Preparedness for when

Frugalsod

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

I've thought about that, when's the last time you've seen a yew tree? I don't think I've seen one in years. Maybe it would be a preppertastic thing to do, to plant more yew trees.....

Many English church yards have Yew Trees. Planting a lot more trees of many species would be a good thing.

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

Press getting excited about the Greek election, could just be the thing that breaks the Euro; I'm going to get some cash out tomorrow, nothing likely to happen though I guess until the election which is in about four weeks. Plenty of time to be prepped up for bank crises and I'm aiming to have as little in the bank then as possible. The election is just before pay day anyway so wouldn't be much in any case :rotfl:

I suspect that much of it is to frighten the Greeks into electing the local puppets that the ECB approves of.

While the election is a few days before pay day I suspect that the banks will not open if the election does not go the way of the ECB. It all depends on how fast the results come in. So any wages that might have been due will not get paid or will be bailed in before people can get their wages. The real problem will be that TPTB will already be moving much of their money out of the country before they bail in the citizens.

DawnW

Frugalsod wrote: »

Many English church yards have Yew Trees. Planting a lot more trees of many species would be a good thing.

Yew, all parts of the tree, is very poisonous to animals (such as cattle, sheep, goats etc which might eat it). I read somewhere that this is why it was planted in churchyards, as animals were not permitted there (as opposed to say, farmland or hedgerows) so could not be poisoned.

It is not poisonous to birds though, as they eat the berries with no ill effects.

GreyQueen

Some ancient yews in churchyards are a lot older than the old churches whose yards they are notationally standing in - they were part of pre-Christian sacred sites. I believe some of them have been tested and are 2,000 + years old and predate Christianity itself.

Yew is highly toxic and if you were to be boiling your camp stove under one, with an unlidded pot, and some needles were to fall in - not good.

I have a yew light-pull in my bathroom, one which Mum made in her wood-turning, its partially of the heartwood and sap wood, so golden on one side and russet on the other. It's protected from hands by being varnished, though.

Even 600 years ago, when archers were being used in earnest in warfare, the majority of bowstaves were being imported from elsewhere in Europe. Bows were made of other woods, including ash, but yew was regarded as the better wood.

My bow is a type of longbow called an American flatbow, in that the front profile is flat, not curved as a true longbow would be. This was a refinement on tradition made possible by improved adhesives for lamination from the 1920s onwards. On mine, the outer layer of the lamination is matte black fibreglass, the other layers are wood. It's a KG Archery's Sherwood Ranger Deluxe, if anyone wants to look at one on the web. 66 inches long and pulling 36lb.

Bows can be made of all sorts of things (old skis, PVC pipes, you name it, someone has done it on YouTube), you just need something capable of bending and flexing without breaking.

Frugalsod

This might be very useful if our glorious leaders start taking even more liberties.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05/peaceful-protest-is-much-more-effective-than-violence-in-toppling-dictators/

I have no interest in a violent uprising and I suspect that the vast majority are the same. Now we have some reasons to take part in peaceful protests.

DawnW

GreyQueen wrote: »

Some ancient yews in churchyards are a lot older than the old churches whose yards they are notationally standing in - they were part of pre-Christian sacred sites. I believe some of them have been tested and are 2,000 + years old and predate Christianity itself.

Yew is highly toxic and if you were to be boiling your camp stove under one, with an unlidded pot, and some needles were to fall in - not good.

I have a yew light-pull in my bathroom, one which Mum made in her wood-turning, its partially of the heartwood and sap wood, so golden on one side and russet on the other. It's protected from hands by being varnished, though.

We have a beautiful low bench / table made from a 'slice' of yew taken vertically down the centre of the trunk (if that makes sense), again partially heartwood and partly sapwood. It is a combination of beautiful colours. OH made it, along with a coat peg rack which he sold. The shop that used to stock such things closed down, and the table came back home

It has been sealed with many, many coats of oil and wax, but we don't use it as a coffee table. It lives on the landing with a vase of flowers on it. OH was lucky to get hold of such a big piece of yew - it came from a small local timber yard and had been seasoned for years, laying forgotten in a corner. It cost a lot, but the sale of the coat rack (made from a much smaller piece than the table) more than covered the cost. I am pleased it came back, as OH only makes these larger items occasionally for private commissions now.

GreyQueen

Oooooh Dawnw, knowing how lovely my little lightpull looks, I can imagine the gorgeousness of your table, how wonderful and what a find at the woodyard.

One of my favourite possessions is a turned wood bowl which I bought from the craftsman at a country fair. It is curved (dunno the right term, the sides are curves so that it swoops up, symetrically, like a smile). It was made from a beech tree which was snapped off in the Great Storm of 1987 at about 10 feet tall. The rot was allowed to get into the beech, so that you get a sketchy linear pattern, it's called spalted beech.

