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:
I came down with a head cold on Saturday, so I didn’t accomplish a lot until Tuesday, other than a bit of organizing and some bore cleaning for my Elk Creek Company side business guns, and for my personal gun collection. I also cleaned up a slightly moldy replica Bridgeport Rig pistol belt, using some diluted lemon juice and then a good slathering of Leather Honey. It now looks nice.
In the midst of my puttering around, one of the guns that I cleaned was a single-shot Thompson/Center (T/C) Encore pistol, in .44 Magnum. Whilst cleaning it, I began to ponder all of the different rifle, pistol, and shotgun chamberings available for that frame. And then, coincidentally, I heard from a friend that he had a 209 primer .50 caliber blackpowder muzzleloading Encore barrel available. Together, this triggered a relapse of my incurable Encore barrel-collecting disease. I call it EAS, which stands for Encore Acquisition Syndrome. It is an incurable disease, but one that your grandchildren will thank you for. I now have four stainless steel Encore frames, but of course, not quite enough barrels. In the throes of EAS, I’m now looking for any of the following barrels, in trade:
- A 20″ to 26″ stainless steel T/C Encore .308 Winchester barrel with a 5/8×24 threaded muzzle.
- A stainless steel T/C Encore .22 LR pistol barrel (6″ to 14″) with a 1/2×28 threaded muzzle.
- A 10″ to 16″ stainless steel T/C Encore .223 Wylde or 5.56mm NATO barrel with a 1/2×28 threaded muzzle.
- An 8″ to 14″ stainless steel T/C Encore .357 Magnum or .357 Maximum barrel with a .578×28 or 5/8×24 threaded muzzle.
- An 8″ to 16″ stainless steel T/C Encore .45 ACP barrel with a .578×28 threaded muzzle.
- An 8″ to 14″ stainless steel T/C Encore .44-40 barrel with a .578×28 threaded muzzle.
- A 12″ to 18″ stainless steel T/C Encore .45 Colt/.410 barrel with a removable choke tube.
- An 18″ to 26″ stainless steel T/C Encore 12 gauge or 20 gauge shotgun barrel. Bonus points for one with internal threads for removable choke tubes.
I have some great no-paperwork goodies available to trade. (See my Elk Creek Company web page.) Or, I could pay in silver .999 rounds or pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver coins. I love to trade!
Later in the week, I was getting over my cold and the weather warmed up to the high 40s. I was feeling well enough to fire up our rototitiller and till almost 3/4s of our main garden and extension garden. I’m feeling productive again. The unseasonably warm and rainy weather caused some rapid snowmelt flooding that Lily will describe.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
The weather this week was balmy and in the forties, reaching a high of fifty degrees Fahrenheit. We had two atmospheric rivers come roaring through the Pacific Northwest this week. In the past six days, according to my rain gauge, we received eight inches of rain. Three point four of those inches arrived during the 28 hours between three readings, from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning around 11AM when the rain stopped falling. We have learned about the catastrophic flooding in western Washington, and about the near bridge washouts in northwest Montana and North Idaho. Our meadows flooded to levels that we’ve never seen before. The water reached into our near-house meadow, only about 60 yards from the house. Our orchard was completely flooded. We have old streambeds in our South pasture. I have never seen water flow in them until this week. We had a regular raging torrent running through there on its way to the Unnamed River. That water was coming from the mountains to our west. We saw water running on both sides of our local road. We also saw a waterfall cascading off one of the local mountains that we’ve never seen before.
The water reached our “horse arena” area and came quite close to the pen of our second group of meat and fiber sheep. We quickly moved them into the hay barn where a 12-foot wide bay had opened up. They had not had a shelter in their pen and we kept meaning to get to building one. Well, one of the Ram lambs developed hypothermia during the first storm that rolled through. We brought him into the house and warmed him up by the wood stove and with an electric heating pad, towels, and blankets. It took him seven hours to get back on his feet. While he was down, I gave him warmed water with Celtic sea salt, sugar, ACV, and Magnesium through a 20 CC syringe. I also gave him a bit of the powdered Vitamins from Molly’s Herbals: A, B, C, D, and E, and a bit more magnesium and calcium. I did that by opening his lip and pouring a small amount of the powders into his mouth one at a time. With each powder that I gave him, he worked them and swallowed them. He seemed to like getting them. Then I offered him grain. He was so funny, lying on his side, as I cradled his muzzle in the palm of my hand, he mouthed and ate five handfuls that I swept into his mouth with my fingers. He ate five handfuls in that way. That boy was living in the lap of luxury and he was obviously enjoying it. Later, I thawed some frozen sheep milk, warmed it up and mixed in some fortified colostrum and gave it to him in the bottle and nipple that I used to supplement the bum lambs this past spring. He could still suck, thankfully, being a “big” eight-month-old. I was worried that he would have forgotten how to suck and I wondered if his stomach was still able to accept and digest the milk. But it must have been full of the right vitamins, protein, and minerals with the colostrum, because about twenty minutes after receiving the milk, he got up on his own. Once he stood up he continued to nibble the grains for a while. Then we moved him into the guest bathroom, so he wouldn’t mess up the Great Room.
