Preparedness for when

craigywv

good morning all , from a wetBelfast ,what a change 1 daymakes.my garden is loving it!! is it just me :cool: or is there quite a few newbies coming to the thread, great to seein fact wonderful to see, but whats happenning out there to make peeps be sitting up and noticing and its daily . i cant put into words what i mean ,this happens alot with me,i know what i want to write but it comes out all jumbled up and makes me angry sory for rant. anyway i cant wait to see if my cuttings from my mums apple, cherry and pear trees "take" thanks to kind peeps mentioning it on this thread that i could grow from a cutting. I get immense pleasure from my plants/veg , seems hardly any flowers this year mostly fruit and veg, in fact i made myslf get some seeds and do hanging baskets and some colourful flowers as back garden just all edible. my blackcurrant bushes have 3 pink tiger lilys growing through them as is much of my garden its all joining together, well i have bored you all enough so have a lovely day and weekend xxx ps 2T WELL DONE !!!! on your job success!!!!ilove Thailand my big bro wife is from Surin top of the country gorgeous but soooooooooooo hot hot hot . well done xxx

S_Wales_Saver

Thanks for the welcome Elaine241. Yes I'm in Cwmbran just below and to the south of you. Glad there's someone else on here from this area (useful for local heads up )

westlothianlass

Hi all
Welcome to newbies:j lovely to see you join us bunch of batties:D.
Well, had a lovely day pottering in the sunshine yesterday, the garden is looking pretty good tho i say it myself. However today is decidedly soggy and grey ( If im being positive at least the pots won't need watered).
The long emergency has just been delivered alongside Barbara Kinsgolvers Prodigal Summer ( i find it really hard not to purchase books when they are only a few pence on amazon, well thats my excuse;)). Just started George Monbiot's Heat yesterday and think It's going to depress and fire me up in equal measures.
Thank for the book recommendations gal's I ordered John Yeoman's book yesterday so the pile of books to read is getting a tad high.
I'm thinking we may need another raised bed, the lawn (i.e. thegreen mossy bits:rotfl:)is slowly being taken over for veg growing. We started by building veg beds round the edges of the garden but now the edges and middle are taken over.
I was totally inspired watching some you-tube videos of people who had taken over every inch of garden for food production. I find myself watching gardening programmes but only get excited when i see plants that are edible being shown, think I may need therapy:D.
P.s. well done 2T
Take care all
WLL x

D&DD

Afternoon all I so love to read all about everyone's homes they all sound lovely! Thriftwizard I know your part of the world well having spent many happy holidays down in Swanage I'd love to live down that way.

Southwalessaver lovely to meet you :wave:

Annie oh you poor thing!! If there's anything I can do please don't hesitate to ask Take it easy you need rest for a while, no gardening.Can you delegate to his nibs while sunning yourself on a deckchair??? (That's a laugh though, where has the sun gone to again???) Hope you feel better soon XXX

WLL I love youtube too far too many good videos to watch and not enough time :rotfl:
and the same for books ATM where does my day go to..

So many great posts today and fascinating to read how others are prepping their gardens too.
I'd love to have nuts but no room sadly but we do have a walnut tree and hazel hedges on our field so can forage but not much luck the last couple of years with them.Need to find a better spot..

Prepping continues at a pace here and have just restocked on some batteries and fishing gear for OH.

I've been thinking more and more about how to prep the boys but trying to tailor that in with them enjoying life it's a hard balance to strike but so far so good.I'd hate to worry them as life's hard enough for them at times anyway but fortunately as I've always done this sort of thing since they were little they don't see it as weird

I try to explain it's our 'insurance' and as we have had powercuts,weather issues and water interuptions recently as well as the riots they think most of the stuff I do has a valid place in our lives.My OH justs humours me but he still see's the wisdom in being prepped and loves foraging now amongst other things,he just gets the hump with my stores when he trips over on the latest batch of 45 loo rolls etc :rotfl:

Rightyho off into the garden for me before the heavens open,I know it's gonna rain because I've got washing ready to go out!!

