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:
This week we took delivery of three truckloads of 3/4-minus road gravel. Two of those loads were spread as “touch up” on our roads and parking area, and the third one was stockpiled for future use.
I had a rather frustrating trip to the service department of a car dealership in the nearest good-sized town. That was a 70-minute drive there, and then a two-hour wait, just to be told: “Yep, you were right about what was wrong with it. We can get the parts on order for you.” So, after paying a $99 diagnostic fee, we are perhaps ready to schedule a $1,000+ repair. That will of course require another 70-minute drive, each way. Sometimes, living out in the hinterboonies has its drawbacks.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week the weather here in our neck of the Redoubt, until midweek, was cloudy and downright chilly with low temps down to forty degrees Fahrenheit and until Thursday temperatures peaked at only sixty degrees. There was some rain, earlier in the week. Thursday and Friday were more sunny, with the temperatures in the high sixties.
This week was all about the chicks. We had a total of twenty-two hatch. The hen hatched out three and I hatched the remainder in the incubator. I gave all of these chicks to the mama hen. I then moved most of her leftover eggs to the incubator. None of those hatched. I let them stay in until day 25. You know the old saying “The last one out is a rotten egg.” Well, the last chick out broke a rotten egg as it was flopping around the incubator. Ugh! There were still a number of eggs left. Those, I put under the warming lamp while I cleaned the incubator, but then, I felt them and realized they had become too hot, so decided to just put them the compost pile. It was past day twenty-five…
But it depressed me to think a chick or two in that batch may have been viable before putting them under the hot lamp. Also, the incubator was too wet and really after a bacterial explosion like that, no matter how much I wash and bleach the styrofoam, it still needs a long period of time in the sun to klll all of that bacteria. Further, if I trusted the bleach, the humidity alone from the wet inside of the incubator where the towel cannot reach would be overwhelming to the eggs. And the bleach itself takes a very long time to rinse completely out and dissipate. The fumes from the leftover bleach could kill the chicks. I know, because I experienced this in the past.
So… overall, I had a much better hatch rate this time around. Summer is the best time to incubate and brood.
I have two hens that went broody naturally still brooding on eggs. So I put eggs under them in the big black plastic garden pots and covered them. Later this summer, before butchering, I may incubate one more batch.. I want at least fifty hens going into winter.
I moved all the brooding hens and chicks to the henhouse and then moved the cannibal egg and chick eaters out to the chicken run permanently, until butcher day. I cannot let them teach the new chicks to eat eggs. The new mom and a broody hen are in the inner coop in the hen house, while the other broody hen is in the corner of the hen house. Anyhow, I had to put up roosting bars and a tarp over the top of the chicken run and put in a planter pot for them to lay eggs in. I am hoping that I can keep them for a while, to continue getting eggs from them for the rest of the summer. But out of a little more than a dozen hens, I just got an average of five eggs per day, this week. Grrr! We will butcher them out a few at a time…
I swept and scrubbed the garage floor. The incubator and chick tank were in our master bathroom. The broken rotten egg caused our bedroom and bathroom to reek. So there was a major cleanup in the bathroom after the chicks and the incubator were removed. Well, anyhow, last week’s chicks that hatched in the incubator spent a week in the tank in our bathroom and began to molt. Then the hatch that occured this week. Those, I moved to the broody hen in the garage, but anyhow between the rotten egg, incubator and cleaning up our bathroom from all of the chicken dust, it was a very big job this week. Then I oraganized and cleaned out some drawers and cupboards attached to our bathroom sink cabinet and a shelving unit. Our bathroom is now proper looking — neat and clean.
I spent a lot of time observing mama hen with her chicks when she was in the garage. She is such a good mama. When one of our cats snuck into the garage, I heard the mama hen make a low growl sound. I laughed. I had never heard a chicken make that sound before. My cat, S. is an old girl and knows that chicks are off limits and wouldn’t touch one, but I scooped her up and sent her back into the house.
I love the way that she teaches her chicks. When there is new food she gets an excited clucking sound as she vigorously pecks at the food and all the chicks come running to see what she is inviting them to eat.
Please forgive me, but while I was watching them, alone, a bodily sound escaped from me. Mama and all the chicks stopped in unison, dead in their tracks, went silent from their constant twittering, and looked around to find out what that sound was. I laughed.
We dehorned to two heifer calves and released them to their moms, out into the meadow. This leaves just one cow in the main corral. Our cow “E.” is due to freshen in a week, I believe. Therefore, I want her in the corral when she gives birth.
The horses had another week off from their training.
We called the folks that we buy our hay from and placed our tentative order for this coming haying season, in July. It all depends on the rain, when they can cut it and dry it, and how much they get this year. We pick the bales up off the fields, ourselves.
I harvested a number of scapes from my volunteer garlic, and chopped and froze them. More to come later.
I’ve harvested a small bowl’s worth, thus far, of strawberries.
I vacuumed and washed the interior of our SUV.
I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and organizing the kitchen and Great Room. We had had so many mosquitoes come into the house that, I spent a lot of time hunting them down and killing them, both with my hands and with the bug zappers. Then, because they were sometimes smashed up against our white walls, I had to go around and scrub the walls. I also decided to clean up the extra stuff we had around a certain part of the kitchen, a few boxes of Mason jars in a corner and other things, to make it easier to swat mosquitoes in the future. Also, I cleared shelves, counters, and other surfaces. With less stuff on the floors and counters, it’s easier to wipe up and vacuum up all the dead skeeters.
I dehydrated about twenty apricots that I had bought through Azure. They turned out to be super sour. I’m not excited about that, at all.
I re-read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book “Farmer Boy” for the umpteenth time since I was a young girl, to remind myself what wild edible plants they gathered to eat each year: wintergreen berries and leaves, Beech nuts, and wild blueberries. Look for a quote from the book that I picked out for next week’s “Quote of the Day”. I love the Little House series, for so many reasons!
I’m still reading up on all kinds of wild edibles and herbs.
I continued to listen to a reading of the book of Acts. Because I am trying to stay away from the computer, I have been listening to my Alexander Scourby’s rendition of the Bible CDs, with my CD Player.
A political aside:
I came across a powerful quote last week that I wish to share with you from Voltaire:
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” – Voltaire (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778)
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.