Preparedness for when

short_bird

GreyQueen wrote: »

Mirrored wall scones for candles would be excellent, I think.

Actually, wall scones do sound more attractive than wall sconces:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

I think I'm going to run down the freezer and use the dehydrator and pressure canner more than freezing things and maximise on jams and chutneys with the home grown fruit and veg. That way I'd have minimal losses if the power did go off and the freezer contents did suffer. Meat I'd cook in a big pot of stew and share it out with neighbours as I know no one else has the woodstoves, although one of my neighbours does have a caravan and a gas stove in it which would mean they were ok for a while.

Thinking on the post SHTF house I would like a large conservatory on the side that would catch most sun to act as a heat sink and would like doors to open from it into the living area to let that be warmed from the conservatory. I'd also like an old fashioned yard, with big gates to shut it off from the road and in it I'd like a covered area with a freshwater well, that would be very useful.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

and have a go at jamming.

You'll be needing this.

Perplexed_Pineapple

I like the idea of imagining our place post-SHTF with no power. For starters, there's security. I think you would need a balance of offensive, defensive and deflective measures. So for defence at a basic level window shutters would provide protection from improvised missiles (bricks and firebombs) as well as insulation. Similarly nice solid doors with maybe a London bar or similar. You'd need an early warning system - a dog would be worth it's feed and more. Offence, whatever you can manage. That should sort out random chancers. If things went more to pot, camouflage or distraction - making your place look already looted or burnt out. The only way to make that a viable ongoing strategy would to be to have a part of the property that was concealed from casual inspection - a cellar or bunker where you could keep supplies. One of our former neighbours once had a bunker in their garden, a concrete thing built by a more paranoid former owner during the cold war. That would be ideal :rotfl:

GreyQueen wrote: »

....Because I spend a lot of time weeding and this is conducive to random thoughts, I tried to imagine post-Peak Oil SHTF home decor.

I think interior walls would be pale, possibly whitewashed, perhaps tinted with minerals. You'd want pale to reflect maximum light. Perhaps lots of mirrors to maximise the light you do have from candles or lanterns. Mirrored wall scones for candles would be excellent, I think.

Heavy duty curtains would be a must for the colder months and an airlock type arrangement of two doors and a small lobby on each external door would be great. One of my pals had a little terrace whose living room opened into the street, plus the rest of the ground floor was open-plan. Result was any cold-caller resulted in a cold householder.:(

Larders and cool storage on the north side of the home, with airbricks and fly-screens. Rugs might be more useful than fitted carpets, which are mostly petroleum products. A nice handhooked wool or mixed rag rug, plus also a sheepskin or two as bedcover or rug..........

Anyone else want to play with this idea and say what they'd put in their ideal future house and why?

You can get light-reflecting paint GQ, we have some in one of our rooms:
http://www.diy.com/nav/decor/paint-woodcare/emulsion-wall-paint/Dulux-Light-and-Space-Matt-Emulsion-Spring-Blush-10299090
I think the floor might be better as wood or tiles - fitted carpets would be awful to keep clean without power for a vacuum cleaner. Rugs can be taken up and beaten to remove dust. Washing would be dififcult - you'd have to handwash clothes if you had enought water. A well ventilated room on the south side of the house would be good for air-drying clothes on racks in wet weather.
I can see that finding the ideal house for a collapse in energy supply is going to take some looking out and more resources than we have at the moment So we'll do the best with what we have and tbh if things start getting bad it might be best to leave the UK if possible - very few places in the world are so densely populated and energy dependent as the south of England in particular. That would be a difficult call to make though, we have lots of assets that are not transportable, in particular and massively important, a supportive community with friends who will help each other out.

GreyQueen

short_bird wrote: »

Actually, wall scones do sound more attractive than wall sconces:rotfl:

:D:D You can have what you like, my dear, but I shall be having scones on my walls.........:rotfl:

PP, some rellies who live in a foriegn (northern European) city have rolling metal shop-type shutters which they bring down over their groundfloor windows each night. They're commonplace in their neighbourhood, which isn't a rough area btw.

As I was wandering around my city, I was thinking about how the external appearance of a home affects how we view the probable interior, and how that could be used to target homes in present times, or future ones.

For example, a home with an untidy front yard and sunbleached and peeling paint on the door, a grubby curtain hanging crookedly....... or a trim and freshly painted exterior, with a couple of handy ceramic planters on either side of the door, just ready to pitch through a window. Pretend you're a burglar; which would you think would have worthwhile pickings?

If there was trouble about, you'd want to have negative 'kerb appeal' and perhaps have some random unvaluable carp littered outside, as if thrown from within, to suggest that you're home had been looted already.

I was once reading a book of safety advice and it remarked that the exterior style of a home, in including its garden, and the bits of the decor visible from the outside such as window coverings etc, can indicate whether it's a woman's home (or a home with a woman in it) or a man's sole domain. And I've even heard of the trick of leaving a pair of old men's boots in some huge size outside the door, with a note about a shift worker being asleep, to suggest that there will be a very big, very angry bloke on the scene shortly.

Another variant is to have a large dog food bowl and a biiiiig bone lying around the yard when Fido is a figment of your imagination.

I guess it could be classed as a variant of hiding in plain sight. In a safe world, people tend to want to look as prosperous as possible, and to have their homes likewise. In an unsafe one, looking ratty and tatty could be the way to go forward in safety.

PP, in the mountain villages of Sloevenia (a small part of what was once Yugoslavia) I encountered a very sensible solution to drying stuff outdoors in a rainy climate; a sort of mini dutch barn, or wall-less shed, with ample room for linen lines to stretch across. A mini-mod of this could be achieved with a regular shed roof and some support posts. Or it would be the perfect re-purposing of a car port.

