Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

JKO who would be collecting the rubbish if thing were that iffy? If you're making like you're not there anyway the rubbish is best kept in a cupboard so anyone looking in the windows would not see used tins etc. in fact I'd leave a deliberate mess in full view to make it look as if someone had already been through the place and stay very firmly out of sight!!!

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

JKO who would be collecting the rubbish if thing were that iffy? If you're making like you're not there anyway the rubbish is best kept in a cupboard so anyone looking in the windows would not see used tins etc. in fact I'd leave a deliberate mess in full view to make it look as if someone had already been through the place and stay very firmly out of sight!!!

Do you think that the people who are considered hoarders are closet preppers? They have already made the place look like it is a tip. :rotfl:

RAS

GreyQueen wrote: »

I've given a lot of thought to the bug in/ bug out debate and think I would be reluctant to bug out for several very good reasons;

I was thinking about this recently.

How do you grow or farm anything invisibly? Stand on any hill and this last month (up here anyway), you can see where all the fruit trees are.

It is obvious where land has been ploughed or turned over with a spade.

I for one could tell you in a month or so which fields have been sown with barley and wheat and which have been grazed and which ungrazed. A lot of other planting is very obvious to anyone with a bit of plant knowledge. OK I know that there are a LOT of people who would not know their maize from their cabbages but a good many do.

Harvesting leaves traces on the plants, even if you only take part of the crop. Stripping it is very obvious. And those traces make obvious that someone lives nearby or has traveled through this place and could lead to your location being identified.

Apparently one reason the potato was so much more popular in Europe in 18C/19C than in the UK was that it was invisible to marauding armies. The fighting season was in the autumn after crops had been harvested, and they could clear off the haulms and leave the crop in the ground rather than risking having the bulk harvest stolen.

Someone put up the link to Tanera Mor the other day. Anyone read Island Farm by Fraser Darling? It describes the harshness of trying to carve a living out of the west coast islands. It would be harder now because very few people grow more than potatoes and cabbages so there is no seed source for many of the plants that could grow there. (As an aside I am having trouble with Sutherland Kale as it plainly thinks it is too warm here).

If the Kabelvag allotment holders could grow 15 veggies and thyme and rhubarb inside the Arctic, there is a lot more we can grow even in the more challenging parts of the country but we would need the seed stock to increase range in each area.

If we are to survive in large numbers, we actually need to build resilience into our communities not just our own homes and families. Many of those who live a mile south of me are poor; not just because they are on a low income and often on benefits but because they lack basic wealth - the fabric to make a cooking bag, the pans to make the preserves etc, - and experience and opportunity.

Argh, rant over.

jk0

Frugalsod wrote: »

Do you think that the people who are considered hoarders are closet preppers? They have already made the place look like it is a tip. :rotfl:

Yeah, there is a constant battle in this house between hoarding & prepping.

When we have some decent weather, I plan to organise my garage. Apart from a few gardening tools & power tools, I have a lot of building materials saved from flat renovations which make the place look messy. However, I know the week after I throw anything away, I will need it.

Has anyone found a reasonable cheap garage organising system/ method or video? I am at a loss to know where to start.

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

Do you think that the people who are considered hoarders are closet preppers? They have already made the place look like it is a tip. :rotfl:

I've often wondered what would happen to a burglar entering a hoarded home. Would he just ransack away in hopes that there might be some good stuff in there, or would he just boggle and refuse to credit that there might be a stash of something useful among the old tatt?

I did once find a YooToob viddy, I think it was Prepare2Survive (they have lots, can't find the right ones in a timely manner) when the presenter was doing a piece-to-camera from his basement storage room Somewhere in America, sometime post-SHTF, describing what was going on, as he was inventorying his family's remaining supplies.

It was done in hushed whispers, as if it was real, and he was describing the hunger in the city, the eventual inability of the deer-hunting fraternity to bring in enough meat, the farm livestock all being eaten. One of the minor asides was that he was being very careful of what rubbish they put outside their home, not to have cans etc visible.

Interesting. There was also another docu-style viddy of the same guy, and another friend, making their way to a covert market in a heavily guarded warehouse, organised by 'the gun show folks'. There he exchanged a gold coin for 20 silver coins to shop with, commented to the money-changer that last week it had been 40 silver to a gold (they shrugged) and went shopping for ammo, and tinned goods, and narrowly avoided being mugged on the way out.