He is currently up, but still a bit weak. He is in our guest bathroom, regaining his strength. He had been in with ours ram and his ramling half-siblings. There was obviously a lot of competition between all of them. So we will give him a couple of more days to regain his strength before putting him back out with his flock, which is now in the hay barn. They will do better in the shelter of the barn than out in the open pen. And I’ve gone back to giving them some alfalfa pellets, in case they were not getting enough nutrients from just their hay and kelp. This group did not have access to the Molly’s Herbals, sadly. They for the most part, except the two females were that were breeding with the senior ram are destined for the freezer. Now that they are in the barn, I can set up a mineral buffet for them more easily and will do so this week.
Well, I wouldn’t be Avalanche Lily, if I hadn’t taken advantage of the flooded meadows and woods, and didn’t go canoeing in it. I did! It was so neat. I paddled around a group of trees and up through our paths that I usually, hike, ski, or ride my bike on. Our four-foot tall pasture fences were completely underwater. I paddled over them through the trees. At one of our gates that I floated over, I put my paddle down to the ground and my arm was partly in the water. Later I measured that length and it was six feet deep. Wild. Our river must have come up about ten feet out of its banks if not more. Another ten feet or so of depth and it would be at our house…We do not have a basement and we are another three feet off the ground, so it would take a tremendous amount of rain and snow melt to flood us out.
This week, I cleaned out the cow stalls and the henhouse, twice.
As soon as the first atmospheric river rainstorm had melted all of our snow and softened the garden soil, I worked the soil and planted the final quarter of garlic.
I then pulled the broccoli bed and then pulled all of the black plastic from the other beds. Last week, we finally got our rototiller back from the shop once again, three times this year it had to go to the shop! So, Jim was able to plow the rest of the garden to get it ready for winter. So that is now completed.
I’ve continued with my puttering around the house with cleaning and organizing, and culling out stuff. It seems to never end, doesn’t it? I keep fine-tuning the kitchen cabinets, dishes, utensils, spice cupboard, and the refrigerator. I’m also trying to work on the hallway pantry. I cleaned the laundry cupboards where we store the sunscreens and thebug dope that we don’t use. Those are kept for guests who may use them. Those same cabinets hold some other laundry soaps for wool, clothespins, and special laundry soap for hunting clothes. Plus there is wasp killer, silver polish, etc. I’m very often sweeping the house because of all of the dirt that gets tracked in from us and the dog. Afterward, I vacuum the floors and the rug. Seriously, sweeping before one vacuums saves on the frequency of changing out the vacuum bags.
Miss Violet caught a very bad cold after Thanksgiving. The grandsons and sons were not sick before and didn’t report becoming sick after Thanksgiving, so she must have picked it up in town somewhere. Anyhow, we treated her with hot showers, herbal teas: dandelion, sage, thyme, rose hip, oregano, mint, rosemary. ACV, elderberry, Celtic sea salt in water. She steamed with a few drops of Lugol’s iodine, chopped garlic and oregano essential oil. She also ate lots of citrus fruits and other healthy foods. Jim and I, to thwart the cold, did the same things. For about four days, Jim and I had headaches, and serious congestion in our sinuses, but it never developed any further and now we feel back to normal, thank the Good Lord.
During the flooding on Thursday, Jim and I hiked up into the adjoining National Forest to see how the storms affected the waterways up there. Along the road, only a couple of streams were flowing heavily, but not more than what we have seen during snow melt. But there were a few extra streams in areas we hadn’t seen before. But, obviously, there was more water flowing through this area because of the overflow along this side of the main road was running with water that we’ve not ever seen before. We did not, however go into the woods to see how much water was flowing through there because Jim wasn’t wearing his waterproof boots. The idea was just to see what was happening along the forest road. Bushwhacking wasn’t on this day’s agenda.
I finished reading Noraly Schoenmaker’s book, “Free Ride“. It was very interesting. She is an excellent writer. I highly recommend it is a very enjoyable read.
After helping oldest Grandson memorize “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. And I memorized it myself in just one week. I thought: It’s been a long time since I worked on memorizing and reciting scriptures. How bad in that department, I have been. So, being long past time to do so, I worked on re-memorizing Psalm 91. By the end of the week I can recite it cold up to the last three verses. I’m still working on those. It actually feels really good to be able to recite verses. I know so many scriptures but only in parts. So I want to fine-tune many of them. I’m working on the Songs of Ascent, Psalms this week. Psalms 120-140. Many of those I used to know cold. But something with age and not practicing has caused me to forget. Remember: We are to use our brain function or lose it, “Use it or lose it” as the saying goes.
I also wrote out Isaiah chapter two and most of three.
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.