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:
We took a trip to town on Wednesday to stock up on grain for our livestock. I also bought some pipe for a plumbing project and a very sturdy steel Tarter brand sheep feeder. (A manger.) Lily wasn’t thrilled with the color that it was powder-coated, but it looks like it will last for decades. Now I need to get busy and use some scrap lumber spare roofing sheet steel to make a rain cover for it.
I cut, hauled. and split another cord of wood. Our stay-at-home daughter helped with the stacking.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a hot week here, with a high of about 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Our nighttime temperatures were in the mid-fifties.
This week, I harvested most of the Red raspberries and pruned most of their spent canes. That was a big, two-day job. We are still harvesting the Golds and will for a few more weeks and then the Primocanes will produce more until the frost. I also pruned the spent Black raspberry canes.
This week, I harvested all of my yellow onions — about fifty pounds worth. I trimmed off their stems and brushed off most of the dirt and put them on a sheet on our living room floor to dry out. I am still growing red and white onions.
I weeded two-thirds of the cabbage patch.
I cleaned the hen house, the Meat and Fiber flock shed, and the Dairy sheep shed and yard. Additionally, our neighbor did not get to the The Meat and Fiber Flock’s yard, so I tackled cleaning that out this week. Jim helped me for the last of the job by hauling away the hay and manure to the compost pile for me, while I did the shoveling of it into the Gorilla Cart.
We went to town to buy feed grain and to get a few more food and infrastructure supplies. We bought a manger for the Meat and Fiber Flock that has three-inch mesh to protect our rams from getting their horns caught. Yes, it’s red. I don’t care much for the color red. We have a wall-mounted feeder that in the past our rams did get stuck in. So, since that time, I had just been feeding them on the floor of their shed. But now with the new manger, we will be having much less wasted hay. Jim attached the old wall-mounted feeder to a half sheet of plywood and wired it to the fence of our Dairy flock’s pen. Then he fabricated a rain cover for that feeder, using some scrap lumber and some leftover roofing steel. The biggest expense for that cover was a pair of galvanized hinges. This feeder will be safe for them, because none of our white sheep have horns. So now they can also eat their hay from an elevated place. This means overall, less waste and less clean-up for me — or shall we say, a much easier clean-up of their domiciles in the future. I bought some more colored collars for both flocks of sheep to help me identify who’s who in the meat and fiber flock and to help me handle the Dairy flock.
Milking of the Dairy flock is going much smoother this week. I am now getting between 10 and 22 ounces of milk from each of the three ewes. That is great for making yogurt and having milk for drinking. Also, soon I’d like to make hard sheep cheese, all in good time.
We picked up an Azure Standard order of Frozen Salmon and Cod, and Einkorn flour and Einkorn wheat berries.
I mowed the garden paths.
I swam a lot in the pool this week and rode my bike often.
I finished writing out Matthew Chapter 14 and 15 and started Chapter 16.
Please listen to Danny of Deep South Homestead, “GET OUT!“. The key part starts at the 11:05 mark. Especially listen to the last fifteen minutes. He mentions how to avoid the Mark of the Beast. See: Deuteronomy 28.
Also, please listen to the truth about the recent past jabs, and real treatments for cancer with Dr. Makis.
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.