Prepper Souviners

I wanted to share my souviners from a day spent “working” on skills to be more self sufficient. First of all, we live on my parents property, but our houses are about 75 yards apart past a large metal building (quanset hut), over a canal, and past my sister’s house. In some ways it isn’t that far, but for my two little ones (who will be turning 3 and 4 this summer). There are many twists and turns that can lead to disaster. They walk the path at least once a day with me, but we’ve had concerns about them trying to take the way on their own – but there may come a time that they need to be able to do it. So, yesterday I called ahead and sent them on their way. With the comfort of cell phones I knew when they had made it. The plan is that through familiarity of knowing they are expected that they are less likely to divert from the path in an emergency situation.
While the kids were visiting their MawMaw, my husband and I took the shotguns to the back end of the property and set up some targets with clay pigeons. I found that the more I aimed the worse I did! My husband bought me a Winchester 20 gauge for Christmas (the first gun I’ve owned) and it seems that some days I’m great with it, and some I’m not. I did marginally better when he threw the targets. However, I moved to quick and didn’t get it settled correctly before one of my shots – and I have a colorful reminder today.

while we were out there i confirmed that we have loads of Broadleaf Plantain if we need it, and tasted a few leaves to decide if I’d be adding it to salads or just mote it for medicinal use. Although the clay pigeons didn’t have much to fear from me, I did shoot my first water moccasin. It was in the canal by our house and I got it with one shot! I didn’t get a picture of that one, but here is a six footer my husband shot this afternoon. It was in some grass about 10 feet from our door. He came across it while hunting eggs from our chickens in the deeper grass.

He’s a much better shot than me (with a lifetime of experience) and shot it through the head with a .22. Happy for me, he also found where the hens were laying their eggs!
While we had been in the back shooting we came across a great blackberry patch. So we took the kids back out and picked about 5 cups of blackberrys (called Dewberrys around here).

So today I made a blackberry cobbler. And a jar of blackberry syrup.

All in all, we worked on skills all across the board. What is amazing to me is how shocked some friends are of what I considered just a normal day.