Preparedness for when

mrsmortenharket

Sorry for your loss Tessasmum x

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

You're both very wise.

If you lose your employment next week, haven't anything else immediately, and have to wait for state benefits, you could easily be looking at 2-3 months before you get any money.

It can end up as basic as no food in the cupboard, no t.p., nothing. Stocking up when you see a good price, of something which won't rot or spoil, is excellent, as is having even a herb pot to liven up dull meals. I have eaten a lot of lentils in hard times and they're nutritious, worthy, cheap and without seasoning, dull-dull-dull.

I think the future will be harder for the majority of the population than the immediate past has been, and that it is sensible and prudent to downscale and right-size your life now. Spend some time learning things which will be useful, shop around for equipment and supplies at your leisure.

F'rinstance, I've bought large pillar candles, unburned, for 20p. Only a lunatic will be flogging them at those prices if we move into an era of regular power cuts.

It is not just the drop in income. Now people do not get paid anything for 3 days when they lose a job, and if you are in and out of work those 3 days keep adding up.

Also benefit levels could drop further and if you are struggling with two incomes and a mortgage now imagine what it will be like with the benefit cuts.

It does surprise me that people actually support benefit cuts yet fail to think that they are likely to need them at some point. When you realise that our ratio of debt to income as a nation far exceeds that of Greece or Ireland then you can see the problems when the SHTF here.

As for learning new things I am looking into the idea of learning how to make a Canadian style open canoe. Not only will it be a skill that could make some money, but in the event of a SHTF moment a canoe and bike with trailer (for canoe) will give me the scope to move a lot further than most. A large open canoe can hold a lot of kit and several people.

I am also looking into the idea of aeroponics after seeing how much can be done in a small greenhouse area.

Frugalsod

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

funny you should mention pitchforks lol... I just bought 2 vintage garden forks for mucking out the pigs, as they are a better rounded shape...

After a long think, I decided that I needed to get a pitchfork just in case, so had a look on Amazon to see what types of pitchforks were available. Also to see what other pitchfork buyers also bought. So have added a 2 and 4 prong pitchfork to the wish list for consideration.

GreyQueen

(((((((tessasmum))))))) what a wretched thing for you and your girls. And how much more miserable and frightening this sad time would have been without your preparedness. Puts it all into perspective, doesn't it?

frugalsod, yes, very much an attitude from some people that they're never going to be unemployed, or injured, or ill, or abandoned by a spouse with young dependants. All that does happen to perfectly decent, hard-working types with lots of marketable skills and flexibility about what kind of job / where they work. In my job, I talk to some shell-shocked forty-somethings who have never been out of work since schooldays, and are suddenly in the job market and can't even get the time of day when they're job-hunting. It sends people into a deep slough of despond, self-doubt and a crisis as they try to keep the household afloat.

I haven't used an open (canadian style) canoe for moving large quantities of stuff personally, but I have done a holiday which involved camping and cruising the bays of new zealand and a phenomenal amount of stuff can be secreted in the compartments of a two-person ocean kayak. You'd've been gobsmacked to see what we were toting (huge steel pots among camping stuff, food, supplies etc) and they travelled easily on water, only a beggar to beach. You line yourself at right-angles to a sloping sandy beach and paddle like demons to ram the kayak as far out of the water as possible. If I did it again, I'd have a pair of fingerless gloves to spare wear and tear on my hands from the paddle, though.

In times of trouble, vey acquatic landscapes such as marshes, fens and lakes would give you some distance from trouble, and an paddles vessel with a low profile like a canoe could be hidden pretty easily. I have my eye on a rowing boat on the river near my flat and think I could do far worse if it all goes pearshaped than swipe that and scull downriver to the marshes and hide in a reed bed.

Re the cold frame, it's about 4 ft long and pushing 3 ft tall at the back, sloping towards the front. The lid is a heavy metal-framed windowpane. The size of the frame was limited by the found materials, and it's made with a ledge around the inside to rest planking shelves on, which are presently removed and in the allotment shed. This gives the flexibility to either sow into the ground (or stand stuff on the ground) or to have the shelves in and have pots/ trays on it.

