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:
With out-of-town travel and some visits to the ranch over Thanksgiving, I had been falling behind on my blog writing. I generally try to keep the blog written several days in advance. So this week I did some catching up.
I laid some more linoleum tile in our little guest cabin. This time it was in the sleeping loft. I had some tile left over, so the next day I also tiled the cabin’s smaller storage loft. That all went fairly quickly. I really like working with the new-style adhesive 6″ x 36″ tiles. It seems much easier to keep the tiles lined up squarely and snugly with the long, rectangular tiles.
On Friday, I attended a gun show, searching for more pre-1899 cartridge gun inventory for Elk Creek Company. Check the web page for the new inventory, as I catalog it. There are some real gems.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The temperatures were highs of mid thirties and nighttime temperatures high twenties bottom thirties. Really, there hasn’t been much temperature fluctuation here since we have a lot of cloud cover. It was a dry week with one day of truly sunny weather at the ranch. That was welcomed.
I spent Sunday doing a whole bunch of odd jobs. I washed off a bunch of canned food jars in our Pantry Hallway. I changed the sheets and washed them from the Guest Bedroom from our Thanksgiving get together. I strained apples from two-half gallons of fermented apple vinegar. I am putting a few splashes of it in my Chicken’s water every day. I bagged up saved Spaghetti Squash seeds. I did a ton of laundry. I vacuumed the whole house. Miss Violet received a new clothes dresser this past week, so the two of us did another sort of her clothes and put them into it.
I ran out of the tall “narrow” almost quart Mason jars that we use as water glasses and for dispensers for condiments., etc. So I opened another case of them that we had in storage and washed them and put them up in the cupboards. We are slowly going through all of our many many jars of canned, or dried foods in our jars, running from 1/2 pint to gallon-sized. They get washed and put away. We actually recently also ran out of wide-mouth quart jars and had to buy three more cases. I was surprised that we had run out of them, because I had bought so many cases over the years. I’ve put a lot of dehydrated foods into them, too.
We went to town on Wednesday to do our shipping. We picked up various grains to make our own chicken feed, a electrical object for the cabin, a few groceries, kitty litter, and ran other errands, like to the Post Office, etc.
I have to say that the hens are soooo much happier to have most of those roosters gone. Additionally, I put four roosters into the inner hen house, again, I had let them out, and I have one rooster loose outside that I cannot get back into the hen house. That leaves three roosters in with the hens at this moment. There is much peace, and normal chicken behavior once again in the Hen house. We plan to butcher two of the rooster residents of the Inner Hen House, probably this coming week. That will leave me six roosters for thirty plus hens, if the loose rooster survives until spring outside, if he still won’t go into the hen house….( Nope) didn’t butcher them. It’s fine for now.
We currently have the light on in there 24/7. It’s not something I like doing but out of nearly forty hens, we were getting no eggs for about two weeks. Now at the end of this week we are up to three a day. This week I added back into their diet garlic powder, and I new thing for us, Cayenne pepper. I heard that Cayenne pepper will increase egg production?? We shall see. I know many folks give their birds a break in the winter. I want to too, but we do need at least five eggs a day for household consumption. Also for about three weeks we were out of calcium carbonate. I picked some oyster shells this week in town and have a bulk order from Azure coming in at the end of the month.
The Hen house received a good cleaning out at the end of the week, as well as the cow stalls and a section of the loafing area where the bull and horses are receiving their meals. I need clean the sheep shed and the bull pen where our new dairy sheep reside next week.
About five years ago, I started to write out/copy the Book of Deuteronomy by hand into a journal. I have picked it up and put it down over the past five years. I picked it up again a month ago, and dropped it again, after writing about ten verses. I picked it up again this week. Miss Violet also has a journal just for Deuteronomy. I have her copying it out also. We are in Chapter 4. We shall see how long we keep at it this time around. It’s enjoyable to copy out scriptures from time to time. At the end of the week, I finished copying out chapter 4. I also started to read and translate from Hebrew to English chapter 1. I find translating to be very enjoyable also from time to time. Miss Violet and I, went to town this week a second time meet up with and to downhill ski with the # 1 Son and the three older grandsons at Schweitzer. On the drive there and back we listened to almost the whole book of Deuteronomy on CD.
The ski day with the boys was an absolute blast!!! We really need more fun days like this a lot more often. It chirks the soul. ;-). Miss Violet had not been on skis for over ten years. So we worked with her skills. I had gone skiing with our neighbors once, two winters ago. So that was the last time I had been downhill skiing. I downhill skied a lot in high school. I also love Cross Country skiing. The two oldest boys are doing super well and the third youngest needed more practice on the bunny slope for the first part of the day. I was pretty rocky for the first five runs. Then the last six runs or so, I had regained my legs and even had improved my parallel technique, so much so, that I was incredibly excited about it. Miss Violet needs another day on the Bunny Hill /Beginner slopes and then I think we can go up the mountain.
I like Schweitzer’s Beginner Slope set up. It has the really easy Musical Carpet slope and then the green level Happy Trails slope and what I would call Advanced beginner/Easy Intermediate Enchanted Forest slope. It is a great place to learn and to improve one’s skills. It is enough variety of slope to spend a few days on without becoming too bored.
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.