Preparedness for when

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

I don't envy my great-grandparents' lifestyle one little bit. They'd both passed long before I was born but one of their DDs her hubs and an unmarried son who died about 15 years ago were still in residence and we visited regularly when I was growing up; I helped clear the house after great-uncle died.

My rural idyll comment was slightly tongue in cheek. I am very aware that the reality and the looking back at history with rose tinted glasses versions are very different.

My Dad's worked with farmhorses as a boy, as he was on a very old-fashioned farm where the squire didn't want to sell the working horses off. They were ploughing with tractors but using the horses for carting and delivering feed to stock in outlying fields. Mum's Dad was one of the last to plough with horses, circa the early 1950s.

Grandad retired his horses in the 70s, though the usual work for them was pulling tractors out of the mire. They did carting duties alongside village shows and pageants for a good few years. He had a petrol tractor in the 60s (and the steam engines were sold back end of the 60s)

It was so uncommon even then that a newspaper sent a young whippersnapper of a scribbler to interview him, as well as a photographer. Mum can recall his reaction to the journo burbling on about the joys of the countryside, the trees etc:

Oi've been lookin' at ruddy trees all my loife, quoth Grandad.

You'll have to imagine the flat cap, weatherbeaten face and the scornful expression on it. For some reason, that remark didn't make it into the article............:rotfl:We have serveral copies of the photo tho.

The scribbler might have needed subtitles My grandad had a habit of dropping into country yokel when people asked what he considered stupid questions, his normal accent being a refined version of Northumbrian drawl.

:j :j:jI am now the delighted possessor of a 66 inch flat-bow style of longbow with a pull of 36 lb and a dozen arrows. Plus accessories. Shopping for archery equipment is so much more fun than shopping for clothes. Can't wait to get back on the indoor archery range (have shot the bow on the mini-range in the shop). Twang!

Slippery ever steepening slope, watch GQ go wheee and find she has even less space in shoebox towers.
Enjoy!

mardatha

Reading back what's been said about returning to the past, this is sure;y why we're in here? To pick other people's brains, to share ideas & put forward new ones.. If it works and you can do it, then grab it

GreyQueen

Yeah, they were lovely horses. Grandad was the horseman on the farm. With working horses, they have to be fed well before they're taken out or they risk colic. You won't be able to get a horse to do heavy work if fed on just grass for most of the year.

Grandad would be up at 4 am to feed the horses, back for his own brekkie, back up to the farm to ready the horses. Horses went out at 7 am and back at 4 pm. Heaven help the farmboy who tried to take a horse away from the farm when it was heading towards 4 pm; they knew what they were owed. The squire was an old-style gent and very inefficient farmer; he was apparently rather more interested in managing his farms so that they'd have sufficient coverts for the pheasants than worrying about efficiencies. Once his son took over, it was a different matter, and the last of the horses went.

I guess Dad, who is in his early seventies, was on the cusp of an era there. Mum's fosterdad, whom I knew as my other grandad, died when I was a small child. Grandma kept him on a tight leash most of the time but he did get to take the horses, all plaited and gussied up, to the shows a few times a year. Best weskit and gaiters. Used to have a few too many beers at the show (the only time he indulged) and be locked out to sleep it off in the shed once he got back to the cottage. Grandma was prolly 6 stone sopping wet, hair in a bun and cross-body floral pinny, and ruled her hubs and sons with a rod of iron.

My family left the villages in the early 1970s to move into town to work in factories. Shifting demographics; only our oldsters live in the villages now. My generation, and the one coming up, are all in towns and cities, for work and affordable (ish) housing. You have to be pretty wealthy to afford to be peasant in southern England these days...........:rotfl:The cottage next door to the one we used to rent just went for a third of a mill - ridickerlous.

Mind you, I revert to grubbing around in the soil at the drop of a hat; you can take the girl out of the countryside but you can't take the countryside out of the girl.

Okay; preptastic things done today; personal weaponry (check), a 4 pinter of milk and 2 litres UHT (check), removed nearly all cash from banking system (check). Ohh, and I got a brand-new still-in-pkt Tala brand metal jam funnel for only 50p.

ALIBOBSY

Just wanted to add my sympathies for CC at a tough time.


