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 was quite busy for us. Summers are always hectic, on a small ranch-homestead like ours. There is always so much to do!
We got the last of the hay stacked in our barn for next winter — just over 22 tons, in all. There were only a few bales left over from last year, and we will probably use that for bedding. Locally, straw bales are now just as expensive as grass hay bales, so there is no longer any point in laying in a separate supply.
The three of us drained and scrubbed out our Redneck Pool, to get it ready for swimming. Freshly refilled and lightly chlorinated, it looked dandy. And that was just a day in advance of the arrival of our four grandsons for a six-day stay at our ranch.
I finally got back out in the woods with a freshly-sharpened chain on my main chainsaw. Hopefully, I’ll have all of the rest of this year’s firewood quota cut and hauled out of the woods within two weeks. Because I have a couple of other projects to tackle, the splitting and stacking phase may have to wait until late August or early September. For now, I’m only splitting the green rounds. There is no rush to split the rounds from the dead-standing trees, since they are already quite dry.
Our neighbor came over with his tractor to scrape manure from our cow corrals for a few hours. That gave us about 15 cubic yards of the lovely black stuff. It is now piled next to our annex garden. I never regret paying him for his tractor time, each year. If I had to do all of that with a shovel and wheelbarrow, it would have taken me more than a week.
I had one day of on-site consulting with a client, early in the week, in the vicinity of Sandpoint, Idaho. Those on-site days are always interesting.
I still have a couple of fence rails to replace, and some garden water system plumbing to complete. Work on a ranch is never finished. If nothing else, the Law of Entropy is inescapable.
Now, on to Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
Please forgive me for my short column this week. I spent a good part of the week, mowing the near meadow, so our grandsons’ “tweet widdle ankles wouldn’t be slapped by weed seed heads while running through it. 😉
I weed-whacked the garden rows. I cooked up a storm in preparation for the grandsons’ eating pleasures.
I scrubbed that pool with Jim and Miss Violet. This year I wasn’t into the pool as much as in previous years. This is the latest we’ve ever got it up and running. The redneck pool was my idea to begin with, since I so love to swim. But it takes a lot of effort and care. This year, I was far more interested in using my time and energy far more wisely with food production and preservation than scrubbing and playing in that pool. But I am glad to have it up and running for the rest of the summer…The boys love it!
Currently, I have several little fellas sitting next to me shelling and eating pistachios while waiting for me to finish typing this, so we can go and ride our bikes in the evening coolness together. So I musn’t keep them waititng. BIke riding is far more fun than sitting and working on the computer.
Next week, I shall write more!
Blessings,
– 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.