It was pretty well done, although the main guy was a little well-padded for the role of nearly-starving survivor, but these are amateur productions and not Hollyweird, so we can't expect to be too fussy. But they were none the worse for that and I'm kicking myself for not bookmarking - it was some months ago.

Have been in the kitchen starting a vat of chili con carne, and noticed I needed to restock the wall cupboard from the underbed storage larders so have moved some tinned tommies and tinned red kidney beans. This means that the deep stores are down to a measly 5 tins of kidney beans and I shall remedy that asap. Have 30 cartons of tomatoes, none of them BB 2015, but have organised them and worked out that I have room for another 20 or so. Shopping on...........

jk0

On the subject of silver & gold, this article recommended on PP interested me today:

http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/silver-commentary/26521-silver-gold-and-not-paying-taxes

America & Canada seem to charge capital gains tax when you spend 'legal tender' gold & silver coins. This guy makes quite an impressive argument why they shouldn't.

Butterfly_Brain

i think that burying rubbish would be the safest bet.

those of us who are well padded are more likely to live longer with bare rations, because we have our own built in stores of fat

craigywv

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

i think that burying rubbish would be the safest bet.

those of us who are well padded are more likely to live longer with bare rations, because we have our own built in stores of fat

you can guarantee to be seeing me then! im the fat one rummaging around on my own x

GreyQueen

RAS wrote: »

I was thinking about this recently.

How do you grow or farm anything invisibly? Stand on any hill and this last month (up here anyway), you can see where all the fruit trees are.

It is obvious where land has been ploughed or turned over with a spade.

I for one could tell you in a month or so which fields have been sown with barley and wheat and which have been grazed and which ungrazed. A lot of other planting is very obvious to anyone with a bit of plant knowledge. OK I know that there are a LOT of people who would not know their maize from their cabbages but a good many do.

Someone put up the link to Tanera Mor the other day. Anyone read Island Farm by Fraser Darling? It describes the harshness of trying to carve a living out of the west coast islands. It would be harder now because very few people grow more than potatoes and cabbages so there is no seed source for many of the plants that could grow there. (As an aside I am having trouble with Sutherland Kale as it plainly thinks it is too warm here). .

I read Frank Fraser Darling's Island Years and Island Farm, now published together in one volume, last autumn. From the library. Very interesting.

As a gardener, I've often thought (you have a lot of thinking time when weeding, trust me on this ) that areas under cultivation are very obvious. Plus if you know how fast weeds grow at different times of the year, you could do an estimate to within a day or two (in spring and high summer) when the weeding was most recently done. If this was a veggie patch remote from a dwelling, it could tell an observer how frequently it was tended, and when they might expect the gardener to drop by again.

I know what you mean about looking across and down from hills but not all parts of the country are hilly (my own area is a bit deprived in the hilliness stakes, it must be said). There could be places where you could cultivate and no be overlooked from above, and small-scale guerilla gardening, of plants jumbled among natural growth may be possible, although there would be proprtionally more losses to slugs and snails and other things than there would be in open ground.

I was thinking of things which are themselves low-growing, like spuds, and dwarf beans, and squash could hide on riverbanks among that elephant ear stuff (sorry, don't know its proper name, thingy with humungous leaves, not a native plant, I think?) and a few other places such as areas of long grass where something like carrots could lurk.

Carrots, with their ferny top growth, could lurk very nicely among cow parsley; indeed there is a plant of this family known as the wild carrot.

Talking as I do to thousands of city residents each year, I encounter a lot of people who cannot recognise or describe the most basic attributes of a plant they have lived in close proximity to for decades. Such as the persons calling about the tree at the foot of their garden. They don't know what it is and when asked some very basic diagnostic questions such as Does it drop its leaves in autumn? Does it have leaves or needles? How tall is it, approximately? are completely flummoxed despite having told you that it has been in their garden for 30 years.............sigh.

Top tip; learn what a Lebanese Cedar looks like. Do not stand, camp or otherwise pass under them if you can possibly avoid it. They can drop large limbs weighing several tonnes with no warning in calm weather.

greenbee

There's always forest gardening if you want to hide food in what looks like an ordinary garden or landscape.