There's a fine line between getting the effect and letting the decay go too far and having the bowl break up on the lathe.

This isn't my bowl, but it's an example of spalted beech: I have owned my bowl for over twenty years and it is still a delight to the eye.

thriftwizard

We have a small yew in our garden; it's in an area where children have no easy access, so we've always let it be & sternly lectured our own kids & any visitors about touching it. Our house is built on the site of a medieval monastery and even now, 500 years later, there's a plant that pops up from time to time that mostly grows on ex-monastic sites - Babington's Leek - very tasty. The yew doesn't look big enough to be a survivor from those days, but a close look at the bole shows that it may be tiny now, but it's been much bigger in the past; I suspect it's been cut down time & again & always re-sprouted.

Wood fascinates me; it's the one material I've never really managed to get my hands on in a creative sense, any more than bodging up shelves & raised beds from old pallets. My younger brother is a cabinetmaker by trade, though doesn't work as such; he spends a lot of time & energy rescuing good bits (both made up and as planks/pallets) and making or remaking them, which has given him a home full of fabulous treasures for pennies, and a fair bit of income on top of what he earns at his day-job. A skill well worth learning! I'd rather like to learn how to use a pole-lathe and might stash some cash away with a view to having a go later on this year.

ivyleaf

The second time we went to NZ, in 2010, we bought three turned wood lidded bowls, different sizes and shapes and different woods. The largest is elm, the middle-sized one is monkey puzzle, and the smallest is walnut.

We bought them at the Arts Centre in Christchurch, on only our second day, and carted them around for six weeks They live on our coffee table now, and bring happy memories every time we look at them.

We were so lucky to get to NZ twice. I hope the Arts Centre is still there after the earthquake.

ETA Just checked and it isn't, or at least they had a lot of damage and are doing a long-term restoration and rebuilding project.

Karmacat

Fascinating about the yew trees! I was doing some research last year on yew, and www.pfaf.org had some very interesting things to say:

" All parts of the plant, except the flesh of the fruit, are highly poisonous, having a paralyzing affect on the heart. Poisoning symptoms are dry mouth, vomiting, vertigo, abdominal pain, dyspnoea, arrhythmias, hypotension & unconsciousness."

"Fruit - raw. Very sweet and gelatinous, most people find it delicious though some find it sickly. A number of people who like the flavour do not like the texture which is often described as being 'snotty'. All other parts of this plant, including the seed, are highly poisonous. When eating the fruit you should spit out the large seed found in the fruit's centre. Should you swallow the whole seed it will just pass straight through you without harm (UPDATE: this is probably not true: unfortunately, the digestive system of most mammals, including humans, is robust enough to break down the seeds. This will release the toxic taxanes. Birds are able to eat the whole “berry” because they cannot digest the seeds). If it is bitten into, however, you will notice a very bitter flavour and the seed should immediately be spat out or it could cause some problems. The fruit is a fleshy berry about 10mm in diameter and containing a single seed. Some reports suggest using the bark as a tea substitute, this would probably be very unwise.


It says a lot else, but it sounds possible that the flesh of the fruit is a survival food. Don't think I'd want to chance it myself, mind you ...

[Deleted User]

Well here we are at the end of another year which has been interesting in some ways and frankly scary in others with the advent of Ebola in this country a couple of days ago. There are days when I look at my stocks and equipment and think I've taken this being ready malarky much too seriously and am aware of thinking I put much too much emphasis on keeping levels of stock ridiculously high but that's only on those lovely warm bright days in summer when the world is on the surface a beautiful and safe place to live in. Then the news that Ebola has finally crossed from the other side of the planet and ended up in Glasgow of all places makes the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end and I look at everything in place here and feel normal and my fear levels fall. I know the majority of the population consider us to be lunatic fringe as preppers and pour scorn and ridicule on our resolve to stay out of harms way by whatever method is appropriate to the given threat and I hear those voices saying 'OH no Ebola won't reach us and if it does, well 'they' will not let it spread, 'they' will keep us safe and well, won't they? Well, the poor lady who is currently in isolation couldn't have done any more to flag up that she was ill, to flag up that she had been in contact with the virus and that she was feeling ill and ALL the checks and temperature taking still didn't get her the medical help she needed and let her continue travelling with many other folks until she got herself to A & E. I wonder what would have happened had she been too ill to get there? What if other folks had found her and not known where she'd been, how many people would have been inadvertantly infected? It's a scary scenario to envisage and I'm SO glad I can bear the criticism and mickey taking that the world sends our way, I'm really, really glad that I AM a prepper.