Have a great day all XXX

lovefullshelves

thriftwizard - vintage clothes?? Ooh anything 40's in a big size? (I like pies:)) Dressing up is one of my simple pleasures:D But I've had to make most of my 40's dresses as they weren't quite as well endowed as me!
pineapple - I happily admit to being exceptionally lucky to have been born here. Land here (lovely black fen soil) is extortionate £43 thousand for five acres the last plot went for. The huge growers who grow for tesco/asda tend to have bought up all the small farms locally, there are very few left and they struggle to compete in a market of loss leaders. I can't grow salads as cheap as Mr aldi sells them! And they're getting OLD! If we couldn't import food or fuel like we do now, we'd be dependant on smaller, more local farms, which have all but dissapeared.
Have a look at http://justinpartyka.com/#/projects/field-work he's a friend of mine and he's fascinated with the old farmers (two of whom, including my dad, have passed away in the last year or two, taking years of knowledge with them) Who says subsistence farming only happens in other countries?
pinkthrift - thats bloomin good going, I think we end up with about 3 months when we have little thats home grown, and I have 10 acres! Kale..I still don't like it but I eat it! I use beansprouts in the winter months too to extend home produced a bit further. Vitamin c at its freshest!
Red veined sorrel grows early and you never seem to get rid of it:) and it looks pretty in the garden.

mardatha

I def see a change in weather patterns, we up here seem to be wetter and windier, and also cooler with less sun. I think a fair bit of Scotland will go marginal for anything but kale :eek: oats and turnips.
I'd like to grow turnips but when I tried they were hellish and we threw them out. Not even got the tatties in yet here, will be running out of time if I don't watch. I've out in some onions and leeks though.
Today is unbelievably horrible, rain bouncing off the road and thick mist on the hills, lambs crying with cold.
Thanks to whoever mentioned "Without Warning" - it came today and I haven't put it down until now. Am fighting the urge to run up to the shops and stock up NOW

[Deleted User]

lovefullshelves wrote: »

pinkthrift - thats bloomin good going, I think we end up with about 3 months when we have little thats home grown, and I have 10 acres! Kale..I still don't like it but I eat it! I use beansprouts in the winter months too to extend home produced a bit further. Vitamin c at its freshest!
Red veined sorrel grows early and you never seem to get rid of it:) and it looks pretty in the garden.

We spend all our spare time in the garden in the summer - we both work full time but love growing our own food. I've never tried Sorrel but I have some seeds this year. I don't think it's red veined so I will look out for it.

Today we took the trailer down to the recycling centre and filled it with 'garden improver' (the stuff they produced from the garden waste). Last year my lovely OH built a proper bay to keep it in My experiment this year, is growing some first and second early potatoes in this in old containers and bags. Some have popped up already It will be interesting to see if I actually get any potatoes though. I do have quite a lot planted in ordinary beds though

GreyQueen

Evening all, and a special hello and welcome in to the new people, it's so lovely to have people step up and introduce themselves.

Today I was on the allotment at 9 am and beavering away. My lottie is surrounded by derelict plots so I spend some of my gardening time fighting to hold the line against pernicious invaders from next door. Chiefly the dreaded couch grass, but also nettles, mallow, docks, bindweeds etc etc.

Today was primarily a day of digging. I dig with a fork not a spade because my lottie was derelict for many years before I had it and is infested with nastiness esp the horsetails. So, I fork it up, bag it up and get it off to the green waste section of the tip.

Yet another sesh failed to turn up my box of gold doubloons, although I did find several more Early Neo flint tools. The guys at the museum tell me that the oldtimers were farmsteading up there. I often try to remove the housing estate and the road, and fill in with conical-roofed roundhouses, with hazel fences and small (by modern standards) sheep.

They'd be astonished by the metal implements we have now, and I guess of all the stuff I grow, the only things they'd recognise would be the broad beans, so much of the rest is from the New World.

I killed a few snails and one slug and dug up a totally ridiculous amount of rusty nails. And this is all on ground I have been cultivating for years, and I always remove non-organic debris on sight. And how did that whole ASDA Smartprice biccie packet surive my previous attentions?

I was having a thought today. I'm car-less and have been for about 15 years now. Financial reasons. A trip to my lottie and back is 2.5 miles. I mostly bike it, occasionally walk. Walking takes twice as long and that's often why I bike.

Anyway, I was at work this week and mentioned to a colleague, a woman about my own age (late forties) that I was going to X after work. She expressed astonishment that I was going to be walking all the way up there.

It is 10 min leisurely stroll from our office to X. I've also had another colleague, again about same age with no health problems, say she wouldn't walk all the way from home to our office. I've been to her home and it's less than a mile from work.

Is this something other people notice? That perfectly able-bodied middle-aged women are thinking that to walk half or three-quarters of a mile is some kind of feat?

For the record, I am no athlete, and never was in my prime, but surely these are minor distances for somebody in otherwise perfect health?

Last night I finished The Long Emergency. And this morning I started re-reading it. I consider it to be that good. I've never been to the USA, if you discount 2 hours airside in LAX when our plane was being refuelled, re-blanketed and stocked with extra croutons. But I have been in New Zealand, another country whose urban and suburban environments were laid out in the era of the car.

So I kind of understand Kunstler's concerns about the suburbia in the USA, about how car dependant it is, and how it cannot be retrofitted to make it suitable for everyday living when the personal car has gone the way of the dinosaur.

