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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 set an all-time personal best for gathering hay and hauling it to the Rawles Ranch.  With the help of our hay contractor and his assistant, we picked up 25 tons of hay in the field in a single day.  This was a 12-hour work day, and that included three 50-mile round trips, in two vehicles.  We also stacked most of it in our barn, the same day. As night fell, I still had about 130 bales left to stack. That was a bit of a shoe-horning exercise, since our three-sided hay barn will only hold just over 25 tons if it it stacked from floor to ceiling. By mid-morning two days later, all the hay bales were in the barn. Lily helped me by staging the bales on the edge of the trailer and hefting some up to my platform in the barn. Whew!  What a big job!

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

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 slaughtered and butchered another ram lamb. We are getting faster and more efficient with home butchering. Many years ago, I found that using an ATV cable winch with a stout rope tossed over a beam in our barn is the best way to have a quickly-adjustable gambrel height, for suspending a carcass. If I want to save the hide for tanning, then the whole process (from “blam!” to freezer) takes me about two hours. But if the hide will be discarded, then that saves me at least 20 minutes. (This is because I can work faster and not worry about nicking a hide.) Of course we usually prefer to keep and tan the hides, so I usually take my time.

We retrieved our pickup from the “nearby” dealership (80 miles away), following a clutch replacement. This was much more expensive that I had anticipated, because the transmission input shaft also had to be replaced. In all, it was a $6,000 job. Ouch.

I’m nearly done with my summer firewood cutting. My latest woodcutting project was a 78-foot tall dead-standing fir. It was 23 inches at the butt, and bone dry.

This past week I also had a day-long trip to do some on-site consulting with a client.

I used some heavy cream to make pint containers of ice cream. Part of it was chocolate chip, but most of it was flavored with huckleberries.

I’ve been busy packing and mailing Elk Creek Company orders. Because the spot price of silver has rebounded, there were a lot more orders in the past week.  About 40% of our orders are now paid in pre-1965 circulated silver coins.

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”