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 I’m leaving most of the column up to Lily, since I’m traveled to the Missoula, Montana gun show, where I have five tables. It is a long drive, but quite worthwhile since it is such a great show. I have more than 80 antique guns on my tables. If you are a SurvivalBlog reader and drop by, then let me know. I’m bringing some SurvivalBlog 2005-2023 archive waterproof USB sticks. While the small supply lasts, I’ll be including one as a bonus with any purchase of $50 or more, to blog readers.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week we had very nice warm summer weather high in the mid-eighties and lows in the high fifties.
We started out the week entertaining a childhood friend of Jim’s and his wife. We really enjoyed hosting them and look forward to many more visits in the future.
I harvested and froze several more gallons of raspberries.
I harvested our first large zucchinis, chopped and froze three gallons worth.
I harvested, washed, chopped, blanched, and froze a gallon’s worth of broccoli and cauliflower.
I pulled a ton of weeds by hand and weedwhacked with the weedwhacker a ton of weeds between garden rows.
I did a lot of housework and cooking. I “semi” invented my own Maple Mint Refrigerated pickles. Watch for the recipe in the upcoming Recipe of the Week.
I cleaned the hen house, sheep shed and cow stalls numerous times.
For some reason during these past two weeks I picked up playing Chess, again. I was originally taught Chess by a brilliant six-year-old prodigy during one summer when I was in my early twenties and was hired to lifeguard and teach swimming in a very small neighborhood pool. The pool was the neighborhood kids gathering place. Some of the neighborhood kids pretty much spent the summer with me all day long. When no one was swimming, we played board games together. Being New England there were a lot of days when it was cloudy and rather coldish for swimming, but they would come anyway to hang out with me to talk and play games. The six-year-old prodigy who taught me the game whupped me for many days. But once I caught on to the gist of the game I was finally able to out-think him by the end of the summer. The last few days we had a friendly bet with each other that if I would beat him three times by my last day at the job that he would owe me a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. And if I didn’t beat him three times then I would owe him a bag of Snickers. Well, I beat him. He was not very happy about it. 😉 Anyhow, he told his Mom all about the bet and our games. On the very last day he gave me a bag of Reese’s. A few weeks later, I went to their home after school hours to give him and his sister a bag of Snickers and met his mom. She thanked me for being such a wonderful lifeguard and friend to their kids to and all the neighborhood’s kids that summer. Fond memories.
Anyhow, I taught our girls how to play and then we rarely played again. This week Miss Violet and I watched a tutorial video to review the rules. Our visiting friend is a Chess instructor and gave us three strategies to wrap up the end of the game. Miss violet and I have had four or five games, thus far. She whupped me twice! Good fun!
A neighbor called early in the morning on Thursday to report that he heard a pack of wolves howling in the early morning. We hadn’t heard them. Jim had just let the cows (not a milking day) and sheep out. So we ran outside and rounded them back up and had them return to their sheep shed and run and then we ran the cows back into the main corral. The horses like to loaf in the corrals in the mornings, so were already in them. Once the cows went in we shut the gate. We did not let the chickens out for the day. We only let them out into their run.
That same morning, Jim and I did some pistol shooting target practice. A great day to make some noise, to remind the wolves that they were not welcome in our part of the valley. I shot my Glock .45 and one of our 9mm Glock 19 pistols. I put about fifty rounds through both of them. I stayed within a couple of handspan grouping with some direct hits. We really need to do more frequent practice.
I called our new neighbors to let them know about the potential wildlife in the vicinity. She said that she had heard a very strange puppy-like cry in the very early morning while it was still dark out. She reported that after each puppy-like cry she heard, a Great Horned owl called back as if to answer it. She heard this back-and-forth exchange about three times. She tried to see what was making the sound and wasn’t able to. She has bunnies and chickens, so as a result of my call, she didn’t let her birds out for the day and brought her bunnies into the garage.
Speaking of the Great horned owl, I have been letting all of my birds out to run during the day. I know that not all of them go back in at night. I try to round them all up, but if they don’t go in and I don’t see them, then it’s “Survival of the Fittest”. They take their own life in their own hands if they refuse to go in at night. Well, one night early in the week, I was laying in bed awake at 11:30 PM. Suddenly I heard a baby chick crying in serious distress. I leapt out of bed, got dressed, grabbed a flashlight threw on my slogger garden shoes and ran out into the parking lot to see if I could scare off whatever had my chick. I made it almost all the way to the barn when I heard these huge-sounding wings flap loudly about six flaps then it was silent. The flaps made the bird sound like it was HUGE, like as big as me. Startled, I shouted “hey”, “hey”. I did not see it. I think it was on the other side of the barn or in the corral behind the stalls where my light could not reach. That chick must have not gone in the hen house that night. Well, the smart chicks go in at night. The ones who choose not to, are fair game for whatever critter is looking for a meal. The only problem with this is that the predators keep returning to look and see if there is someone else to eat.
I was recently given a small flock of “wild chickens”, a rooster with his hens. My friend didn’t want them anymore about her place. I was told that they can fend for themselves. So, they are fending for themselves. But they like roosting in the barn at the top of the hay bales. It’s a dumb place in my opinion for roosting. They are sitting “ducks” if a raccoon, skunk, owl, or any other climbing predator smells them and goes up there and snatches them while they are sleeping. I have tried to encourage them to go up in the trees with the local turkeys but they keep returning to the barn. Whatever! Now one of them is missing. I hope she just went broody and is hiding off somewhere incubating chicks. Update: At the end of the week she was back with her little flock. Good! She must have taken a short sabbatical from the flock???
I read Chapters 30 to 43 of Isaiah.
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.