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 past week I kept busy berry picking with Lily, and catching up on projects around the Rawles Ranch. One of those was hanging a new tube gate on our main corral. I finally found a suitably heavy-duty tube gate. It is built to the same specifications as the panels for our bullpen. So the new gate is truly “Bull Strong.” (Our bull had destroyed the previous one, made of lighter-gauge steel.) The gate came with some huge threaded hinge support bolts. But they were about an inch shorter than the diameter of the existing cedar gate post, so I countersank the washers and nuts. That was a fairly quick and easy job.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a busy week here at the Rawles’ Ranch. The weather cooled down wonderfully our highs being in the high seventies and low eighties for most of the week. We had two days of very, very unusual weather breaking records with rain showers for the date of July 29th and 30th for our region. The showers wonderfully moistened our earth and knocked the horrible dust down. Because of the cooler weather, we were able to accomplish much around here. At the end of the week the heat returned and put another damper on outside work and general activities, unless it was swimming. Our mosquito population finally crashed. I’m super happy about that. Though there are still some around at dusk and at all times in the garden.
I did a deep cleaning of our henhouse. I sent all birds outside and then I scraped out as much of the caked feed and manure as possible. I then hosed down the entire inside. After the strongly adhering caked manure was soaked and loosened up, I finished scraping it out and then used our squeegee to send all of the water out. I sprayed and squeegeed numerous times to get it as clean as possible. Then I aired out the henhouse for several hours before putting in new hay as their bedding. It’s really nice in there once again. I really like it when my animals have clean homes.
Additionally, I scraped out the sheep shed and the cow shed and laid down more hay for them.
I continue to milk our cow about three times a week. She has a calf that I separate from her every night, to keep the routine. Some mornings I milk her if we need the milk, then let the calf have her. Other mornings if I don’t need the milk, I just let Mama cow out and let the calf empty her bag out. Milk sharing is a very convenient setup.
I’m still harvesting gallons of red and gold raspberries this week. It takes me about two hours to go through the entire patch. I pick every-other day. Then, in the kitchen, I go through all of the berries, rinsing them and picking out any overripe, or moldy berries, leaves, stems, and bugs. I spread the berries one layer deep on lipped cookie sheets, to be frozen. After they are frozen solid, I scrape them off the trays, bag them, and freeze them. We have so much jam from previous years of jam-making and I don’t care too much for dehydrated razzes, we already have a lot of that anyhow, and we did not eat all of last year’s fruit leather. So, thusfar this year, I prefer to just freeze them for pies, smoothies and quick syrups during the winter. I also enjoy eating frozen berries for a snack, now and then.
This week, I finished pulling thistles and ferns from around the Black Raspberries. I decided that I wanted more plants. I did some research to order some. They are selling now from Starks brothers, $27 dollars on sale for one plant in a gallon pot!!! I found bare-root raspberries selling for $11dollars. That is crazy expensive! I happened to see that MIGardener put out a video on pruning Blackberries for higher fruit production. I watched the video then read through the comments. Someone mentioned that her granddaughter takes the pruned tops and puts them in the ground where she wants them, waters them and gets more blackberries. So, I looked to see on Youtube if one could do this with Black Raspberries. Yes, one can! I watched a few videos. Right after, I went down to the orchard and took off the tops of both Black Razzes and Blackberries. I dehydrated the leave from a number of the Blackberries to make tea, and also put some in water to root them to plant in the orchard and I also put a bunch of the Black Razz canes in soil in the greenhouse. I am hoping that they will survive and put out roots. I am looking forward to transplanting these all next summer or later in the fall if they root strongly. It seems that in the past I used to prune back the black raspberry primocanes. But for some reason I hadn’t done it during the past few years. I had forgotten about it. So much going on during these past years that occupies our minds and time.
Last year I took some of the seeds from my plums and refrigerated them all winter until this week. I took them out and planted them in pots in the greenhouse. We shall see if they will grow.
I planted Serviceberry seeds also in a pot in the greenhouse. I am not having the same “luck” that had last year in harvesting them. Grr!
I also took cuttings from my Rosemary plant, stripped the bottom two inches from its leaves, gently scraped the bark off from the leaf-striped section of stem, inserted the stem into pots of very wet soil up to the level of the other leaves. Within the next five weeks or so, as long as the soil remains moist the rosemary shoots should send out roots. Then they can be transplanted into four-gallon pots for their forever home. This is the first time I’ve tried this. I am looking forward to having new Rosemary plants.
I dehydrated some Blackberry leaves, Sage, Rosemary, and Lamb’s Quarters.
I cooked up a lot of beef, chicken, rice, carrots and mixed those and froze them for future dog meals. After thawing, I add raw egg, Pumpkin seed oil and raw cow’s milk to it and feed it to our “pup”. She likes it a lot.
I made my own version of Pesto this week. That included: Basil from the greenhouse, olive oil, fresh garlic from my harvested garlic, salt, pistachios, freshly ground Einkorn flour, two tablespoons of Olive oil, Teaspoon of salt, a Tablespoon of honey, and hot water. I knead it, divide into balls of dough, roll it out with rolling pin, slice into strips of the size noodle you want, I like about quarter-inch-thick noodles. I pop them into boiling water, and boil until plumped up. Drain, and serve with the pesto. Super yum!
