Earlier in the week, I pruned one apple tree and one pear tree.

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 came down with a cold last weekend. Whilst sick in bed, I took the opportunity to do some reading. My goal was to gather some Quotes Of The Day.  I stumbled into a treasure trove when I began to read The Debates in the Several State Conventions. (“….an influential early 19th century edition of key documents about the ratification of the US Constitution by the states.”) In the next week, you will be reading from a few of these founding fathers.

I bounced back from that cold fairly quickly.  Thankfully, I’m back to my regular chores and my regular writing/editing schedule.

Now, Lily’s report…

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
We’re definitely up to this point having a very warm El Nino late fall.  The temperatures were in the high thirties and low forties, twenty-four-seven for the past few days. Additionally, it has been very rainy with about five inches of rain, all told.  The river has crested its banks and our big pasture has flooded deep enough to paddle in, though I haven’t done so yet. It was interesting to see that the river came up very fast and flowed into the creeks that flow through our meadow causing them to flow backwards for a few hours. The rain and above-freezing temperatures caused all of our five inches of snow to melt in the valley. It also caused the snowpack up to eight thousand feet to mostly melt.

I’ve, as usual, cleaned the cow stalls, sheep shed and chicken house.

These warm temperatures allowed me to clean up the manure in the loafing areas.

I turned over the compost pile in the garden, though the compost had about two inches of granulated ice just below its surface.  I chopped through it and continued turning it over.

So, I have been feeding our loose beasties in the loafing areas and then cleaning up after them.  I was putting the manure out into the House meadow.  While I was wheelbarrow-ing it out into the House meadow, the fifth load, I suddenly, I had one of those “slap in the forehead”, “Ah Ha!” moments.  Duh! How thick, I can be sometimes? I realized that I could save myself a whole lot of work if I would just feed the beasties out in the meadow.  The beasties nicely tear up the hay bales and spread the hay (and hay seed) all over the place while they eat it and defecate on it.  I am trying to fertilize our meadows and build them back up nutritionally.  They can do that for me.  So, for the past two days, we’ve started bringing the hay out to them and spreading the flakes everywhere so they can eat it and spread any un-eaten hay and hay seed around and fertilize the meadow. And I can sled it out there, once the snow arrives to stay, if it does stay this year.

Earlier in the week, I pruned one apple tree and one pear tree.  I will prune the others later this winter.  I also continued spending some more time limbing some trees in one of our forested areas.

I deep-cleaned three of our kitchen drawers and our junk drawer.

I continue sorting photos from my five and half decades walking this earth. I’ve made a pretty good dent in the pile.  I pretty much now have to sort out all of the pictures from the girls’ lives now.  I categorized them as, my babyhood to high school graduation, college years, after college, mission years, first marriage, girls early years, time at grandmas, Second marriage/Rawles Ranch years. Lots of memories.  I’ve been contacting some folks by phone, and renewing friendships as a result of this photo sort.

We celebrated a family member’s birthday this week.  All of our children are now of legal age.  We are getting old!

I sewed a button back onto a pair of jeans.

I repaired five cashmere sweaters that moths had put holes in. Two of them were fairly new.  I hadn’t realized that the holes were caused by the few moths I would see from time to time.  But when multiple sweaters came up with holes, I realized that it just wasn’t me working hard while wearing the sweater, especially when a hole showed up in a brand new sweater I had worn only once…  Once repaired they were put in plastic bags for protection and I throughly looked through the closet to make sure there were no more moths present. I also repaired a flannel shirt in which the hood partially separated from the shirt. This incident certainly reminds me of this scripture:

I organized my sewing cabinet.

I spent time reading the book Nuclear War Survival Skills.

This week, I did a lot of calisthenics.  We walked up to the neighbors to check their mail and put it in their house. And I’ve walked for about an hour plus per day out and around the ranch.  I rode my bike for about twenty minutes one day.  I haven’t ridden it much this year.

Miss Violet and I listened to the last twenty-five chapters of Isaiah and some Psalms this week.

May you all have a very blessed and safe week.

– 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.