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:

We’re back home! The project that we mentioned in our column three weeks ago was helping our eldest daughter move to the East Coast. Our part in this was transporting her car with a rental tow dolly, behind our full-size SUV. The car was stuffed full of her household goods. We took advantage of this trip to visit several relatives and to do some hiking and a bit of shopping. As usual for any road trips to the northeast, we bought/rustled up a lot of 1-gallon and half-gallon jugs of maple syrup to bring home—both for our own use at the ranch, and for gifts.

Most of the trip went smoothly. We had just one mishap: A nighttime deer collision in western South Dakota. A full-grown Mule Deer doe darted out of the darkness in front of our vehicle. We were traveling nearly 70 miles an hour. The driver’s side of our bumper hit her solidly across the hips, and then the deer went under our wheels. I didn’t even get the chance to hit the brake pedal, before the impact.

Thankfully, our SUV is equipped with a 600+ pound steel deer bumper. These bumpers are considered almost standard equipment, here in the American Redoubt. (Deer collisions are quite commonplace here.) That bumper turned what would have been major damage — and possibly even a “total loss” — into just some minor damage to the driver’s side quarter panel. Our deer bumper was built by a company called Reunel, now defunct. (Their company name, designs, and phone number were bought out by Buckstop Truckware, of Prineville, Oregon.) There are several other competing brands with quality deer bumpers on the market, including Ranch Hand, ARB, and Thunder Struck. If you live in deer country, I recommend opting for a heavy, full-size bumper that wraps around the headlights

We had some fun and educational stops, on our trip home. Lily will give you the details:

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
We traveled to my home state in New England and stayed with my Mom and stepfather and visited my Father at his camp. Miss Eloise is currently living there with my Mom. We brought her car and belongings. I had not been to my home state in six years.  It was so good to see them all. The visit was long overdue. Besides bringing Miss Eloise her car, I really wanted to help out my Mom.  My stepfather has been having health issues and my Mom had some health issues this past winter, but since changing her diet drastically, she has quite recovered from them!!! Nevertheless, she needed help with wrapping up her garden. It had been taken over by horseweed that was six to eight feet tall.  So we spent a day pulling all of those weeds. Then Jim cut down some trees for her and trimmed some branches.  We stacked the burnable wood for her and then hauled all of the yard waste to an organic waste center. Mom and I dug her potatoes.  She had grown about forty pounds of potatoes.  I also brought her about sixty pounds of potatoes from my garden, onions, garlic, cabbage, carrots, and Transparent apples. Then I spent two days cleaning up the basement and organizing it for her.  Additionally, one part of the basement has all of her prepper stuff.  We cleaned, reorganized, and restacked everything for her. Then I vacuumed the basement. We hauled away a lot of recycled plastic bottles and such that she realized she didn’t need.

Additionally, we bought her some chainsaw safety gear. (Kevlar chaps and a Stihl helmet/earmuffs/face shield combination.) I introduced her to fermenting and ordered her a fermenting kit. I bought her some more mason canning jars, a wool shirt from Ibex, and other things. You know, up to this point in life, my mom has always been the giver to us and now I wanted to give back to her and help her as much as I possibly could.  It was wonderful also just to walk with her and to work beside her. I really love and appreciate my Mom and I wish we lived much closer to her.

Mom and I went for walks with the dogs, nearly every day around the old neighborhood.  We walked about two and a half miles each day.  It was so wonderful to be with her again.  One day we took Miss Violet and the dogs and hiked around the nearby reservoir.

On all of our walks, I looked for plants that I already knew and for those that I didn’t,  both for edible and non-edibles.

I brought Sam Thayer’s “Field Guide to Wild Edible Plants of Eastern and Central North America” with me,  and spent a lot of time studying plants growing in the Eastern part of our country.  His book is awesome. I learned and identified quite a few new plants for me on this trip. I also bought my mom a copy of this book to add to her prepping library.

Another day, our family went to my Dad’s camp and went out on his boat on a New England lake.  It was so wonderful to be out on the water and to see all of the scenery, again, that I grew up with. Additionally, on one of our visits, I took out my Dad’s neighbor’s Sunfish and sailed it for about an hour.  I love sailing.  Miss Violet came out with me too for about twenty minutes and got a crash course in sailing.  There was a stiff breeze and we had that little sailboat clipping along and nearly keeling over!  Such fun!!! 🙂

Another day, Jim and I had a date and traveled to a local famous tourist site and climbed a high mountain to a lodge for hikers.  We didn’t have time to summit the mountain. I love New England mountains and all of their flora and fauna.  I loved seeing again: Yellow and white birch, beech, Hobblebush, sphagnum moss, Wood sorrel, Striped maples, Red and Sugar Maples, wood ferns, Interrupted ferns, Jewelweed/Touch-me-Nots, etc.

Our dog H. accompanied us on our long road trip. I have never in my life encountered a dog that is quite so agreeable a traveler. She is well-behaved, never has “accidents”, and rests quietly on her dog travel bed. She didn’t even leave any nose marks on the vehicle windows. She is just so happy to be with us.  She has learned to wee on command, too. She quickly got into the routine of staying in hotels. The first night she growled and barked when hearing people outside our door in the hallway.  Both Jim and I hushed her quick.  By the third hotel, she learned to growl “under” her breath.  Ha ha!

