Preparedness for when

D&DD

Just reading the paper before bed and saw about the flooding in Alberta Wondercollie when you get a minute can you just check in and let us know you're ok? We'll only worry otherwise

Orf to my nice clean bed to enjoy the space OH is back tomorrow!
Night all XX

wondercollie

Thanks, I'm four hours north of Calgary.

My son's just been deployed to Calgary (he's a Combat Engineer) and is on the road down there as we speak.

He was born when my husband was posted there. He's been back a few times because of the zoo and the good shopping. We've heard they had to evacuate the zoo. I man where do you move animals?

Our old place down there was on a rise that overlooked the Bow River. It wasn't unusual for the river walks to be lightly covered with water due the spring run-off. The type of flooding happening there hasn't been seen by my generation.

Homes have been washed away in some of the smaller communities.

The husband is on standby to go down.

It just makes you think. No matter how well you prep, Mother Nature is a fickle witch.

D&DD

Will be keeping you and yours in our thoughts WC I thought I'd read he was being deployed down there hope he has a safe trip and your OH too if he has to go! XX

S_Wales_Saver

Oh joy of joys. Got Internet back. Been without all week #1daughter tried to no avail, #2 daughter tried then rang the virgin man. He said they'd both been doing the right things but the hub wasn't working. 'I'll come out tomorrow, what time's convenient?'

:eek::eek: Didn't think anyone did that anymore. Arrived yesterday on time. Checked everything and announced we had never had a full signal cos some plonker had put a tack through the wire! Fixed it all and it's all working :T:beer:

Kudos to the man from Virgin :A. Makes you think though. Whatever reason the SHTF loss of Internet can't be far behind :eek::eek: I don't think I'd cope too well.

mardatha

I wouldn't miss the fancy spices and fruit and veg. I can live happily on my wartime cookery books now, so I won't even notice
I think you'd all surprise yourselves actually. Our mums & grannies coped with wartime. You cope because you have to...you moan, but you cope .
Am in a bit of a pickle here. The RV has decided to try low-carbing again to get his BS down a wee bit, and I will share his diet because it's less hassle. But what on earth can you store that's low carb?? Help

pineapple

elona wrote: »

DH has just been looking online and reckons inflation is going to zoom very quickly and I made the point that if countries (including us) don't manufacture or create then how can they continue to prosper?

Yesterday I saw a report on the BBC which said while there was a general increase in the cost of living, the price of food was actually coming down. Can you Adam and Eve it! Someone needs to tell the local shops
Anyway I've been rethinking my growing strategy. I have a ton of space but most of it is exposed hillside and poor clay soil. I'm improving it inch by inch but slowly.
Then there is the patio - on which I'm growing carrots in Asda carrier bags amongst other things. :rotfl:Can you believe I thought that each plant grew a clump of carrots? What a numpty.. Now I know the awful truth - that a single plant produces a single carrot - the tlc and space required for just a few meals is just not worth it for me.
Further up my ski slope I'm experimenting with blackcurrant bushes. Though I only just found out that you can grow a blackcurrant bush in a container and you could get around 101b of fruit off one bush in old money. So stuff the carrots - next thing is at least one blackcurrant on the patio.
But nasturtiums are my newest discovery. I've found they grow 'up there' and 'down here'. They look pretty and are nutritious! And OMG I love the flavour.
http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25346:the-veggie-girl-noshable-nasturtiums&catid=1:latest&Itemid=197
Was going to replace the expired clematis with another. What was I thinking? Vertical veg are the way to go
As for my habit of growing potatoes in potato bags on the patio - again what was I thinking? If I am going to grow them in bags they might as well be sited further up where the poorer soil is.
Sometimes we get locked into patterns of doing things and it's time (cliche alert) to think outside the box. :T

thriftwizard

Pineapple, thinking vertical garden space, you could also think about fan-trained fruit trees - take up very little space, need very little attention, give a lot back - or a vine, or hops (but beware, they're complete thugs) or even a kiwi if you have the space; it's a very pretty plant & the fruit is tasty, but it's BIG. Or look at fixing lightweight containers to the wall & growing, say, lettuces or strawberries in those; you can do a nifty self-watering container with a milk carton cut in half, top inserted upside down into the bottom & filled with soil so that the top is the growing space & the bottom functions as the reservoir.

Reminds me of the day a couple of ageing rockers turned up to collect a bag of old mikes, wires & plugs & stuff my musical son had asked me to Freecycle. They were most intrigued by our garage, which in summer vanishes under jasmine, a kiwi & a hop and various container-grown food plants (some idiot built it in the sunniest spot in the garden) so I explained about using vertical growing space, and inadvertently described it as growing in more than one dimension. That really took their fancy & they were still chattering about "Multi-dimensional gardening! Wow man! That's really blown my mind!" as they rode their enormous motorbikes off into the sunset...

Sadly I suspect they'd just retired from managing banks or something. But I still laugh every time I look at the garage, which currently resembles a long-lost Inca temple.

pineapple

Love that story tw :T
Maybe we should have a pattern of exchange visits where we survey each others space. It's so easy to get into a rut in just about anything and sometimes all it needs is an 'outside' opinion.

twiglet98

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

A good prepping day today, added 20kg of flour to the stocks in anticipation of prices shooting up later in the year due to poor harvests. Also more lentils.

PP where do you store this amount of flour? I have one open bag of each type in the kitchen cupboard and keep the unopened bags in the freezer, but I don't have room in either freezer for that many bags.

If it goes in the freezer for 48 hours (or however long it needs to minimise weevils), what would you transfer it to for long-term storage, in or out of its original bags?

