Preparedness for when

charlies-aunt

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Do you strip the rabbit skin from end to end, or do you prefer the belly pinch and nick method?

Pinch , nick and peel back method ... I can do everything except skinning the heads of rabbits - I have to pull their jumpers as far as their necks as I can and then chop the neck to decapitate.
I heard that there is a 'top-to-botton' squeeze'n'eject method for gutting rabbits but I do the traditional way through a incision in the belly

mardatha

I used to be good at wabbits too, with a stanley knife. Did a hare once, and never again!
We used to call kitchen cupboards the press and the pantry, and the kitchen was in some houses " the back kitchen" or "the scullery". And you never said something was in the the kitchen, it was always ben the kitchen. I dono why.

lovefullshelves

GC - some of the cutting of fuel use comes from a lack of money, some from changing the way we do things. I do alot of the landwork the old way, with a hoe like I did as a teenager (but with alot more aches now!) To buy a tank of farm diesel we'll need over £700. We just can't afford it. We're having to sell some of the machinery to keep the rest moving. Such are the times that our costs keep going up and the price we get paid is the same as 30 odd years ago. Take it or plough things back in. I guess thats part of why we're now semi-subsistence. First I grow for us, then whats left is for cash!
And you're right about the huge farms, in my lifetime I've watched all the small and council farms swallowed up, most now provide lettuces and radishes for supermarkets.
I have tried to learn as much as I can from the old boys. I can make pegs, do land drainage by hand without the huge machines our neighbours hired. (and the £1000's that they cost) I've planted potatoes 1930's style and saved my own seed. I can grow corn and grind it to make flour.I was taught how to broadcast seed.
I grow amaranth as an alternative cereal though I've yet to try getting oil from the borage
My DD just thinks I'm ready for zombies, she's turned into a bit of a corporate braindead clone, but I love her. DS at least is willing to learn. I do worry what the future holds for them sometimes!
x

maryb

Hi all, been away for a few days and what an interesting chat you've all been having!

Going back a few pages about getting rid of rubbish, people used to burn stuff but presumably one wouldn't want to do that in the first days of disruption. Makes me wonder whether a compactor would work if one could get one that didn't rely on electricity? I know you can get things that work with foot pressure to squash cans and they would probably do cartons as well.

You'd have to bury it eventually but it would make it easier to deal with

Re ants - our lawn is infested with them. Every Spring when it warms up, little mounds of fine soil appear overnight. I could live and let live but that soil is totally dead - nothing grows in it even months later. So obviously ants do something naaaasty to all the beneficial things that live in the soil

sorryImoved

Do you have fire ants in the UK? We have them and they are horrible. They bite leaving red itchy welts. Once had them in my mailbox and reached in to get the mail. Ouch! Stepped on a nest of them too and have the scars on my foot from the bites.

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

TBH, I find canned foods less faff:



ETA; Just refound that YooTube viddy I was referring to; I'd misremembered - it was survive2day not prepare2day : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DsvjKz0AiY

Just wondering whether there has been a unicorn meat scandal? Ground up horn in with the rest of the meat in the can?

mardatha

We used to burn all rubbish when we had the open fire - old shoes, old jumpers, everything.
This house has just come up for let, it's an estate nearish to me where one of my sons works... Get ready to drool
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-46264115.html?utm_content=ealertspropertylink&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailupdates&utm_campaign=emailupdates3day&utm_term=letting&sc_id=12999690&onetime_FromEmail=true

GreyQueen

sorryImoved wrote: »

Do you have fire ants in the UK? We have them and they are horrible. They bite leaving red itchy welts. Once had them in my mailbox and reached in to get the mail. Ouch! Stepped on a nest of them too and have the scars on my foot from the bites.

:eek: No, we don't, and having just read about them on Wikipedia, I'm heartily glad of that.

We have regular garden ants and wood ants (several species of wood ants, including a special Scottish Wood Ant, Mar; they're tartan-coloured ). The wood ants are bigger than the regular ants and build mounds and some are reddish (some are black) but all our ants are Formica this of Formica that and it looks like these fire ants are all Solenopis this or Solenopis that.

But some interwebulating reveals the European advance of the Invasive Garden Ant (Lastus neglectus) which is extremely bad news and is heading into Northern Europe from its Black Sea homeland, thought to be transported in plant pots by the horticultural trade.

OK, I shall add that to the giant Spanish slugs as something else to fret about as a gardener.

Frugalsod, there has been a minor canned unicorn meat scandal, when some randomly sampled batches were found to be deficient in the promised amount of sparkles (should be a min of 5% sparkles by volume) but after some swingeing fines by the SuperNatural Meat Marketing Board, that problem was resolved. There are some rumblings, sub rosa as it were, that some tinned gryphon meat may be adulterated with beef, but I stress that these are only rumours and no one should change their shopping habits just yet.

maryb, if the economy wasn't functioning, there would be a lot less waste produced and a lot of what is chucked now would be kept as fuel or for use; if there's no such thing as kitchen roll, rag becomes more important. And Mar is right, a lot of stuff is burnable. Mum and Dad recall living in their first marital home, the 400 y.o. cottage whose only plumbing was a cold water tap in the back kitchen.

There, is you wanted more hot water than you could boil in a kettle on the Rayburn, you bucketted cold water across from the tap to the copper in the corner of the kitchen and lit a fire under it. All sorts got burned for this inc things like worn out shoes. Wasn't much for the dustbin man to collect back in those days.

Runcorn_Bridge

I well remember Mum putting potato peelings on a lovely roaring fire and killing it! happy memories.

My Own SHTF problem this week, definately no pun intended.

We've been having drain probs for some time, a few times lately the let go bath water has ended up in the cellar. :eek: Last Wednesday I realised my attempts to fix the problem hadn't worked and I called 'the men' with the CCTV, it seems roots have taken over 75% of the drain and the whole lot will have to come up and be replaced, gulp. This is yet to be confirmed by the Insurance Co's 'men' but I'm pretty sure that's the case.

Question:
I've been keeping some tinned stuff down in the celler on shelves, though whilst sorting it out in date order it's probably touched the floor at some point. Since the bathwater must contain other 'solids' (sorry if you're eating) how safe is the environment? Am I best just to dump the lot? It wouldn't be any great financial loss to do so.
Any suggestions gratefully recieved.

[Deleted User]

For can crushers would it be an option to use those little gadgets for making paper bricks? I'm fairly sure you could use one of them with foot pressure, the same as you'd use to get the water out of the paper bricks when you made them, to crush and flatten cans.