On our trip home from the Unnamed Upper New England State, we had several interesting stops. We started with a drive to the Amish country of central Ohio. After a night’s stay in a hotel, we drove down to a very well-stocked hardware store in Mount Hope. Arriving soon after they opened for the day. Jim’s goal was to find some stove tongs and a couple of stove chimney thermometers. Just getting there was fun. Driving through some rolling hill farm country, we saw lots of horse-drawn buggies, and Amish mothers walking their children to school. The Quaintness Meter was pegging!

Next, we drove up to Kidron, Ohio, to spend a few hours shopping in the famous Lehman’s store. We had no idea that it was so huge. The ravages of Biden-era price inflation were evident! They are now selling Country Living Grain Mills for $649 each. Ouch! (And that price was without the must-have “Power Bar” handle extension.)

That afternoon we drove down to northern Kentucky for a two-and-a-half-hour visit to the Ark Encounter, in northern Kentucky. We had previously visited the nearby Creation Museum. But this was the first time for us to see the enormous Ark of Noah replica. Seeing that really brought the Bible’s description of surviving the Flood of Noah to life.

That evening, we drove up to northern Ohio. The next morning, we visited the famous Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Miss Violet needed her annual rollercoaster fix. (We usually go to the Silverwood, in Athol, Idaho, for that.) At Cedar Point, it was great fun for her to ride some different roller coasters. Jim went on all of them with her.  He loves them too.  I stayed in the parking lot with our pup for four hours reading books and resting. I am not a roller coaster fan.  I don’t need the adrenalin.  If I didn’t get nervous, I would like them…

We pressed on, westward. The next day, we sojourned to De Smet, South Dakota. That was the childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Since our kids and I have read all of her books, multiple, multiple times, it was delightful to see the setting of their 160-acre homestead and the museum/store.

Jim pointed out that most of the buildings are either replicas made with modern finished dimensional lumber or re-located “similar” structures. His comment: “There is hardly a square nail or a piece of rough-cut lumber here!”

Closer to home, we took a very scenic side-trip over the Big Horn Mountains to pass through Cody, Wyoming, and then see part of Yellowstone National Park. Somehow, in the 14 years of our marriage, I had never been to the park. The weather was deteriorating that day, but we still got to see Old Faithful and many geothermal pools and fumaroles.

We got rained out the next day, so we decided to zoom home to the Rawles Ranch.

We found that all of our livestock and gardens had been well cared for, by our next-door neighbors.  It feels so good to be home.

We arrived home at about 2 PM in the afternoon and hit the ground running.  For one, the cats had been locked in the house for three weeks.  We hadn’t wanted them outdoors since the neighbors would only be at our house twice a day.  So I worried about them being stuck outside for too long and them perhaps leaving, or not having a safe place to hide from predators, etc.  It was the first time we had left M and M for such a long time.  They were rather upset about it, and jumpy for the first day or two that we were back.   I could tell that Female M was looking at me like, “Is it really you?  Why did you leave us for so long?”  Our older cat Miss S.  has seen us leave for long periods about four times in her life, so I could see that she wasn’t so shocked about our absence.  Anyhow, the house smelled funky and was full of cat hair, everywhere.  So within an hour of returning home, after I checked out the garden and the cows and sheep and chickens, I vacuumed the whole house, washed floors, and began washing the flannel sheets that were protecting the couch and chairs. We cleaned out the litter box. It had been cleaned in the morning, but it really needed to be washed out, so I did that. I rolled out the wool rug and spot-washed a few places on it. I dusted and washed every surface in the Great Room, Kitchen, Laundry room, pantry hallway, and guest bathroom. Miss Violet washed her bedroom floor and changed the bed linens.

Then I cooked dinner. Throughout all of the cleaning, I slowly unpacked all of our clothes, started more loads of laundry, and put away a lot of the stuff we had bought.  We bought some kitchen items from Lehman’s and books and I collected a lot of seeds from my home state to plant around the ranch.  I brought home four maple tree saplings and about thirty sprouts of wild black raspberries that were growing in my Mom’s backyard.

We had left tomato plants and squash plants in the house, just in case we had a frost while gone.  Then I would have some plants through the fall. We did not have a frost, thankfully. However, two tomato plants and two squash plants were used as litter boxes by the cats.  Those died.  One tomato plant survived. So much for bringing them into the house to protect them from frost.  Ha-ha!  Anyhow the plants leaked water and cat pee onto the floor, even though there were trays under them so it took a couple of washes to get rid of that smell.

The next day, I had to wash parts of the floor again.  I continued with laundry. It was The Observed First Day of Tabernacles, so we observed that The first Day of Succot is a Sabbath.  So we tried to keep it.  I actually had a four-hour nap in the afternoon.

Our neighbors had watered the garden and greenhouse in our absence.  The plants continued to grow.  They did not harvest anything though they could have had some stuff. So I picked golden raspberries, cucumbers, Broccoli, and zucchini.  I made four and a half gallons of fermented cucumber pickles. We really, really like fermented pickles, so I was thrilled to be able to harvest more cucumbers and make four more gallons when I came home. I blanched and froze broccoli and froze some zucchini.

I didn’t require that the neighbors clean out the animal domiciles.   So on Thursday, I cleaned out the Hen house.  It was pretty bad. That entailed hosing it down, scrubbing the floor, and moving the nesting boxes to new spots in the hen house. Of all of our animals, the chickens, literally take up most of my animal care time. Friday, I cleaned out the sheep shed.  Next week, I’ll get the cow stalls.

Jim and I shared in mowing the garden paths.

May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,

– Avalanche Lily, Rawles

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As always, please share and send e-mails of your own successes and hard-earned wisdom and we will post them in the “Snippets” column this coming week.  We want to hear from you.