GreyQueen

Loving the image of the Inca temple style garage under it's edible burden. Something to treasure and such a good idea.

I have nil growing space at home, tiny flat in the shadow of taller buildings with window ledges all of 2 inches wide. My lottie is 1.25 miles away and is just shy of 300 square meters.

There are limitations up there as it's a very windy site, as my new neighbours have found out to their cost as they have just re-erected their small polytunnel for the 3rd time in 6 weeks and added the second batch of wooden reinforcements.

When they were trying to decide how to orient it at first, and moving it around with several helpers, I did try to tell them that the orientation they'd chosen was broadside to the prevailing southwesterly wind, but they chose to put it there.

I've only been gardening on that site, on my own plot and the plots of others, since 2005, so I expect I know nothing useful, such as that the wind come from the SW about 90% of the time and is very strong as we're near the top of a hill. Ach, let them get on with it.

Today I went out shopping for some very specific things and went to add some more of the John West corned beef at £1.59 into the stash. In date for years, got many more viable years beyond date, and you can't find a can of it under £2 anywhere else if my recent experience is to go by. I have acquired 24 cans in total over a few trips, as well as some others already in stock which will be eaten first. They're in a pretty floral coolbag and will be secreted in the bedroom, which is unheated, dark and constantly ventilated.

Part of today's prepping will involve rotating some water supplies from their various niches to keep them in date. Apart from one bigger carrier, I store water in the 2 litre bottles it came in, and will change it out and use it for teakettle, then refill from the tap.

We has a partial water outage in the city during the week. I was talking to the public about it and rang the water company. Probs with a valve. It was less than an hour but people were panicking. Can you imagine what it would be like if it was longer?

Scenario:

Becky Normal comes home from the school run with her two. They run in ahead of her and her son goes to the loo. She hears him flush the loo and yells at him to remember to wash his hands. He yells back that there's no water in the tap.

Becky goes to the bathroom, and the taps are dry. She goes to the kitchen and it's the same. There's no water tank, she's on a combi for the hot water. She realises that the usual noise of the WC cistern refilling isn't happening. Butterflies start in her stomach.

She goes next door; same there. People who are at home at this time of the day are sticking their heads out; all the water is off. Becky calls the council and talks to someone like me who tells her that the supply is in the hands of the water company. She calls Tiddlumpty Water and gets a message that they are experiencing a very high volume of calls......

After about half an hour waiting on the line being reassured that her call is important to them and that many enquiries can be handled by their website, Becky gets to talk to a nice lady called Sarah at Tiddlyumpty Water. She apologises profusesly to Becky but they are experiencing a widespread problem in her area, engineers are on site, supply will be resumed as soon as possible etc etc.....

Minutes crawl past, becoming hours. Becky calls several more times, one of hundreds if not thousands of people trying to call. Each wait is longer. Finally she can't get thru to a human being no matter how long she holds or how many different options she presses; there is a recorded message repeating they are aware, engineers on site, sorry, restored as soon as possible, sorry and goodbye.

Neighbours who have been out all day start to come home and then come round. You too? Becky would kill for a cuppa but she hasn't even got enough water for that. They've had to use the loo again even though they can't flush it. Someone has done a number two and even with the lid down the stench is seeping beyond the bathroom.

Becky is feeling sick with panic. She can't cook most things because they require water. The only drinkable fluids in the house are smallish amounts of juice, pop and milk. Her children are complaining and Becky is becoming scared. Her OH works away and won't be home for days, she's on her home in a waterless house with two under tens and no idea what to do.

About 4 hours into the outage, Tiddlyumpty Water's automated message has gone off. There is a blank tone whenever any of their numbers are called. People are getting scared. She hears a neighbour mutter about going to the supermarket for bottled water. She thinks she ought to do that and bundles the children out to the car. The roads are hellish but she arrives eventually.

The supermarket carpark is full and the store is heaving. The place where the bottled water is shelves is a wilderness. Other liquids are disappearing fast, too; milk, pop, beers, juices, anything which will quench a thirst. Customers are grabby and aggressive and the crying of frightened children echoes across the store. Staff are trying to keep order but it's hopeless.

Becky doesn't want to be here, it feels unsafe, her children are getting scared. She manages to find a few boxes of sachet orange drinks which have been overlooked. It's pitiful but it's all there is. She has a brainwave about tinned fruits, thinking food and liquid. She gets a few. Lots of other people have cottoned on, or are just panicking and getting grabby.

Becky hasn't ever noticed how little food of each type there is, even in a big supermarket like this one. She's used to living in a world of constantly-replenished shelves but this is starting to look like something from the old USSR. She manages to get thru checkout after about 20 minutes and it takes another 20 just to get off the carpark and back onto the main road.

Becky is exhausted and tearful by the time she's thrashed the car thru ther heaviest trafffic she has ever seen. She's trying not to show it for the childrens' sakes but it's hard. She scuttles indoors with her precious fluids hidden in the shopping bags, afraid they will be spotted. There is so little, she can't share if the children will go without, what if someone gets aggressive and wants to take from them? She wishes to heaven that her OH weren't 300 miles away on a job.

They have a miserable supper. Becky tries to maintain hand hygiene using wet wipes but they're fast running out. The WC bowl is filling up and reeking. They go to bed still a bit thirsty and scared.

When Becky wakes the next morning the power is off. She tries to reach OH on his mobile and the network is down. She sits with her subdued and frightened children and wishes someone would tell her what she should do, because she's scared and helpless and her kids need her to sort this out for them and she can't.