Kunstler is very much in favour with what he has seen in Europe; cities with compact, walkable centres and nearby agriculatural hinterlands. He'd adore my city, you can walk across the centre of it in 15 mins and it sits in a good crop-land. Such a difference when your built environment was laid out by the Romans (among others) and properly human-scaled.

Although I have conniptions at least once a week when I see articulated lorries squeezing themselves between 17th century houses with jettied upper floors. There isn't much room for us pedestrians sometimes, hence my occasional evasive action lurking in shop doorways............

Morganarla

Hello everyone!

Sorry for my absence, have been busy moving from the capital into our delightful new village!

Hi and welcome to all newbies!

2t, congratulations on the new job, hope you will be happy there

All nine of us are just about settled in here (furries, me and OH), but there are still boxes and bags everywhere, cue much swearing in OH's mother tongue when he trips over...:o

The village is lovely, very friendly and resourceful (having come from a village myself but lived in London for years, it brings home the stark carpness of London quite sharply!).

The cottage itself is COLD :eek::eek::eek::eek: Like, shockingly cold. Draughty single glazed windows with cracked panes, draughty chimney (and I don't know when it was last swept so can't light a fire yet just in case), no insulation, broken/barely working storage heaters... Slowly going round draught proofing where I can (can someone PLEASE remind me that I shoved one of my black, glossy sofa cushions up the chimney to stop the draught coming down? Preferably before I light a fire? Cheers :rotfl:) but it's still a bit cold, though better now the weather has perked up a bit. Sitting in front of a halogen heater as I type, might as well throw our money onto the fire and burn it...!

We have a lovely little local library that I joined today. I'm hoping to request some books, namely The Long Emergency and The Long Descent, but whether they will be able to get them from anywhere, who knows... They will probably think I'm mad, plus the two women in there today seemed quite talkative so possibly likely to pass comment on the books of choice... I'll just say they're for a book club. We have a WTSHTF book club, right?:D

Storage is quite an issue here, limited space in the kitchen, though there is a weird shaped cupboard in the corner that I might try and put shelves into. I have my pots and pans hanging everywhere to save space, I think it looks lovely but OH is not so sure and thinks we look a bit gypsy-esque!

I have more storage under the bed, but not sure how much room is going to be left after all suitcases are put away under there. GreyQueen, d'you mind me asking - what kind of wheely trolley things do you have under your bed? Think I might need some...

I was really pleased to have an airing cupboard, but the five cats appear to have taken it over as their bedroom as it is much warmer in there (immersion tank is in there), so think I am going to have to relegate my linen back to it's old wicker basket and fill the cupboard with cat beds..!:rotfl: So there goes more storage space... Sigh..:rotfl:

Not long to go now though, once everything is in place, I can start added to the s/pile again, if I can find somewhere to put it all..

Going to be making a BOB as well. Saw someone on here had theirs in a shopping trolley do-dar? Sorry can't remember who.. I have a rather funky zebra print one, back from the days where I could afford to put all furbabies in kennels/hire catsitters and go and drink my own bodyweight in beer (carried in aforementioned zebra trolley!) at Download Festival, so think I will now turn it into a BOB. Its wheels are pretty sturdy (it survived being bumped along for miles in shin high mud at least..), but I'm concerned that I won't be able to fit everything it as I will need supplies for the furbabies too, particularly with one epileptic baby... Will have to make a list of stuff to go in and then try it out.

Oh that reminds me! I have to prep our brand new (to us;)) car...! Damnit, another thing to do... Survival blankets, snacks, maps, wind up torch.. Gah this prepping malarky is costing me a slow fortune. I tell ya, the S better HTF in my lifetime, 'cos I will NOT be impressed if I've wasted all my time and dosh :rotfl:

Oh-em-gee I have so much to do. More Yorkshire tea required.

Love and furkisses from us all!

Toodles xx

annie123

Thank you D&DD and I'm starting to wonder if the government have rationed the sun too. Nothing would surprise me any more.

I've discovered something I don't have; AAA batteries for the digi box remote I've got every other type of battery, including those flat round ones. Don't usually put the TV on, but thought I'd half watch a film whist on the web,never mind.

What I have decided is a dehydrator is essential for my food prep
A big thank you to a certain person on here
Hubby laughed when I picked rhubarb, blanched it, dehydrated it, then turned it into a crumble the next day. It was wonderful. I've nearly finished reading the dehydrating thread, full of ideas and useful info.
DS is camping next weekend and has asked for pasta sauce! so I've found a few web sites and you tube vids so going to try that on Monday. If it works ok that would be brilliant as we get through a lot of that here, even if it was just dried buildings blocks of basic sauce. The freezer space it would save would be great.