Editors’ Prepping Progress for Saturday March 28, 2020
To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make 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. Note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers,
This week saw us do some new activities that I hadn’t done before. This past week was Miss Eloise’s birthday. She requested and orange sponge cake. So she and I, made it for her birthday cake for the very first time with orange glaze frosting. The family reported that it was a wonderfully yummy cake. (I didn’t eat it, because, I don’t eat eggs.) Also for the first time, I dehydrated the orange peels, (after scrubbing them/the whole orange before squeezing the juice) with warm soapy water and rinsing well. I then powdered them in the Vitamix blender.
Also for the first time ever, I baked a whole chicken in our cast iron pot in our wood stove. First of all, I cleared out all of the ash from previous fires. Then in the far side of the stove, I started a fire with very dried kindling and wood, leaving about a square foot of open floor on the door side of the stove. I opened up the air vent. When the wood was burning well, I put the cast iron pot with the chicken and lid onto the floor of the stove and closed the door. About twenty minutes later, I checked on the cooking status of the chicken. It was cooking fast. So I rotated the pot around to the other side, so that the other side of the pot would receive the heat from the fire. I didn’t think to close the air vent. Therefore, the chicken cooked through well, but the skin was a wee bit blackened. The chicken tasted great, but wasn’t as tender as it could have been if it had cooked more slowly at a lower heat. In the future, I will let the fire burn down to hot coals, and will keep the vent closed, and will cook the chicken slower.
A gardening story of Providence provision.
At the end of February, I planted in my Indoor bathroom green house, what I later discovered was my last bag, of celery seed. Fast forward three weeks, the celery seed has appeared to fail to germinate, except for maybe two or three plants. I didn’t realize that I needed to order more celery seeds three weeks ago when I placed three orders for seeds. After discovering my oversight, for the past 6 or so days, I was feeling very remorseful with this omission, feeling as though we might be facing this longterm TEOTWAWKI event without enough celery once it runs out.
To be clear, currently, I do have two quart jars filled with dried celery stalks and leaves, but we do use a lot of it.
And I had bought three celery stalks the last time I went to the store, of which I have cut off the stalks and put their butts into jars of water to grow more celery on the window
As I was ruminating on this lack of planning and inwardly panicking and chastising myself for this oversight for a few days,
One day this week, I was walking down the pantry hall, this hall is filled with stuff, so I forget what I have if I’m not looking for it it particular. My eyes dropped to a paper bag with some dried plants inside. I picked up the bag and reached my hand in and pulled out the dried flowers and smelled that it was celery flowers, Instantly, I remembered. Two years ago, I had planted several rows of celery. Come that fall, I had harvested most of it accept, about four bunches on the edge of a row. I had let them over winter. Last spring I saw that they were coming back to life, so rototilled around them and let them grow all summer. I only harvested a few stalks from them. They produced flower fronds, but it was only one of the plants that did so. I saw honey bees all over the flowers, but because it was only one plant, I’m not sure if the seeds were pollinated and will be fertile… Come fall, I decided to cut the flower fronds and put them in the paper bag and there they sat forgotten all winter until this week. So, I rubbed the seeds off the flowers and put them into a jar, and planted some of them into the seedling trays where the other celery seeds failed to germinate. Now we will wait and see if they were viable. If they are viable, then we will have lots of celery this coming summer and, I will allow some of them to over winter next winter to produce flowers and seeds next summer.
(Oh, I just remembered, that last summer when I was buying spices and herbs in bulk that I bought a pound of celery seed as seasoning for making relishes. I’m not sure if they are viable, at this time. I am currently trying to germinate them between two damp paper towels. I will let you know as soon as I see if they germinate or not.)
After watching more videos from Adapt 2030, Ice Age Farmer, Yanasa Ama Ranch, and Peak Prosperity, and others. I have to admit, I have a bit of panic going on inside my heart, though I know that God has specifically promised me that “my children will never be begging for bread” Psalm 37. I have been claiming and proclaiming that verse out loud to the Lord a lot lately. But in light of all of these warnings and the rising panic has served as a great motivator to get me going in a day.
This week, the nights are still below freezing but the days are in the 40’s and partly sunny, so, I put all of my cruciferous seedlings outside in the green house, (They handled the two very cold nights out in the green house under a second layer of plastic, well. So I am not worried about them surviving until, I can put them in the garden) which freed up floor space in the Indoor bathroom green house to start seedlings of all of the squashes that I wish to grow and cucumbers. I planted 8 trays of 18, 4 inch pots. These seedlings, I hope will give me a jump on an earlier harvest of the squashes, I also intend to plant these same squash seeds directly in the ground come warmer weather for another later harvest.
Dear readers, we need to pray for all of our medical personnel from around the country. We are hearing reports of there not being enough personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses, lack of testing of Doctors and nurses, though that is beginning to be remedied, though, probably too late. Doctors traveling from hospital to hospital without being tested or taking personal precautions of not spreading the virus.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-25-kaiser-permanente-theatens-to-fire-nurses-for-wearing-n95-masks-coronavirus.html
May you all have a very blessed and safe week.
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
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As always, please share your own successes and hard-earned wisdom in the Comments.