To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. Steadily, we work on meeting our prepping goals. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities. They also often share their planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, property improvements, 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 the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready! This week’s emphasis is on small arms mechanical training.
JWR
Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,
We had light snow showers off and on for most of the past week. Here we are in March, and winter is dragging on. Grumble, grumble. We’ve been focusing on indoor projects, getting things better organized.
Now that there is some room in our main wood shed, I took the opportunity to split a new batch of kindling from cedar rounds and a some scrap lumber tag ends.
We have a big batch of chicks on order, but they aren’t due to arrive until mid-April.
My wife (Avalanche Lily) is getting all of the trays and pots set up and filled with soil and within the next week will begin planting seeds. These seeds will be started in the house in a spare room under grow lights.
With the denizens of D.C. starting to make serious gun grabbing noises again, I thought that it was time to re-assess our family firearms preps. Now that I have grandchildren, I’m increasingly looking at this situation multi-generationally. I did some counting and “per rifle” calculations. That led me to order a few more magazines and some spare parts for one rifle that I’d previously overlooked.
Note that if you ever find that you have too many magazines, they are always useful for barter, or as a speculative investment.
This past week I also ordered a few more Franklin Armory BFS-III binary triggers. If I’m right about the pending BATFE ruling and about the necessity of the inclusion a Grandfather Clause, then this could prove quite profitable. But if I’m wrong… Well, I’m ready to take the loss. But I still think that the odds are in my favor.
Please continue to post comments about your own preps. They are fascinating.
Thanks, – Jim Rawles
HJL
The Latimer Homestead has not completed its kitchen update efforts yet. While it had to be set aside to enable our focus of other projects, we are not sad about it at all. We’ll pick it back up in another week. The main reason for the shift in our efforts is to prepare for the addition of a new family member! No, Sarah is not pregnant. Our son is getting married and bringing a new “daughter” to the homestead. So, we have worked to clean and prepare their living quarters for when they return after their honeymoon next week, not to mention all of the preparations for the wedding. The growth of our family is a great blessing and we so very much welcome this outstanding young woman to the family! She fits right in.
o o o
As always, please share your own successes and hard-earned wisdom in the Comments.
Visited the grand opening of a ‘Gander Outdoors’ store. Much more hunting/firearms and camping orientated than Mtn was. Unfortunately the shooting range is not open with no definite plans on re-opening it.
This week I’ve nearly completed realizing gains by selling off stocks with the exception of mining and some other commodities. Gerald Celente warns us that party is indeed over as well.
I made good on a promise to financially contribute for plowing costs. We are planning on redoing the dirt road when spring arrives. The winter has taken its toll.
We’ve inventoried supplies consumed during the winter and developed a procurement plan to rotate and restock.
Did a check on my guns and magazine inventory as well. I’ve determined that I will be sitting the oncoming rush out. I’m comfortable with the numbers that I have and feel good about it. It’s moved to the rainy season now in Middle TN, which means it’s also mud season, so still not doing much around the Homestead. The seeds are sprouting well, and I did get a large load of topsoil delivered for more raised beds. Today we are buying two more peach trees to add to the orchard. Congrats on your grandchildren JWR!
GOT 2 MORE FRUIT TREES IN AND PLANTED. GREENS ARE UP. GOT LUMBER FOR MORE RAISED BEDS.
Started to prune my fruit trees and was interrupted by Old Man Winter. Which is good ’cause I have a snow removal business that was in sorely need of snow. I have plans for a raised bed garden addition that I will transplant strawberry seedlings to when the weather starts to cooperate.JWR is right, I need to go thru my hunting sticks and make sure there is enough redundancy’s to be comfortable with and to supply a few more relatives. Yes I think there is something in the wind that is blowing this way that will not serve the 2nd Amendment or the staunch supporters thereof.
Rented a gas-powered tiller from a local place, I forget how many bags of peat moss, and contributions from our horses as well, all got tilled into the garden. Formerly orange-ish brown clay of Eastern TN is now dark grey soil (couple more years it will hopefully be black!)
Added 45 feet of bed-space for berry bushes, hope to plant and transplant those as the summer progresses. That would make for a good article (I wish I could write!) – how to propagate woody-stemmed bushes.