I did a lot of laundry this week, sheets and blankets. I ran out of my homemade laundry detergent so I made some more: two boxes of Borax and eight-two cupper measuring cup scoops of bulk washing soda and two cups of baking soda.
I vacuumed the whole house and washed the floors several times.
Jim and I built our own type of grill of cinder blocks and fire brick for our outdoor kitchen. We use our own wood for fuel. Before the heat came on, I cooked two suppers out on this grill: a round steak and salmon with stir fry veggies, Butternut squash, and zuchs. I’d actually rather use this grill than our modern propane barbecue. Jim also received a mailorder for a four foot wide and seven foot tall metal shelving rack unit that he split in two to use for counter space for the outdoor kitchen. I placed two large long plastic cutting boards on it and will use it as a space for food preparation and to do dishes outside. Additionally we will put our “new” toaster oven and propane camp stove on it if I want to cook or do some canning outside. I’m not doing too much canning these days. We may also bring our dehydrator outside too, though I haven’t gotten to that yet. This is the progress we have made on the outdoor kitchen, this week.
I opened up a new gallon of Maple syrup that we have had in storage for about six years. Just in case it had any mold in it, I boiled it for ten minutes. While boiling, I skimmed off the foam and any flotsam and jetsam located in the foam. When the syrup was clear of foam and remained clear of foam while boiling, I called it done. I then strained it through filters that I use when filtering my freshly raw cow’s milk. Then I cooled it down and refrigerated it.
Speaking of Maple syrup, I have been making my own version of Switchel in the mornings to rehydrate my body after the night’s fast.
I also made sole for the first time this week. Usually, I had just been sprinkling Himalayan salt into my water. But now I am trying sole. I made it by mixing Himalayan salt and Celtic sea salt together then adding a quarter cup of that to a quart-sized mason jar and then adding water to that. Shake the salt in and let sit for twenty-four hours. Then put a teaspoon of the sole in your glass of water.
So my Switchel is made in a quart mason jar. I put in one teaspoon of sole, two Tablespoons of Apple Cider vinegar, and half of a squeezed lemon, and a teaspoon of Maple syrup. I like it first thing in the AM right after getting out of bed. I drink the whole thing down over about five minutes to re-hydrate and to flush any toxin build up from the night’s rest. Once in a while, I will add a capsule of Magnesium glycinate. I open the capsule and pour in the powder and mix it into my Switchel.
It has been about three weeks since my tooth was pulled. I have had what I thought was bits of my jawbone sticking out of my gum in the back of the extraction site. The dentist looked at it and thought it really might be part of my jaw. Since it wasn’t stabbing my tongue we left it alone. From the surgery up to Tuesday night my body had worked out of my gum at least three pieces of bone shards. On Tuesday night, I brushed my teeth, as usual. I then went out to put all of the animals into their respective housing, Sheep into their sheep shed, Cows into the stalls, and Chickens into the hen house. The youngest chicks are still giving me a rodeo every night. They are the last to go in at night. I have to chase them around the henhouse several times before they go into the gate of the run that leads to the guillotine door of the henhouse. (“Kids!”) They stay outside until the last Hurrah. 😉 The horses get to stay out at night. As I went across the parking lot to the barn, my tongue suddenly felt something else sticking out in back of my now new hindmost tooth. I had not felt that before. I kept rubbing it with my tongue thinking it may be a caught raspberry seed. As I did chores, I kept working on it. It seemed to move.
When chores were done, I went to the house and straight to the bathroom where I have kept a flashlight in order to illuminate my tooth socket in order to scrutinize the damage done and the healing process/progress of it and to help me to aim the irrigator syringe directly into my socket for irrigation. I shined to flashlight into my mouth and saw something else white. I took a small gum cleaner thingy and poked at the white object, it moved. It was quite sizeable. I really began to move it about. After a bunch of pokes it dislodged and I could see it. I reached in and grabbed it with my fingers. It was a humdinger 5mm shard of bone! It caused quite a bit of pain and a lot of bleeding as it cut my gum as I worked it out. But I didn’t care. I recognized that it had been an unknown contributor to the pain-filled slow healing process I have been going through.
Then I thought, well now, maybe that other piece that I mentioned earlier really isn’t attached to my jawbone. Therefore, I immediately began poking it with the gum cleaner. It moved, slightly. I, then shoved it with my fingernail and it popped out with also some more pain and copious bleeding. It was four millimeters in length. Yes, I measured them. Wow! That oral surgeon was a butcher!! He didn’t clean up in there very well, either… I have had at least five bone shards and two of those were quite sizeable. Update: as of Thursday, I pulled out a sixth piece of bone, albeit much smaller than the others. Wow! Later, I talked with a friend and she mentioned that she pulled out a piece of bone from her wisdom teeth extractions as much as a year later…Lovely!!! (Not! ) 🙁
Well, my tooth socket now feels much smoother and is much less painful. Now it can truly heal. I rinsed it with salt water for a few more days. The next day, much of the pain I had been having in my socket area was mostly gone. Addi, my under-the-jaw lymph nodes that had been swelling and painful also began to get better. Finally, I am healing. It is still quite disturbing for me to feel that gap there. Sad!
This week I have read Isaiah and back to Proverbs
May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,
– 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.