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:
I was able to get all but one of my slash piles burned, early in the week. Sequentially untarping and igniting them, and then tending all of those fires occupied my time from 6:30 AM until 4:30 PM. This was a tiring, but gratifying day. Other than mounting snow tires, this was the last major hurdle to clear, in our preparedness for winter. The last slash pile consists of some green bows from a pine tree that looked diseased. I cut that down just three weeks ago. That pile may have to wait until next spring. I have the pile tarped, so it should be easy to touch off — either late this fall, or just after the snow recedes, next spring.
On Wednesday, I slaughtered and butchered nine chickens. Then on Thursday, I did in another six of them. These were our notorious Eag Eaters. As usual, I slaughtered, beheaded, de-winged, de-legged, gutted, and skinned the birds. Then they were carried into the house, where Lily did the final cleanup, at the kitchen sink. We have already raised a younger flock that will soon be laying eggs, so it was definitely time for the older flock to head to the freezer.
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather has been fairly nice this week in the high fifties and mid-sixties for highs and in the low forties for lows, cloudy with sunshine at the end of the week.
One day, I laid out in the sun for an hour and a half to catch up on my vitamin D. It was a gorgeous day mostly clear, sunshiny, quite windy up above, with developing clouds.
Here is a bit of an observation. We live between two high mountain ranges in a narrow valley. As you know we had quite a lot of rain last week so the mountains have a lot of moisture in them. As the winds blow across our mountains west to east, most of the time, they move the clouds from one range to another. On a sunny day after rains, the sun causes the mountain moisture to evaporate quickly, the evaporated water quickly rises and hits the cold wind and condenses between the two ranges and covers the sun. On this particular day, it was mostly clear to our west, but right above us just before the eastern mountain range, right where the sun was located we had clouds rapidly developing with the winds blowing them over the eastern ridge. The developing clouds would block the sun and the wind would blow them to the east and I would get a bit of sunshine but literally two minutes later the sun would be blocked again. Sometimes a wisp of cloud would be to the west of the sun and I would think that it wouldn’t develop into something then I’d look again a minute later and it had ballooned into a full-blown cloud and the wind would push it into the sun and I would not get the sun’s rays until the wind moved it away. I would block the sun with my hand and just watch the clouds develop. So cool to see it. After an hour of intermittent sun, the sun was completely blocked by the clouds. So I went inside.
This week I cleaned again, the Henhouse, sheep shed, Little Miss M.’s stall, and the Bullpen. The bullpen became all mucky from the rains last week. I spread the sheep and chicken manure around the so-prolific plum tree with the hopes it will just be as prolific next summer. And the manure from the bullpen I spread around the outside of the pen itself, to fertilize the ground for better grass growth for the beasties grazing pleasure next summer.
I scrubbed out all of our stock tanks this week. I do it quite frequently, once or twice a month, but I forget to mention it in the blog.
I finally, pruned the Red Raspberry spent canes and began to fertilize them with manure. That is a big job. I did not get the job finished before Jim burned the other slash piles, so he will have to burn that pile when he burns his other leftover pile.
I harvested another batch of winter squashes, Buttercup, Acorn, Honeyboat Delicata, and volunteer Spaghetti. The squashes growing on the manure pile, I pulled back their vines and Miss Violet and I began to pull all of the Smartweed and lamb’s quarters and other weeds, that grew under and around their vines. Since the squash plants are still blooming and have a few immature squashes still growing and we are not expecting a frost for at least another week, I didn’t pull up the vines, just pulled most of them out of the garden space that I want to begin to clean up.
We bought Greensand to fertilize the gardens and meadows. I began spreading it this week on the Main garden.
We have been having some technical difficulties with our Internet access during the past few weeks and are trying to work it out. Currently, the system is allowing only one computer on at a time, so Jim and the Blog get precedence, therefore I am off. I have been trying to stay away from it anyway. So during my break times, I have been reading in addition to the Bible, a book about the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
I again began to read the apocryphal book of Jubilees (Fascinating! I haven’t finished it yet) and read the whole of Enoch and Tobit. I am seeing why these books were not included in the Bible we have today. They speak a lot about the coming Messiah, Jesus, and they speak a lot about angels and give their names. They speak a lot about, sinners and heaven and where the souls of sinners who have died are held and other things. Seriously after reading them, If I didn’t know Jesus, I would be incredibly fearful of where my soul would be after death. They give a lot more information and knowledge and understanding. Frankly, I feel as though we’ve been denied information by the Power’s That Be that collated the Bible. I am also reading the book of John in Hebrew!
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.