This week, we are bringing in more wood. Unfortunately, my woodcutter was laid up last spring/summer with shoulder surgery. Coupled with a long, nasty winter it has left us with no wood. We heat our house solely with wood, and do not have a working furnace or duct work. Praise God his shoulder is healed, and we have access to good seasoned wood. More snow is expected this weekend, so wood is our priority right now. And you know we already have a good supply laid up for next year! It’s green, but once split and stacked will be perfect for next year. We want to get a good 2 year supply so we are not caught short again.
And in the house, I am working on emptying a freezer. I believe I can get one empty, depriving our utility company of a bit more of my husbands hard earned money. I am rendering and canning lard today. That will clear out a bit of space, and give us lots of beautiful jars of lard for the next year.
Things are greening up rapidly here. The blue berries, apple trees, fig trees, and peach and plum trees are budding or blooming. The crimson clover is about 6″ tall in the pasture and the cows are mooing wanting in to graze, but the clover doesn’t have a good root system and needs fertilizing first. I didn’t plant hardly any rye grass this year because the seeds were in short supply and sold out by the time I got to it. We would have planted our potatoes last week, but the soil is way too wet. We received 11 inches of rain in February and 10 inches in January. Looks like we will plant our sweet corn, potatoes, green beans and squash at the same time in the next few weeks. It’s time to round up some calves to sell for some cash to pay for our fertilizer for our 50 acres of hay fields. This next month I plan to receive another pig to butcher to get us thru the summer with pork chops, ribs, bacon and sausage. I wish I had saved us a bull calf to butcher this spring, but I sold the balance of bull calves last fall. I also need to finish my LPOP and install my elevated water tank. I have the tank, but need to purchase the materials for the tower to set it on. Looks like we will have 100, 4’x5′ rolls of hay left over which will serve as a reserve for a summer drought or to have a good start for next winter’s supply. This winter I estimate I will have fed 300 rolls of hay by the end of April when the summer grass will really start growing. Things will get really busy around here in the next month or so. We actually had a winter here this year and burned a whole cord of wood. I have two trees drug up to the house to cut to refill the wood shed. Then we will have 8 cords again.
We are cleaning our basement and I threw out some old military MREs that were made back in the 1990s. Some of my Y2K Preps. My wife, who hates to waste anything, didn’t want to do it. “Aren’t they supposed to last forever?” She asked. “No, just five years, and these are 25 years old!” Have I eaten outdated MREs before? Yes, but not that outdated. Would I eat them if I was living in Venezuela? Yes indeed. But thankfully, I’m not,
I am concerned just enough about gun control that I bought three AR-15 lowers online this week for $39 each. Just in time, too — they were sold out when I went back online today. I have the tools, experience and sufficient spare parts on hand to build at least one of them out, but I expect they will stay in the safe as stripped lowers for some time. I am also looking for a 1892 lever action. All my rifles are semi-auto except a bolt action hunting rifle, so I thought having another option might be prudent. And practicing with it will be a good excuse to have some fun!
Seems we have had all of February’s snow March 2nd. As a result, we were snowed in and were able to rest – anti-flu prep!
Managed to move forward on the medical front with more preventive appointments taken care of. I have also finally finished resupplying the first aid kits.
Bought 100 pounds of dog food and a large box of chews. We have been working more with the training collars and I have hopes of being able to calm our pups while keeping their guarding ability.
Bought seeds even though I am unsure if we’ll do more than just prepare a new garden this year. I continue to collect seeds of all sorts in anticipation of needing them in the future.
Finally, I have started to build a collection of games and books for the days when we too have grandchildren. I’m collecting free or inexpensive games that do not require batteries nor electricity. Someday…
Took advantage of cold and wet weather by polishing and waterproofing most of my boots. Being in wood stove season really helped warm the leather for easy application of bee’s wax. Made sure to use the right product on any gore-tex boots. Did not realize how many pairs were in need of attention until I started looking. Revitalizing some of my old favorite boots was quite satisfying and when I need a pair they will be ready. Earlier in the winter I did the same thing with the surprising number of knives that needed sharpening. Thank you and keep up the good work.
We’re focusing on getting organized. There is a clear difference between supplies for an uncertain future and clutter. It gets labeled and properly stored away or it gets sold off, donated to charity or dumped. So far several huge boxes and garbage bags full of “stuff” have been assembled for departure. Everything form clothing to boxes of books to a spare excellent condition ’96 Ford F-250 4WD going up for sale. This has been extremely refreshing for us but more importantly it helps us to see where we really stand on preparedness. It’s surprising when you find that clutter contirbutes to a false picture of having valued supplies.