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 several nice soaking rain showers in the past week. That rainfall should give our pastures a chance for one more spurt of growth before the fall cold weather arrives. Hopefully, that grass will minimize the amount of hay needed for our cattle, until October.
I wrapped up the annual firewood project this week. It feels good to have it all safely stacked and ready for winter.
With more rain in the forecast, I have tarped all of my slash piles, to make them easier to burn, come October. Wet slash piles take a lot of dyed diesel or propane torch fuel to get them burning, and that is a needless expense. So, I’ve developed the habit of tarping slash piles. There is something gratifying about a “one-match touch-off”.
I’ve been busier than usual with consulting work, both on the phone and face-to-face. This has meant some extra driving for me in north Idaho and northwestern Montana. Many of my clients are telling me the same thing: Recent events and public discourse at the national level have them feeling increasingly anxious about getting their preps squared away. Three of them used the same phrase: “Time is short.” Clearly, food, fuel, ammunition, and night vision gear are all high on their priority lists. My advice: Buy them now, while they are still relatively inexpensive and plentiful. Long-term storage food, in particular, is at risk of selling out quickly, in the event of a crisis. Presently, there are no significant shortages of storage foods. But that could change just about overnight, because it is a thin market. A rush of orders could quickly have them quoting a six-month or longer order backlog.
Early in the week, I helped my eldest son Jonathan with the final edit of his new relocation e-book. That is available as a free PDF download. And Jonathan tells me that his SurvivalRealty.com business is picking up. Higher interest rates have made fewer buyers qualify for mortgages, so rural retreat properties are staying on the market longer. I’ve also heard that the ongoing rollout of the Starlink satellite constellation is making very remote properties more viable as “work-from-home” retreats. This is having a profound effect on the rural real estate market.
Now, on to Lily’s part of the report…
