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, we traveled just 110 miles to pick up a new ram to cover the ewes in our little milking flock. Keeping two rams on the same property can be tricky. They invariably want to butt heads. So, I’ll have to maintain pen and pasture fences very carefully to keep them separated. I just built a separate ram pen. Hopefully, our new ram won’t be a jumper.
I should mention: I’ve witnessed two of our rams butting heads through a shared fence, timing their charges so that they both arrive at the fence wire simultaneously. Yes, in 32+ years of keeping sheep, I’ve seen a lot of silly sheep tricks…
I took a close look using my bore inspection light and added bore condition descriptions to all 9 of the Vetterli rifle listings that are in our Elk Creek Company online catalog.
Over the course of the next two weeks, I plan to have another 12 more Federally-exempt “antique” rifles, one antique revolver, and one huge Colt Walker percussion replica added to the catalog. That batch of guns includes a scare Ramrod Bayonet M1888 Trapdoor Springfield, a couple of very scarce .303 British-chambered antique rifles, and five different blackpowder muzzleloading hunting rifles — mostly .50 caliber. Stay tuned!
Now, Lily’s report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
Happy Solstice, today! From here on out the days get longer. Yeah!!! Some very interesting facts for me. The sun at our latitude on the solstice only reaches about 20 degrees on the horizon at Meridian. What a low angle! The length of our daylight is only about eight and half hours. No, I am not giving the exact numbers, but close enough for OPSEC reasons.
This week started out with snow showers that went into rain followed by two inches of accumulated snow followed by 1.4 inches of rain. That was followed by sun for two days with night-time temperatures below freezing, about 29 degrees Fahrenheit which turned the remaining snow and puddles into thin ice across our parking lot and our meadows. The temperatures have been hovering around 32-to 42 degrees F. day and night, all week. Ho hum, this is winter at lower elevation west of the Rockies. We have almost no snow this year in the valleys, though above 6,000 feet we are at over 100% of snowpack for this time of the year in our region. This is good for spring melt, so far. May the snowpack continue to grow this winter!
So this week was quieter. We stayed home all week until the end of the week. I was more of a domestic diva/pioneer wife this week, maintaining our animals’ health and domiciles as well as our own.
This week, I milked the cow every day and made Farmhouse Cheddar cheese, once. I cleaned out the cow stalls a few times and I continued cleaning the loafing area where the bull and the horses like to congregate for their two meals of the day. I still have more to clear from the loafing area. I cleaned it the day after the two-inch snowstorm and during the rainstorm the next day. I do my best work sometimes in the most adverse conditions. ;-). However, it was warm out and the manure and hay were soaking wet — not frozen. Obviously when it’s frozen one isn’t cleaning it off the ground.
I cleaned the hen house twice this week. With all of the rain and snow, and letting the birds out into their run, they got the floor very wet and damp. This is not healthy for them, so I kept them clean. The birds are very happy with lights on 24/7, receiving fermented mixed seeds for their food with garlic powder and cayenne pepper powder sprinkled on it. They are as of Thursday and Friday, giving us 12 and 14 eggs a day, once again. Yes! Jim and Miss Violet eat a lot of them as well as the dog and cats. We will be sharing them again soon with our friends, too.
We brought home a ram to cover our new girls. He is a very nice boy. Soon we will put our girls with him one at a time to stagger the births of the lambs. That way, we will be able to milk sheep from that flock nearly year-round. I can hardly wait. 😉
This week I ground Einkorn wheat and on two different days, made Einkorn sourdough bread. It is good! But it is a nearly flat one-inch thick dense bread. I’m working on tweaking my recipes to make a fluffier, taller bread.
We have been eating the lettuce, watercress, Cilantro, Lamb’s quarters, Claytonia, and beet greens that I planted in trays and put under the grow lights in the guest bedroom. Additionally, this week I planted, in two bussing trays, Silverado chard and a mystery mix of seeds that had fallen out of opened seed envelopes into the bottom of the gallon plastic bag where I was storing the greens seeds. So we shall see what grows from it.
I want to start laying down composted manure on beds in the Main garden this winter, so I keep checking the manure pile that our neighbor moved this fall when he cleaned our corral out with his tractor. It still has a lot of mold in it, so I cannot move any yet into the garden. It’s too dangerous to breathe those spores. GRRR! We need a lot of rain on that pile to get the composting completed. I’m seriously thinking about putting a sprinkler on it for a few weeks while our temperatures continue to be so mild.
Every week or so, Jim, or I, or Miss Violet cook up a bunch of ground beef or chicken and rice for the dog and cats. We put the cooked meat and rice in a huge stainless mixing bowl, mix it up super well, and put in quart mason jars for the animal’s food for the week. To the dog’s portion, I always add milk and eggs from our cows and chickens and Pumpkin oil for nutrition and a parasite cleanse. Sometimes I also add beef gelatin from the beef bones that I boiled down last month and froze in quart jars. The cats get the beef and rice or chicken and rice and I beat up an egg for them separately and put it in a separate bowl.
I recently discovered Jacob Knowles: Lobster Man YouTube Channel. This week I binge-watched his channel. Though I don’t eat Lobster because the Father forbids it in his word, I am fascinated with ocean fisheries and the ecology of all of the Father’s critters. So I have enjoyed listening to Jacob teach us what he knows about lobsters and I’m also interested in what else his traps pull up from the ocean bottom.
I went for a couple of long walks this week. My walking, and how often I walk during the week, has slowed down the past few weeks. I need to get back at it.
This week I copied out Chapters 5-7:18 of Deuteronomy into my journal. And I read some of the Hebrew text of Chapter 6. I was very much into copying this week. There is something peaceful and calming about writing out in cursive scripture as neatly as you are able to. I also looked up some words, to define them.
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.