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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:

I got back to my annual firewood cutting, splitting, and stacking project. All of the firewood that we will need for this winter is now in our woodshed close to our ranch house. There is, of course, also a big reserve of wood for subsequent winters under tarps, but that is farther away from the house.  We’ll only get into that reserve wood if we have an exceptionally hard winter.

I helped Lily prep our east sheep shed for winter.  She had already hauled out nearly all of the manure mixed soiled bedding/waste hat. My part of the job involved scraping the floor down to bare soil, scorching the soil with our big propane torch wand, shoveling three wheelbarrow loads of gravel around the base of the shed’s exterior walls where there were some light gaps, and spreading two wheelbarrow loads of clay around the base of the interior walls and on the floor of the shed.  All that it needs now is some fresh straw bedding, and then it will be nice and snug again, for winter.

I topped off all of our fuel cans and had one 20-pound prone cylinder refilled. It looks like we haven’t yet seen the top in the fuel price spike!

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 did some more roto-tilling in the near-house pastures, with our trusty old Troy-Bilt Horse. Lily immediately broadcasted the usual mix of fall cover crop seeds.

I also did some more manure hauling from the Dairy sheep pen. Lily and I finished that by scraping the soil with the tips of square-point shovels. Using our big propane torch wand connected to a 20-pound tank, I then thoroughly scorched the soil of the pen and the ground inside the pallet shelter, to kill any intestinal parasite eggs and/or any liver fluke plasmids.

I built a wooden storage shelf in the ranch house kitchen, to take advantage of some available cabinet space. I also cut 2″-thick blue closed-cell insulation inserts that are friction-fit inside the screened vents near the top of our new “just in case” outhouse.  I expect that those insulation panels will be there for 9 or 10 months of each year.

After nearly 20 years here at the closer-to-the-border Rawles Ranch (our third ranch),  I’m finally getting a few things properly organized. For example, some scrap lumber and extra Trex decking planks that had been stored under our east deck were moved to our workshop. I’ve also started organizing all of our stored lumber and lumber scraps. I started with the plywood, plywood scraps, and pegboard sheets.

We had our septic tank pumped.  So, that should now be good for the next 7 to 9 years.

I shipped out several more Elk Creek Company orders. The recent jump in the price of silver brought our silver divisor briefly up to 48, though it is back down to 45.5 as I’m writing this. (This is the silver pricing ratio, for payments in pre-1965 circulated U.S. silver dimes, quarters, and halves. The ratio changes frequently, tracking the spot silver market) Two recent examples: I sold a $350 Ruger Old Army .45 Colt stainless steel conversion cylinder for just $7.25 in silver, postage paid. The same day, I also sold a $589 Mauser Model 1895 rifle for just just $12 in silver, insured postage paid. So it is still “the good old days” for prices, if you pay in silver. Keep in mind that it isn’t that silver has “gone up.” Rather, it is the Federal Reserve Note “dollar” that has gone down!

As most SurvivalBlog readers know, I do most of my consulting by phone, Wire, or Zoom. But last week I did some on-site consulting, at a client’s ranch. This was a fast-paced nearly three-hour preparedness presentation to three couples, followed by some Q&A.

This week, I plan to do some more firewood cutting and splitting.  I’ll also be helping  Lily bring in more of the  potato harvest  It looks like we may get more than 300 pounds of spuds, this year.

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”