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:
This week, I had a project in cleaning out the accumulated lint from our clothes dryer’s under-floor ducts. I had always presumed they were a bit gunked with lint when I bought the ranch house, 18 years ago. But by this year, the ducts were pretty well sclerotic with lint — so much so that the dryer was having a hard time actually drying clothes without repeating drying cycles. Cleaning out the ducts required a lot of time and effort under the house and under our front porch. To obviate full removal of the 4″ ductwork from between the floor joists (running through fiberglass insulation that is held up with stapled-on chickenwire) I jerry-rigged a 6-foot extension to our ShopVac’s hose. I dd so, using some 2″ Schedule 40 white PVC pipe. That way, all that I had to remove were a couple of 90-degree elbows – not the entire duct runs.
I just hope that I don’t have to do this same job more often than once a decade. (It was NOT a fun job.) Well, I did have some fun quoting the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil. (“I want to talk about ducts.”) But at least now it is done. And our dryer will be working much more safely and efficiently. It also means we’ll be spending less on propane each month. So it was a “win-win.”
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
We had a bit of sun this week, but mostly clouds and rain. Temperatures went as high as 52 degrees Fahrenheit with a low of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. If this rain pattern continues when the colder weather arrives, we are going to have a whole lot of snow…In the past month we’ve had about eight inches of rain. There is a ratio of 10 inches of snow to every one inch of rain. That means if it had been cold enough, we would have had eighty inches of snow in the past month.
I washed our two lightly used honey bee brooders and their four supers, and their many hive frames, with very hot pressurized water this week and then dried them out on top of the wood stove. I put them up off the stove on two cast iron bread pans to keep them from burning.
I weaned the bull calf from his mom, because I wanted to get more milk from her for our use and to preserve/freeze and to prolong her lactation. It is going fairly smoothly to be milking her twice a day.
With the three X-Class solar flares in quick succession last week, we had the chance to see some Northern Lights early in the week. But we only saw the red glow behind the clouds. But others in our area had clear patches of sky and saw them and shared with us their photos, or reported their sightings.
This week, I gave to some friends that live in a small Development, four young hens. They built a beautiful little hen house for them and are very excited to have them. May those girls lay lots of eggs for them.
I cleaned the hen house on Sunday and the cow shed.
Jim and I spent about an hour digging out the roots of the rest of the area of the garden where I want to plant more garlic. I need to get into there and finish sifting through the soil to get the last of the roots out and to plant the rest of it.
I scraped the dried tanned sheep hide and brushed it out, this week. I, still need to wash it again and stretch it while drying, and then smoke it. I’m finally understanding the process more and more. There is no set way to tan a hide. There are myriads of tanning methods. This is good to learn, and it frees up ones mind, because it is so worrisome to think one may mess up a step and ruin the fleece.
Even though, I didn’t mind drying the clothes on the clothes racks in the living room by the wood stove in fall and outside during the summer for practice of living an offgrid lifestyle and saving money from not using the electricity and propane, I am very happy to have the working clothes dryer back. It is easier to get a washing of clothes completed in a couple of hours versus twenty-four hours or more. As soon as it was in operation, I washed our bed comforters and pillows from our bedroom. I will do the same for Miss Violet in the coming week.
This week, I allowed myself to relax a bit more than what I have been doing all summer and fall. This has been a summer of go, go, go. I took the time to do more reading. I’m also trying really really hard to stay off the computer more and more. I hate the thing. I hate the hold it has on me. I hate being sucked into it. I feel so much better when I’m not on it. I’m just checking e-mails and the news in the AM at lunch and after dinner and then I’m done. My regular computer is having track pad issues. So we put into service for me, an ancient computer that only has my most favorite sites on it: our blog and it’s login, Noaa, USGS, Space Weather, Time and Date, YouTube, Blue Letter bible,( But I’m using my Strong’s and dictionaries more often these days.) Tropical Tidbits, and Quayle for some news. I’ve shut down the history tracker on my YouTube channel and only allow it to show me the channels that I have subscribed to, except the side bar still suggests relevant channels of the thing I had just watched. Which is better than when they were offering everything under the sun when my history was on. That’s it. Now, I watch what I want when I want and get off.
I spent my free time this week reading straight through almost half of Brad Angier’s book, “How to Eat in the Woods”. I perused parts of Phyllis Hobson’s “Tan Your Hide!”, and parts of Carla Emery’s “Country Living”, Thomas Elpel and Kris Reed’s, “Foraging the Mountain West”, the 1888 Farm Cyclopedia, and I went completely through the plant and herb section of Penelope Ody’s DK book, “The Complete Medicinal Herbal”.
Jim and I went for a four mile hike up in the national forest this week. I rode my bike once and also had a few very brisk walks around the ranch.
I wrote out Chapters 1-9 of the book of Hebrews.
May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
o o o
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.
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