My allotmenteering will involve moving several tonnes of earth in the next few months (a wee bit at a time) which will be the final stage of the great levelling project which commenced in Year 2 of the allotment tenancy. My plot had been derelict for a long time and had one side of it very humped up; envisage a rough grass bank, grass over rubbish, about 2-3 feet higher than the rest of the plot. The rest is long-since levelled but this bit couldn't be sorted until The Rough (which became the tattie patch) was sorted out.

You'd be amazed what you can move with a landscape rake it you're stubborn and determined, which I certainly am.

The woodash was a very pleasing result. I had to have the bonfire there as it was the only bit bare at the time and I couldn't go any further up (wooden shed nearby) but it all came out very well. I haul a fair bit of stuff off the allotment which isn't ameniable to composting such as horsetails, bindweed, couch grass, and it's a case of laboriously biking it down to the tip, or dealing with it on site.

I'm aiming to look at so-called 'waste' materials as a resource, not a problem to be hauled away. Those plants hauled minerals up from the deep soil, esp the horsetails with their 6ft deep roots and their habit of hauling up silica. If I take them away, all that stuff leaves, too. If I can use an annual bonfire to tidy it down into a compact form, and leave some of the minerals behind, and incorporate them into the soil, I figure that's a good thing.

Although I turned my ashy bit of soil under, you could allow the site of a bonfire to cool for a couple of days and then look at gathering the ashes into a rainproof container, to top-dress those plants which find potash especially benefical. I would caution you that the ashy bed of a bonfire holds its heat for a lot longer than you'd imagine, even if you supervise it burning out and then put water on it, as I do. I was raking through my bonfire remains more than 24 hours after it was extinguished in order to remove some stray nails, and they were too hot to pick up.............. Don't want to decant ashes into something and accidentally set your shed alight.

Have had an opportinity to buy a pitchfork for a fiver this morning at a bootsale and I was more than a little tempted. Cold steel; they don't like it up 'em.

thriftwizard

Tessasmum, just wanting to add my sympathy; no matter that it was expected & planned for, it must still be a huge loss to you & your kids. People I know have been through (and are going through) similar traumas, but few of them have faced it with such common sense & forward planning. Hats off to a Prepper-Supreme!

All that does happen to perfectly decent, hard-working types with lots of marketable skills and flexibility about what kind of job / where they work. In my job, I talk to some shell-shocked forty-somethings who have never been out of work since schooldays, and are suddenly in the job market and can't even get the time of day when they're job-hunting. It sends people into a deep slough of despond, self-doubt and a crisis as they try to keep the household afloat.

Too true, GQ & Frugalsod. It even happens in the kind of families where everyone thinks it can't possibly happen to anyone we know... I think everyone could do with remembering the phrase, "There but for the Grace of God, go I..." sometimes.

pineapple

Sorry to hear your news tessasmum.
Wishing you strength for the future
x

pineapple

charlies-aunt wrote: »

I wonder if the breakdown of family life and fragmentation of neighbourhoods has contribute to this sorry state of affairs.

I'm sure that's a factor.
That and people being increasingly unwilling to get off their lazy *rses and do things for themselves

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

Have had an opportinity to buy a pitchfork for a fiver this morning at a bootsale and I was more than a little tempted. Cold steel; they don't like it up 'em.

I bet you will regret not buying it when the mobs form and you do not have your pitchfork. :rotfl:

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

I bet you will regret not buying it when the mobs form and you do not have your pitchfork. :rotfl:

Yeah, but it'd mean taking it on a National Express coach tomorrow - can you imagine the expressions?! *

But you are right, I may be a little under-dressed come the revolution. Whenever I think of pitchforks, I envisage Nanny Ogg with one, muttering rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb, as she made her way thru the crowd.

* I have, previously, transported a standard lamp and most-of-a-bicycle on a coach, and the expressions vary from WTH to PMSL.:rotfl:

Frugalsod

pineapple wrote: »

I'm sure that's a factor.
That and people being increasingly unwilling to get off their lazy *rses and do things for themselves

Yes but that does not apply to everyone. Many homes are squalid no matter what the tenant does. Some landlords simply use their buy to lets as a source of income and fail to spend a penny on them even to make them habitable. They should be taken to court and prosecuted as a slum landlord. All they concentrate on is making the place look presentable to let and if that means a splash of paint over the mould then that is what they do. Then you need to prosecute letting agents for letting homes that are not habitable. Most landlords are pretty good and so this is not really aimed at them.