On a different subject-The more I think about the post peak oil future the more I think it will be those that can adapt and roll with the punches that will cope the best. I hope as my kids are growing up with chickens in the garden and growing veggies etc as well as baking, preserving and foraging that they will be well set to at least have the sort of mindset to deal with the new future. I still don't see the big crashes many prepper sites talk about, but envision a future with alot less power around so people will have to do more stuff themselves, but hopefully some of the best of technology can carry over to this new world and people learn to make the best of what we can have and not keep trying to hang onto a world which will fast disappear. Knowledge, self reliance and adaptability will be the keys to success. Those that choose to sit there and wait for stuff to come to them will be those worst off.

I do worry that it will be those in real need of help, the elderly, the disabled etc who may struggle as the new economies will have to contract and the current benefit payments will be unaffordable for the country and what will health care look like with slashed budgets?

Ali x

RAS

I remember going back to the village where my father grew up at the point where the last farmer was converting to motor power in the late sixties. He would have shifted sooner had he been able to afford the expense.

On the other hand long before modern power companies, the villagers dammed the beck and ran a leat to a generator in a building at the bottom of one of the gardens. I am not sure which year they did it but you got 4 hours lighting a day for your contribution to the scheme 80 years ago.

And with regard to dialect; I recall much excitement when one of the local farmers was interviewed on TV. We watched at home, looked at one another and noted that whilst we understood, the chances of the rest of the population making it out were slim.

Despite GF being dead half a century, I expect to be introduced as GF's grand-daughter when I go this weekend.

GreyQueen

ALI, I think the life you're giving your children will stand them in excellent stead, and that's what good parenting is all about, really.

If you look back at predictions made 50 years ago of the life we were all supposed to be living by now, where are the colonists on Mars and where-oh-where is my personal air car?

I think the future will be a series of declines and resets at ever slightly lower levels of energy consumption. Habits which were once luxuries for the very rich, such as foriegn holidays and personal car ownership, will gradually slip out of the reach of everyday people. It's started happening already, if you think about it.

We'll live more modestly than many of us do now, and pleasures will be less extravagant. There will be more walking and cycling, and less driving and flying. We won't have Kenyan mange-touts, we'll have homegrown or off the local farm. We'll need to husband our resources more carefully and to buy with the long haul in mind, not the short-term distraction.

This will reshape the economy. I wouldn't bank on the longterm economic prospects for nail technicians and the like, but persons who can repair and refurbish machinery and household goods may find themselves with a niche in a contracted economy.

Now's the time to start acquiring the skills, habits and fortitude for straightened times.

Today, I walked through parts of my city which are very suburban and bethought myself of the richness of an economy which can allow ground to be reserved for lawns and a few random flowerbeds and rockeries, rather than being put down to crops or small lifestock raising. It's like many modern homes are bijou versions of large country estates; there's the terrace, there's the parkland etc etc.

When I start to see those lawns coming into veggie cultivation, I shall know we've really started to reset at a lower level

Butterfly_Brain

Heads up for gardeners! Wilko have cuprinol fence/shed paint for less than half price £4.95 a can which is even cheaper than Wilko's own brand and it does more panels as well cuprinol 24, Wilko 20

RAS

mardatha wrote: »

Reading back what's been said about returning to the past, this is sure;y why we're in here? To pick other people's brains, to share ideas & put forward new ones.. If it works and you can do it, then grab it

I really had a lesson last weekend when working on the plot.

One of my neighbours was getting help from his son for the first time I recall. Another man (family, friend) also in his thirties showed up and started to talk to father. He was surprised at how much ground father had, even more so when father explained that he had given up the second plot when it got too much last year. Father was explaining how he was planting potatoes.

This shocked voice rang out; "You mean you have to plant all of this EVERY YEAR?" followed by a mild expletive.

On the other hand think of the people now making cooking bags/modern hayboxes? Old technology with a modern twist and a new purpose.

jk0

I just tried to check my balance twice on internet banking, and it won't let me in after log in. It says:

internet banking

Sorry we cannot action your request at the moment. Please try again later.

Anyone else got a similar message?

ArthriticOldThing

Just logged onto my internet banking and got thru no trouble Jk0. Maybe just a temporary problem. Very worrying though.