those. So, as of writing this, eggs in the incubator are hatching now and through the weekend and the same under the brooding hen.
So for a recap of the “force” brooding experiment: I use 18″ tall and 20″ diameter black plastic gardening pots for the brood “boxes”. A heavy piece of plywood serves as a lid. I leave a 1″ air/light gap at the front of the lid. I tried to force brood a total of five hens. Four hens had to be retired. They just were not having the job. Only one that I forced actually went truly broody. I think, in the future, it will be best just to wait until hens go broody by themselves and separate them from the others and put eggs under them. It is much simpler and less work for me.
And speaking of such, another hen went seriously broody in the henhouse this week. So, I put her into the inner coop in a pot and put a dozen eggs under her. I have left the cover off her pot which gives her access to water and food in her enclosure. It appears that she is foregoing it…We shall see what she does in a couple of weeks.
A third went seriously broody two days ago, but I haven’t allowed her to keep the eggs yet. I might move her into the inner coop and put her in a pot and slip some of the already incubating eggs under her… I haven’t gotten to it, yet as of the moment of writing this update.
I am also doing another experiment. I put a group of eggs in a bowl on a towel and put an electric heating pad over them at the medium heat setting. I keep turning the eggs a couple of times a day, like I do with the eggs in the incubator. I candled them this week and I have seen life in them. I think I will be putting them in the incubator once the batch currently in there hatches out over the weekend and will let them finish their development in the incubator. After all of these ongoing hatches, I might be calling it finished. I am hoping for about thirty more chicks in all. It’s been fun, but I need to do other things this summer other than hatching out chicks. 😉
Miss Violet and I went on a foraging expedition and collected rose petals. I dehydrated them and received about a half cup of them. I will use them for tea, later. On our foraging expedition we scoped out areas for wild edibles and noted specific areas where edible plants were located. Plants we came across are Sego lilies, nettles, Buckbrush, Yarrow, Thimbleberry, daisies, dandelion, wild ginger, orach (perhaps, I need a positive identification for this plant), clover, sarsparilla, kinnikinnick, and Usnea and others that I cannot remember just now.
Jim, our daughter, and I went hiking up a local mountain. This hike we hiked up about six miles round trip. It took us four and a half hours. It felt super good.
I have been dehydrating more spices, more apple mint, lemon mint, and oregano. I also dehydrated a half gallon worth of Lamb’s Quarters. We have been eating them quite regularly. They are super yummy.
I finished cleaning the tack room. Horsey Friend came over and helped me go through a bunch of broken and messed up bridle parts and we determined that we could fix three of them and we found that I had already bought extra reins, stirrups, and another bridle. So now we have things fixed and those that cannot be fixed are in a labeled bag for parts to use in the future. I worked the horses once this week.
I weeded the garlic bed. In that same area, I also planted potatoes last fall that overwintered in the ground. Only two rows came up completely while the other three rows only had a few plants grow in each row. The patch is located in a fairly shaded area. I guess there is better success in planting one’s potatoes in the spring in sunny areas. My potatoes that I planted in the beginning of May are going gangbusters and are already flowering.
Also, I harvested my first garlic scapes and strawberry, once, this week. Looking forward to more to harvest in the coming week.
I was looking at my gardening notes from last year. It appears that my garden, this year is a few weeks ahead of last year’s growth. In fact it seems that last year everything was growing a month behind its usual and this year everything seems to be a few weeks to a month ahead…
I have been studying the book of Acts in my personal Bible study.
Warning: In the next week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at night there appears that there will be a big cool down in the mountainous regions of the American Redoubt and even down into the mountain areas of Nevada and Arizona, even danger of frosts and snow in certain areas. Please pay attention to your weather and be prepared to bring in plants and to cover them to protect them as much as you can. It could be devastating to our gardens and orchards.
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.