DawnW

GreyQueen wrote: »

The fruit I'd take out and eat as much as possible when fresh, then get out a big pan and the sugar and have a go at jamming. Have a book to tell me how, and several spare jamjars. With the blackcurrants being so much smaller than the rasps, I'd be tempted to see if I could dry them off, particularly if there wasn't enough sugar to jam them and the other fruit.

Jam works fine with frozen fruit (or fruit that has been frozen, but has thawed), also jelly, marmalade etc. It tends to need boiling a bit longer, that is all. I often make these preserves from frozen, as I don't always have time when the fruit is ready, and berries in particular don't hold well.

In fact during one long winded power cut some years ago when we lived in the middle of nowhere, I remember having to do as you describe, and boil up a lot of defrosted fruit on the rayburn (solid fuel, no gas there) and making it into jam.

Come to think of it, I have a couple of bags of mixed citrus fruit taking up space in my freezer at the moment, nothing special, oranges that got a bit sorry looking in the fruit bowl, some left over half lemons etc and must think about having a marmalade making session sometime soon.

thriftwizard

In a power-off full-freezer situation, I'd most likely make wine with any defrosting fruit; I've already done it once when a freezer died on me. But with the meat etc. I'd fire up my assorted outdoor cooking options & throw a party. Remembering that we're quite a friendly & supportive community here, we don't need many excuses to throw a party & this'd be a good one! Hopefully the leftovers could be kept reasonably cool out in the garage, where I have some "cool" shelves & a camping meat "safe", and would keep us going for a couple of days at least. There'd be bound to be a little waste, but hopefully not too much.

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I think I'm going to run down the freezer and use the dehydrator and pressure canner more than freezing things and maximise on jams and chutneys with the home grown fruit and veg. That way I'd have minimal losses if the power did go off and the freezer contents did suffer. Meat I'd cook in a big pot of stew and share it out with neighbours as I know no one else has the woodstoves, although one of my neighbours does have a caravan and a gas stove in it which would mean they were ok for a while.

I think canning will be a very good solution. I think I need to look into no power food storage. If energy is a problem then rolling blackouts will be a fact of life. Though I suspect that the police could be inundated with burglaries when security systems become deactivated. In some respects the real victims will be the elderly who may struggle to keep warm.

Batch cooking and canning would be an efficient combo. Reheating contents in microwaves will also be fast and efficient.

[Deleted User]

I wonder if it would be a viable idea to rig up a smoker in the garden at short notice to preserve meats and fish if we did have a power out for a long period? I don't currently have one but do have the plans for making one and it would certainly enable the meat etc. to be kept for a little longer rather than eating it all at once rather than lose it. The other thing I'll throw in as an idea is that it's apparently quite easy to build yourself an outdoor clay oven, I've seen a couple of different celebrity chefs actually do this on the TV for pizzas but it doesn't take a huge amount of skill, materials or space and if you had the wood and knew how to fire it up it would give you a means of cooking if you had no open fire or woodstove, an idea for many of us perhaps???

In the house I'd like to rig up a hanging rack above the heat source both for drying washing and for keeping crispbreads old swedish style. Traditionally they were made when there was plenty of flour and were dinner plate sized with a hole in the middle and then were hung on a pole close to the ceiling above the cookfire which kept them crisp and dry right through the winter months. Washing? how about an old style dolly tub (for this read 1/2 a blue barrel and a washboard along with a wringing post (medieval gadget) set in the garden. Would never be easy but might be better than doing all the hard work by hand.

nuatha

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I wonder if it would be a viable idea to rig up a smoker in the garden at short notice to preserve meats and fish if we did have a power out for a long period? I don't currently have one but do have the plans for making one and it would certainly enable the meat etc. to be kept for a little longer rather than eating it all at once rather than lose it.

I can remember several relatives having slitches of bacon hanging from their kitchen ceilings. A few years back I cured a couple of sides of bacon, one to my Dad's old butchery book recipe (1950s) and one to a family recipe (1920s). Dad's recipe was saltier than my preference, but acceptable as a modern bacon cure, the other was seriously salty and needed soaking before eating.
I suspect the same may apply to smoking meats - what we appreciate now is a light smoking for flavour, rather than the depth that is needed to preserve meat. I'd love to be proved wrong though.

The other thing I'll throw in as an idea is that it's apparently quite easy to build yourself an outdoor clay oven, I've seen a couple of different celebrity chefs actually do this on the TV for pizzas but it doesn't take a huge amount of skill, materials or space and if you had the wood and knew how to fire it up it would give you a means of cooking if you had no open fire or woodstove, an idea for many of us perhaps???

Its fairly easy and remarkably quick to do. Build in the morning and pizzas for afternoon tea quick. I'd forgotten about this, I was involved in doing some for schools back in the 90s, I'll see if I can find my notes.

In the house I'd like to rig up a hanging rack above the heat source both for drying washing and for keeping crispbreads old swedish style. Traditionally they were made when there was plenty of flour and were dinner plate sized with a hole in the middle and then were hung on a pole close to the ceiling above the cookfire which kept them crisp and dry right through the winter months. Washing? how about an old style dolly tub (for this read 1/2 a blue barrel and a washboard along with a wringing post (medieval gadget) set in the garden. Would never be easy but might be better than doing all the hard work by hand.

There's another change, how many of us have the skill to keep a fire going all winter (assuming we have a fireplace or woodburner) for that matter how many of us have a fire in the kitchen. I could adapt my living room to be a kitchen, but plumbing might be a bit makeshift.