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’ve just begun a big new project this week that is sucking up a lot of our time. So this column may be sparse for the next few weeks.  Some details will follow. Thanks for your patience.

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Avalanche Lily Reports:

Dear Readers,
This early week felt like fall: cloudy and in the sixties and low seventies.

I harvested more potatoes on Sunday afternoon. Most of them are now harvested.   I have a few scattered around in other spots that were planted late in the summer. Those will probably overwinter to spring in the ground.

Praise:  I was praising the Father for the bountiful harvest despite my not weeding or watering as often as I thought I should.  The Father causes food to grow despite what we do, through the incredible heat, horrible weeds, and mosquitoes.  Just Amazing!

I spent a lot of time cleaning the house for the “project” and cooking a month’s worth of food for the cats and the dog: chicken and ground beef and froze it.

I cleaned out the kitchen refrigerator and freezer. I moved most of the contents to the other freezers.

We vacuumed the whole house, washed floors, and rolled up the wool rug for the duration of the “project” to protect it.

All bathrooms were deep cleaned.

I reorganized my armoire and Miss Violet’s clothes.

I forgot to mention last week that while processing the apples to dehydrate, I saved all of the cores and ends and made Apple vinegar with them three half gallons.

As usual, I cleaned out the Hen house, Sheep shed, and Cow stalls.

I harvested another gallon’s worth of pickle cucumbers and fermented those.  I tried last week’s fermented pickles and really liked them.  At the moment of writing this, I am waiting to see how my body likes them. Update a few days later: they appear to agree with me.

I harvested basil and zucchini.  The basil was blended with a bit of water and frozen in ice cube trays and the cubes were put in a gallon plastic bag.  Zucchini was washed chopped frozen and put in two, one-gallon bags.

I organized the entire greenhouse.  All pots, trays, all totes were organized and stacked together.  I will be washing them all at a later date.

All garden tools and garden machines have been put away. I have harvested most of the garden for winter at this point.  What is left out there can grow for a time ’til we finish the “project”.

My laptop computer died this week.  I am sadly, quite rough on them. ;-0  I’m continually unplugging it and carrying it around the ranch with me to listen to what is happening in the world.  Somehow the battery either died. I run them down too low, too often, not on purpose, mind you, I’m just super busy, and/or the fan died or something else happened to it.  We’ll find out later what happened to it, in the meantime, we have set up a spare computer for me but have not yet re-established the Avalanche Lily e-mail.  If you wish to contact me please e-mail Jim with Avalanche Lily in the subject line. Because of the “project”, we may not be able to get that back up for a bit.  But we are working on it. Actually, this computer I am now using may soon be shared by both of us. Jim’s computer is also acting up. I have to say, that I really enjoyed being computerless for a whole day.  It really freed up my mind and time to do a ton of work.  It was actually quite liberating. Someday, we’ll be unshackled from this technology.  I look forward to that day.

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.