The Editors’ Preps for the Week

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 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 focus is on homemade bug spray for livestock.

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,
This week has been very warm, sunny, and hazy from some distant regional forest fires.  Relatives are visiting for the next three weeks, so not much prepping other than gardening will be occurring.  This week we did dig up/rob many volunteer potatoes.  We had a few meals with only what we have raised here on the ranch: Lettuce, cucumber, tomato salad, beef roast, fried potatoes, fried zucchini and lots of raspberries for dessert.  We made chicken soup from our own chicken, celery and potatoes.  It’s very exciting to eat food that you have raised yourself!  This feeling never gets old to us.   We did freeze more zucchini, red and black raspberries from our garden. We also froze some purchased blueberries, from Costco.

With the young’uns, we’ve continued to practice and refine our water safety, rescue skills, and swimming strokes and endurance. Also we continued evening mountain bike rides around the ranch in up in the adjoining National Forest.

Homemade Bug Spray

Next, some readers wrote in, wanting to know the proportions of the ingredients in our homemade bug spray for our horses and cattle.  We use: One cup and a half of water and two cups of white vinegar with about 15 drops each of Citronella oil, Tea Tree oil, Eucalyptus Oil, Lavender Oil and Peppermint Oil, and two squirts of  dish soap.  Mix it up and put into a 32 fluid ounces (or 950 ml) Windex  style spray bottle. We spray the horses  and cattle very liberally. We soak ’em fairly well.

Safety Note: Be sure to guard their eyes when spraying their ears and chin.  I cup my hand over each eye as I spray each ear front and back.  I do not spray their faces with it.  (You could wipe it on their face with a washcloth, if you are careful not to touch their eyes or nostrils.) We spray them about three times a week.

Jim’s Projects

Jim (“JWR”) has been busy for the past week clearing a field of rocks. Having a utility ATV with a dump bed on the back end is a great labor saver! He’s also been hauling slash to burn piles.

He also installed a replacement hand pump on one of our backup wells. The old pump, which had trouble holding prime overnight (regardless of the handle position) will be getting a rebuild kit installed. After that it will be greased up set aside in JASBORR as a spare.  Remember:  “Two is one, and one is none.”

Finally, this week he has also done some annual forest fire prevention work. This year, it has entailed cutting any dead limbs off of trees within 200 feet of the house and barn, to a height of 15 to 20 feet.  Here, it is the closely-spaced fir trees that are the worst offenders.  For this, he uses a Fiskars brand 16-foot adjustable length manual pole trimmer. It has both a saw and chain drive (mechanical advantage) lopper actuated by a pull cord. It works wonderfully. These are designed in Finland, but manufactured in Taiwan. I should add that we always try to avoid buying anything made in Mainland China. We have no objection to buying things from Free China.

That is all for this week.  We’ll be touring relatives around the Northern Redoubt this coming week.  So, not many prepping activities will be occurring.  May you all have a safe and blessed week – Avalanche Lily Rawles

HJL

We’ve had a busy week, primarily in the garden, and also with a few minor homestead maintenance projects. We had to work on additional trellising for and positioning of tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, green beans, and melons in addition to maintenance weeding in these areas. The vines are growing aggressively and requiring more support. The pests always need ongoing management, since we use only organic methods. Many vegetables are being harvested, with new additions added to the harvest routine weekly. Every day our harvest baskets are more full and over flowing than the day before.

Also, it is time to begin preparing the spaces designated for late summer/fall crop planting. Brussel sprouts, broccoli, and other vegetables will soon be planted. We simply need to get these spaces cleared of weeds and the soil loosened, some compost worked in, and the surface smoothed. It is our hope to get some of the areas completed this week so we can begin planting the following week.

Growing Chicks

Of course, the three week old chicks are requiring quite a bit of attention too. They are so cute, we don’t mind much. This flock is quite strong. They’re leaping and flying up to perch already. So, we had to get busy and do another clean up of the next area of their transition to be out next to the big chickens. They seem to be about ready for much more space, especially tall space where they can run, hop, and fly. Where they currently are does not allow them much elevated space, though they have a lot of run space. We are expecting the transition to go smoothly, as they will have their own space in the hen house and segregated area of the run.

Peaches!

Our peaches appear to be about ready to harvest. We salivate as we look them over, wishing they’d hurry up and lose the green on the underside. Oh, how we are looking forward to some delicious peach cobbler, possibly before the end of next week!

Basil Harvest

It certainly looks like we will have a large basil processing effort going this weekend and early in the week, as some is just beginning to bud or blossom and we need to cut and process it before it reaches this stage. We sure do enjoy our homemade pesto, salad dressings, marinades, sauces, and more made from the various types of basil we grow on the property! Some will be processed into concentrates and frozen in olive oil while the bulk will be freeze dried. We grow multiple varieties of basil. If you haven’t tried lime basil, you are missing out on a real treat. (Freeze-dried herbs are the best, short of fresh! Although dehydrated isn’t bad either. Dehydrated herbs are better than air dried, because the faster you get them dried after picking, the better.)

Security

Hugh had time to put in two more HD cameras in the security system. There are about 3 more needed for security purposes and there will probably be some put in just because we want to observe things. The dog-resistant chicken coop has been wonderful in keeping the coyotes and feral dogs from killing the chickens, but we’d like to catch them in the act rather than just seeing the evidence.