Preparedness for when

cornishchick

Oh my word, a member of the powers that be who has a sense of humor....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jonstone/someone-asked-the-government-if-they-could-drop-out-of-socie

GreyQueen

cornishchick wrote: »

Oh my word, a member of the powers that be who has a sense of humor....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jonstone/someone-asked-the-government-if-they-could-drop-out-of-socie

Loving it.

We occasionally get some weird correspondences at my workplace. We always aim to answer them as politely and professionally as we can, and signpost the person to the right places if we cannot help. But some of them are sooooo funny that we treasure every sentence.

Is it me, or is there something innately ridiculous about there being a Society of Hermits? :rotfl:

pineapple

vivatifosi wrote: »

You can get some lovely cheap places in Sweden - middle of nowhere and a bit of a preppers paradise in terms of resources. Not that I know anything about Swedish prepping you understand:o.

I met a couple of strangers while out walking the dog recently and rather strangely, we ended up talking about the economy and prepping. Turns out they have bought a smallholding in North Portugal for a song and have it all planned out. Property is cheap there. The main consideration for me at my age would be health provision and the exchange rate for my pension.
I rather like the idea of Sweden but I've heard it can be a bit dead in rural areas and the cost of living is high.

Butterfly_Brain

Been MIA for a few days RL got in the way.

GQ good luck with the strike on Thursday I am backing public sector workers all the way, it is a shame it is only for one day. The condems need a kick in their complacency.
Have you seen this though...........the condems are really pushing for a fight.

Then there is another infringement of our rights here
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jul/06/track-phone-usage-law-snoopers-charter

sadly I don't think Labour will change anything , because they are answerable to the same bosses

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jul/06/track-phone-usage-law-snoopers-charter

the_cake

Cake's Fruit Report .....
Anyone else finding it a really brilliant summer for fruit? We've been greedily eating strawberries and raspberries for about 10 days now, with quite a bit more still to ripen (2 of us, about 20 Gariguette strawberry plants, 8' row of Malling Jewel raspberries, with another 8' row of autumn fruiting Allgold to come), very heavy crops on the black- and redcurrant bushes (1 of each: plenty!), but the gooseberries - I have never seen anything like it. We have five bushes (Hinomaki Red, Hinomaki Yellow, and a couple which were cuttings from an old one in the hedge). Today I have picked nearly 7kg of fruit from them, and there are still a few more berries lurking. I've made seven jars of jam, but am having to freeze the rest for now, as I've run out of jam jars. Made a gooseberry pudding tonight. My arms are scratched to b*gg*ry, but I'm dead chuffed with the harvest. I can only think all the fruit really enjoyed the very wet, mild winter. And the ash from the woodburner ....
The garlic harvest is also excellent, so in an SHTF scenario, we could probably be self sufficient in garlic and gooseberries. Everything else we grow is decimated by slugs and ants. And Jeeves, chasing butterflies and knocking things over.
I would love to hear what food growing successes others are having - I think it's an intriguing year.

happydays89

We have a row of blackcurrant bushes,normally they are full of fruit but this year not a berry insight,just very healthy green leaves no signs of disease.They must be having a year off.

We received a booklet with our Npower bill,and there is a section on disconnections due to power shortages.We have decided to concentrate our prepping on solar lighting and stocking up on fuel for our multi fuel stove.

[Deleted User]

We have a wonderful crop of redcurrants this year but we've only still got them because we double netted the bushes and pinned the nets down with tent pegs. Before this the sparrows were taking the immature rock hard green berries, I've never seen the like!!!

Frugalsod

pineapple wrote: »

I met a couple of strangers while out walking the dog recently and rather strangely, we ended up talking about the economy and prepping. Turns out they have bought a smallholding in North Portugal for a song and have it all planned out. Property is cheap there. The main consideration for me at my age would be health provision and the exchange rate for my pension.
I rather like the idea of Sweden but I've heard it can be a bit dead in rural areas and the cost of living is high.

Portugal will be very hot in the summer and with climate change it will only get worse.

Sweden does have a high cost of living but then incomes are higher as well. Property has been cheap, but then they have space and unlike here even a bus driver can afford a summer home in the countryside. They might be small and many are little more than well insulated sheds but they have that little space out in the country.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

GQ's fruit report:

The strawbs were transplanted from a congested bed, so I wasn't expecting much, but what did happen was that a lot of immature (i.e. completely white) fruits where found detached and a few inches away from the plant and half-chewed. Mice? I've probably had about a dozen strawbs out of 2 double rows 8m long. They were lovely but it's an appalling ROI.

