make do and mend for tougher times

mardatha

Time to roll sleeves up, gird yer pinnies, and buy some food for the stash :eek: Although this is about the US harvest failing, it is still a worldwide probem.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/commodities/9418651/Food-price-alert-as-US-woes-spread.html

QUOTE
With crops dying in the fields, the prospect of tightening supplies is driving what Barclays Capital analysts say is one of the most rapid prices spikes "in recent memory".

and this bit too -

"In addition to the crisis in the US, concerns in other parts of the world are also starting to mount, with dry conditions hitting Black Sea grain exporters and India's lentil, rice and oilseed harvest "

**********

So maybe get some lentils while you can - and I'm wondering about cooking oil? With rapeseed harvest affected?

fuddle

Thanks Mar it's this bit that screams out. Ouch.

The global nature of markets means that the reverberations from the US, the world's biggest corn producer as well as a major supplier of soybeans and wheat, will be felt around the world.

Alan Clarke, an economist at Scotia Capital, expects the effects of the drought to add "significantly" to UK inflation over the start of 2013, since it takes around six months before rises in agricultural commodity prices feed into prices on the supermarket shelves.

So many food items effected but worryingly it's the basic every day items that are effected. Gawd, all restrictions I have on that store cupboard are off. No more 'no more than 1 item in spare and 1 in use' I'm going to hoard food for a while, this looks like it's going to be effecting everything for some time.

Kittikins

I read that article too and groaned.....then opened an email from AF; free delivery if you spend £40 until the olympic torch is lit. Good for couscous, tins of soup etc.

fuddle

Thanks for sharing that kittikins.

I feel the nerves wrangling about. I'm going to go get ready, have a cuppa and go tidy out my stocks. It's all I can do right now.

My mam is coming, we're supposed to be having a BBQ as forecast was gorgeous weather. The sky is heavy grey, although sunny and still quite gusty. To top things off I have cold, I couldn't breathe last night and was pleased with my winter preps as I had olbas oil in. Did a naughty thing and sent DH a text to ask him to bring it up on a tissue lol well he gets waited on enough!

I feel a prepping list coming on.

GreyQueen

Yeah, fuddle, it's going to be a bumpy ride. I chat with my Magic Greengrocer, one of the remaining 3% of indy greengrocers, all the time. He reads the trade mags and tells me lots of interesting and frankly worrying stuff.

I'll be lifting my h.g. tatties this week but the commercial maincrops are yet to be harvested, and who knows how much slug damage they are sustaining underground? Harvests are looking darned ropy around here and we grow a lot of rapeseed (cooking oil) and sugar beet. The % of sugar in the won't be known until the harvest starts going thru the factories later this year but I think it will be probably be reduced due to the lack of sunshine. If you're into jamming or otherwise a heavy user of sugar, I'd say stock up now. Sugar is pretty unique among foodstuffs in that it doesn't go off as long as you can keep it dry. Salt has the same quality and can in theory be kept for centuries.

I predict that there will be a dearth of fresh veggies post-Xmas and into Spring as the growing conditions are so tough, and what will be around will be expensive imports. Wheat is looking poor and hay is a joke.............

I've just saw my 2nd butterfly this year (I don't count Cabbage Whites as proper butterlies) although there is a rather exotic caterpillar on my broad beans which I hope might be the young of something exciting. Yesterday, I havested 50 snails from one not-big blackcurrant bush, total kill on snails was 300 of the darned things, plus 18 slugs. The slugs were keeping a low profile due to it being the second warm dry day on the trot, so I shall have to resume hunting them when it's rainy.

I'm gravely-concerned about what will happen if many of them overwinter, plus the eggs which they will be laying. They look like little pearl beads, grouped in clusters often around the base of a plant or an edged bed, if anyone hasn't seen them before. I was going to plant a green manure crop over the potato patch once they were up but I've had a rethink; because of the meadows (derelict plots) on either side dropping weeds, and the heavy slug infestation, I don't want to have any ground cover for pesties. I shall have the soil exposed, and keep forking through it to turn up the pests for the birds.

It will be a PITA (and in the back) but should pay dividends next year.

Today is a work day, then I'm having a couple of days leave to do some gardening.

:mad: We have a house alarm somewhere around here which has been ringing off since just after 6 am. Incredibly annoying. I often think they are ineffectual unless they're being monitored by a security company as they ring off so often over nothing that you think every time it must be a false alarm.

Anyway, the sun is shining and the sky is blue, and that alone makes it a good day by my reckoning. Have a good one, peeps.

ETA OMG the alarm stopped! After 90 minutes.

Uniscots97

GQ, alarms going off like that are annoying. When a neighbours alarm went off like that and I called the police (as I saw people I didn't recognise milling about) the neighbours told me off :eek:, told them if it had been a real burglary at least I'd done something. When my car got broken into...... nobody saw anything!

I'm getting worried about the price of things, I'm not working at the moment (not for the want of trying with what I've applied for believe me!) so every penny has to be stretched as far as it will possibly go. SS moaning this morning about paying his dig money (he gets off lightly and he knows it), so I'm not feeling guilty about asking him to clear up etc and he make as many faces as he likes. Its his generation that annoys me atm, I'll plan what to use, how to use it etc and he'll munch through whatever he feels like, I see it when OH and I are out people buying stuff from takeaways eating so much and binning the rest! So I've stopped making him dinners every night (only when I can be bothered and I know he's not been eating junk in his room so that he that he won't take one bite of his dinner and bin the rest :mad:). OH and I have been trying to grow some veg but with the weather the way it has been the only things that have really taken off are the chillis and onions (onion chilli chutney and crackers here I come). I'm noticing prices creeping in all stores now not just the big supermarkets. Even Aldi I've noticed a change in their non-offer fruit and veg.

Hardup_Hester

Fuddle
My DD is a childminder & is on Anti D's. So it doesn't always stop you minding, maybe it varies from area to area.
Hester

GreyQueen

Happiness is a not-alarm. It was one of those which went mweep-mweep in an incessant sort of looping noise. We have some houses near the Towers which all have alarms and it's a regular occurance. Drives SuperGran spare; she's been on the cusp of severing wires to shut the blasted things off before now. She tells me they're supposed to cut out after 20 mins but these ones go on and on and on............

Evil thought; if you see suspicious activity at your neighbours, remind yourself that they wanted you to mind your business and don't call the Police. If they're done over, tough.

I learned something from the Telegraph article which might explain why the inflation figure is so laughably-wrong compared to most of our experiences; food is only 10% of the items in the "basket of goods" monitored to arrive at the inflation figures.

Well, tha explains how I see stuff jumping 50-100% overnight and yet the official inflation is well under 3%. Donkey's years ago, I'm talking about 30 years ago, I saw an advert in The Guardian for a government statistician. Wish I'd cut it out and kept it because it was wonderfully-weasily worded but the gist was this;

"The successful applicant must be prepared to tailor the statistics to support whatever lame-a$$ed political agenda is the flavour of the hour for the political classes. People with scruples need not apply."

I feel a few more canned goods are needed.........Laters, GQ x

[Deleted User]

I had a scruple once, it was a feisty little thing always getting into spats with other dogs and very argumentative, could never teach it a recall however and lost it irrevocably to a Droit de Seigneur which was being exercised on the playing field at the same time - they ran off into the sunset together and have never been seen again - story of our lives really isn't it? Have a good one folks Cheers Lyn x.

paidinchickens

woo hooooo another sunny morning I can hear birds singing and everything :j