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 had a very busy week. I pitched about 3,000 pounds of manure and soiled bedding from our secondary dairy sheep pen. That completed the removal of “the island” under and near the rack feeder. I hauled that with one of our wheelbarrows into some open patches in our west woodlot, to form Edible Forest Garden plots and squash-planting mounds.
I replaced two posts and three 35-foot long rails in our main corral. This time, I used deeply creosote-treated surplus telephone poles for posts, so they won’t rot out — at least not in my lifetime.
I mowed the weeds alongside the county road at the front end of the Rawles Ranch, using our Cub Cadet line trimmer. That is a walk-behind gas engine machine that cuts a 32-inch swath. It has large wheels, so it does well on uneven ground. I was able to rake up some of the trimmings to feed to our sheep.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had very humid and showery weather this week, lots of clouds, with intermittent sunshine. Temperatures as high as eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit and lows of forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It reminded me of June in New England.
A fun animal story.
This week I was trying to get my sheep into our Southeast Big meadow pasture for their grazing pleasure. There is a HUGE puddle at the gate. Sheep don’t like walking through puddles. The gate was stuck in the mud at the edge of the puddle. So I kicked the mud out of the way, it took a few minutes, and was able to open the gate wider and lift it up onto the grass. This left a very nice dry grassy pathway next to the gate for the sheep to walk on so they didn’t have to walk through that puddle. Well after that job was done I had to entice and show the sheep, both flocks, the way into the meadow. Also just a few minutes before this, we had had a Dairy ewe get stuck between two closely placed fences between the orchard and the Big Meadow on the House meadow side. Once Jim and I together got her out of her predicament, we had lifted her up over one of the fences and put her into the Southeast meadow which gave me the idea to open the gate more since I hadn’t seen the sheep in this meadow yet. Jim worked on closing up that gap so it wouldn’t happen again with a scrap of field fence, while I was working on the gate very close to him. The dog was with us. As I went to get the other sheep that were milling around in the house meadow waiting to be reunited with their previously stuck flock member, our Great Blue Heron friend flew into that southeast meadow really low and landed near a few of the cows that had wandered in to see what the commotion had been about. The puddle is no obstacle to them. Our dog saw the heron fly in and land in the meadow, and ran into the meadow barking at it. We let her chase birds, because they can fly away so easily. I especially let her chase the chickens out of the garden and whatever other bird in in there. (She knows she is not allowed to chase deer, moose turkeys or chickens in the general yard. They are off limits and she can discern between the species. She is a really smart dog and is obedient when I call her if she starts after something she shouldn’t go after. But geese and vultures and starlings and robins, I don’t care they can fly and don’t need to be here if she sees them.) Back to the story, the heron took off and flying low over the dog, about fifteen feet up from the ground, turned it’s head backwards and down toward the dog, looked down right at her and squawked really loudly, telling her off. I thought it was so funny and cool to see that Heron “yell” at the dog. Such a personality to tell our dog off. Anyhow, I was able to get the Dairy sheep to go into the southeast big meadow pasture, but I couldn’t get the Meat and Fiber flock in it. They’ll find their way in there eventually. Currently the snow melt from our high mountains has flooded most of the big meadow, but not like previous years. We’ve had a very poor snow pack this winter.
This week I took it easy to help my thumb heal from the trauma it received last week from the shattered Mason jar. It was not an easy thing to do. Jim continued to help me milk the sheep, but as the week progressed I was able to handle it more and more on my own.
My thumb’s “crater” is filling in nicely as the white blood cells do their job. The wound looks very good now. It is still draining some. It just needs to dry out and form a scar, at this point.
Now that “the island” is gone in the west sheep pen, I can easily rake it out each day after we turn them loose to forage the ranch, which keeps their home much more pleasant for them to dwell in. I can rake it gently — even with my sore hand. I’m not cleaning the other sheep pen because there is too much stuff for my hand to handle right now, but next week, I’ll probably get back to it. At the end of the week I cleaned it out, being careful with my hand.
This week I sorted through a bunch of seeds that I had that were older and decided to broadcast them on the spread manure piles in the western part of our ranch. I have spread old Einkorn, red and white clover, sunflower seeds, millet, bayou kale, turnip, and some others, so far. We shall see what comes of them.
We picked up two new bee Nucs last week and ensconced them into our pair of horizontal hives. I am feeding them a bit of our honey comb from last year’s bees.
Earlier in the spring I set out honey to see if the bees that abandoned the hives last fall were about (I’m thinking of Pooh Bear), but they were not. If they had been about, I would have followed them home to their bee tree. Now, with my new bees arriving last week and a neighbor to our south hosting a set of hives from a local apiary, that also arrived last week, it is fruitless for me to try to find that hive that went feral. I would just be attracting my new bees and their bees. I believe that they actually didn’t make it though the winter because they left with very little time to prepare reserves for winter. This week I received 14 beeswax frame foundations in the mail. I melted them onto the steel wires of the wooden frames with a small propane torch and a quarter held in pliers, I heated the quarter and ran it along the wire and pressed the melting wax into the wire, and installed them into the hives to give them more working space this week. I am reading up on how to grow our own Queens this week. Fascinating!
We received the stainless steel tumblers. Miss Violet washed them and we replaced the small mouth mason jars we had been temporarily using as everyday drinking glasses with them. It feels safer knowing that these won’t shatter while being washed. By the way, Jim himself had many Mason jars and Corelle dishes shatter on him and received cuts from them over the years. So he was in agreement with me to replace them with stainless steel. We are just tired of the injuries. We still use Pyrex, and the more solidly-built mason jars for food storage, etc. We have only replaced the weaker everyday-use stuff that we handle day in and day out.
We bought some native, edible, wet meadow wildflower seeds last year, some of those I planted in our meadows this week. I have a lot more to plant in the coming weeks. Those are all livestock-friendly varieties.
We have a whole lot of Lamb’s Quarters growing in our plowed, unplanted garden beds. I am harvesting them and we are eating them on a regular basis. They taste much better than spinach and are far more nutritious for you than lettuce. In the next week, I plan to harvest most of them and to dehydrate them for winter use in soups, stews and smoothies.
I tried again this week to get a hen to get a broody-ish hen to adopt the latest batch of incubated hatched chicks. Last week the hen that I gave them to rejected them. So I tried again with what I think is another hen. On Thursday night this hen was in the egg laying boxes. I touched her and she “growled” at me, so I put her in the inner pen and I had already put another hen in their earlier in the day. That hen wanted nothing to do with the chicks so, I then put the chicks in a nest inside the pot and then I put the second hen in and left them. In the morning when I went in she was on the chicks in the pot. Yes, so it appears that she has accepted them. I left them in there all day Friday and I will see how she behaves towards them on Saturday (this) morning.
I harvested and dehydrated a pint’s worth of oregano and a quart’s worth of chives.
Mosquitoes are now bad again in our valley, hence they are also in the house with the constant in and out of us and the dog and cats. Jim and I have put up our three man tent on our King-sized bed to be able to sleep in peace, protected from the blood sucking terrorists.
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.