My only other fruit is a blackcurrant of unknown variety. I was offered this plant by someone from work who'd received it as a gift, stuck it in the border of a rented house and was moving on to a flat. It was about 2 feet tall and just a few twigs. I put it in my allotment and it didn't do much for 2-3 years, grew mebbe a dozen currants each year which the birdies ate not me.

Until winter of 2011, when I had 5 tonnes of mixed cow and pig manure dumped on the end of the allotment by a farmer's tipper trailer. Whoops, forgot about the little twiggy blackcurrant. I barrowed quite a lot of the manure up the allotment, but heaping piles of it stayed around the blackcurrant for months. I did clear some of it off the bush which hadn't sustained too much damage, just a broken limb.

Ever since the manure, it's grown like a mad thing and is about 5 feet across, even with annual pruning. I was foolishly away on holibobs for 2 weeks last July and missed the best of them, but still got loads. Now I'm here and harvesting and can barely make a dent in the quantities still on the bush. I'm picking into Carte D'Or ice-cream tubs and each one is 1lb 6 oz and I have 5 alreasdy and plenty more to do.

Meanwhile, the strawbs are requiring constant attention (de-runnering twice a week minimum) and occasional weeding, whereas all I did to the blackcurrant was spent 5-10 mins 'pruning' it last autumn, and about 10 seconds throwing a random chunk of horse manure under it about 6 weeks ago.

You can see where my thoughts are, can't you? If I can get a few top fruit varieties which produce as well as the blackcurrant, it's a far better use of space and time. But if you possess a blackcurrant, the books say they love nothing better than a heavy manuring, so get some on them and stand back and wait for wonderful harvests.

I did read something in the newspaper that this is one of the good years for beech mast (beech nuts) which doesn't happen more than one year in three.

Re the industrial action, thanks for the moral support. I'm wincing to think about losing the money but the grubbyment will alsoget a bit less tax and NI, so that makes me feel slightly better, lol. Not too happy at the thought of the public being put to inconvenience by customer services being mainly MIA, but there comes a point where you have to do something. It may or may not achieve any positive results, in which case I've lost money to no end, but if I expected colleagues to take the hit in their paypackets and me to take any increase in the pay offer they win, well, that's nothing but hypocrisy, isn't it?

Yup, customer services could bring the LA to its knees if we all went out and stayed out. Particularly if the council tax department joined us.

As for Labour, aren't they due a name change sometime soon? To something like the Sucking-Up-to-Big-Business-while-abusing-Workers Party? If they want to see tradional Labour voters in the UKIP camp, they're going the right way about it.:(

******and breathe******** I have tea, the sun's shining, all will be well.

Perplexed_Pineapple

the_cake wrote: »

Cake's Fruit Report .....
Anyone else finding it a really brilliant summer for fruit? We've been greedily eating strawberries and raspberries for about 10 days now, with quite a bit more still to ripen (2 of us, about 20 Gariguette strawberry plants, 8' row of Malling Jewel raspberries, with another 8' row of autumn fruiting Allgold to come), very heavy crops on the black- and redcurrant bushes (1 of each: plenty!), but the gooseberries - I have never seen anything like it. We have five bushes (Hinomaki Red, Hinomaki Yellow, and a couple which were cuttings from an old one in the hedge). Today I have picked nearly 7kg of fruit from them, and there are still a few more berries lurking. I've made seven jars of jam, but am having to freeze the rest for now, as I've run out of jam jars. Made a gooseberry pudding tonight. My arms are scratched to b*gg*ry, but I'm dead chuffed with the harvest. I can only think all the fruit really enjoyed the very wet, mild winter. And the ash from the woodburner ....
The garlic harvest is also excellent, so in an SHTF scenario, we could probably be self sufficient in garlic and gooseberries. Everything else we grow is decimated by slugs and ants. And Jeeves, chasing butterflies and knocking things over.
I would love to hear what food growing successes others are having - I think it's an intriguing year.

Sounds fantastic, the cake, we're also well supplied with gooseberries although I don't know the variety having inherited them. Garlic also doing well and I've discovered that if you plant the "bulbules" that develop in the flowerheads, after one seaon you have a little dinky garlic bulb about a third of an inch across. I'm going to try putting them in the fridge for a couple of weeks to see whether I can fool them into a fresh growth spurt in the autumn.
Good luck with the IA GQ, you have to fight your corner and though I don't really understand what the present dispute is about there's no doubt that TPTB are aiming to run down public services where they can. I know they need to reduce the deficit, but cutting front line services is never going to be feasible in isolation and it's a kick in the teeth to public sector workers to have their pay frozen and cut while MPs get their pay rises year on year.
Heading over to the lottie in a bit, need to keep those weeds down. Slugs and snails have eaten most of the greenery but the spuds and onions are hanging on in there. Thinking about sourcing a deep fat fryer to help cope with the tatties come harvest time