Preparedness for when

elaine241

Hello All

Still here! But back to work ( only Pt doc refuses anything else!) so not a lot of time to catch up as totally kn*ckered!
Sorry if out of context, I live where farm meets posh estate so have had a few funnys over the years!
The one neighbour asked me if I could keep the sheep noise down as it woke him up in the morning, I kept a very straight face and said I would ask them to keep the noise down!
I ride a horse on the road but many round here ( not country people) ride on pavements and leave deposits behind so I can understand annoyance at that!
The local ramblers decided to take a short cut through one of our fields ( no FP) to join up with another FP , they came across my pet ram who proceeded to chase and butt them, v funny from my point of view but not for the 20 so ramblers running down the field trying to get away from him!
My FIL farm is in "millionaires row" and we have an ex prof footballer moved in next door. We have had several run ins, his dogs chased and killed/mauled our sheep so he didnt take kindly to the use of the twelve bore to put things right! He drives a sports car v fast round the lanes and met my BIL who is an agricultural contractor in the lane complete with huge tractor and enormous baler; he then said to BIL should reverse as "dont u know who I am!". BIL is a large lad with bad temper who taught him the error of his ways!!
Still prepping! managed to buy two wool whitney blankets at the bs for 50p each!! I have copied all docs on computer to stick to back up and also uploaded to cloud just in case place burns down! Just got to scan a few docs in and do the same then sorted!!! Yeh!!
Veg patch looking good this year so hopefully plenty of produce to see us through summer and winter. I tend to grow th emore expensive veg rather than ones I can buy v cheaply form the shops.

Anyway keep prepping! I cant post v often but Im still here reading! :-)

GreyQueen

I'm catching up with the most recent posts on thearchdruidreport and thinking, as I have been thinking for some time, about the probable outcome of the end of the oil era.

Assuming that some magical source of cheap and versatile energy doesn't pop out of somewhere, what will happen in the future to those who have no intention of becoming 21st-22nd century peasant farmers?

Farming/ gardening with only muscle power (human and draft animal) is hard work. And the rewards are chancy and starvation often threatens. Which is one of the reasons that peasant farmers across the globe have been leaving their hardscrabble existances in droves and why, for the first time ever, the majority of the world's population are urban, not rural.

So, cast yourself in the role of an elite, affluent person. Do you intend to learn to hoe, weed and shovel sh*t? Do you intend that your children, grandchildren and further descendants down the line become peasants? Or, do you have intentions that you and yours will continue to be elite people, living comfortable lives which don't involve tilling, sh*t-shovelling, pounding your clothes on riverside rocks to clean them and roofing your own hovels?

The answer is, of course, that elites didn't get to the top by being squeamish. And the ones which have a squeamish side won't stay at the top table for long. If you want to live large in a post-oil world, you will have a lot of servants. And, if they become too expensive, uppity or just plain annoying, you will have slaves.

I can't think of any advanced urbanised society of the pre-industrial era which wasn't a slave-keeping society. Can anyone tell me of one?

daz378

didnt i read somewhere(probably on here) that if we had to revert to non oil farming methods ... we could only support about 15% of the current population.......think there may be a gradual increase in insect farming or cows on steroids may find all wonderful, weird ways to supplement our food supply ......on late tomorrow before a much needed day off.....take care

Frugalsod

The problem with slave economies is that they have insufficient demand for many products and so technological innovation slows down. I am a lot more positive that there are already significant solutions to a post oil world. Wind power and solar power combined with batteries via electric cars will give us a sufficiently resilient energy network that we could cope. Heavy industry might actually be impossible without cheap energy so it might be that Iceland becomes a new industrial powerhouse. If Saudi Arabia builds lots of solar farms it too could become a new industrial giant.

The problem is that currently there are too many vested interests who will bribe politicians to delay the inevitable. Look at BP. In the past it got involved in Solar energy as it saw that it was politically sensible and great greenwashing, but over the last few years they divested themselves of green energy and are a dirty fossil fuel company again.

One thing that we do need is a complete ban on any form of political sponsorship contributions of any kind to any political party to get things honest. Personally we need a carbon tax that makes it uneconomic to develop fossil fuel technologies. Green techs should then have no subsidy and nuclear would be charged a tax to pay for clean up. It should never be left to nuclear companies who will go bankrupt rather than pay the clean up bill so they should be taxed so that the government and tax payers who would get the bill eventually benefit in the meantime.

The carbon taxes could then go to provide research grants for electric farm vehicles because we still need to grow food and maybe electric tractors are an interim.

Though there also other technologies that could allow us to feed millions quite easily. Aquaponics and aeroponics offer very good solutions for producing lots of food, in a small amount of space.

I think that eventually the masses will rise up and force change and it will be bad for the elites if they resist.

Frugalsod

Here is an idea for looking after young livestock in winter. Good for those with smallholdings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfxUt9UM0nc

moneyistooshorttomention

By and large I'd agree with FrugalSod. The one point that concerns me is that yep....aquaponics etc does rather look like it will be the future of foodgrowing - but the food cant have the same nourishment in it as that grown in the "proper fashion" (ie in the soil). I have read the statistics about just how much of the "goodness" has gone from our food these days as it is - courtesy of much of the land having been over-farmed to cope with the sheer volume of all these extra people to feed.

I have long been watching a big Food Division going on - between those who can afford to eat properly (or make it their highest priority to do so first and foremost - in the case of some of us) and eat food we like and that will keep us healthy in one group. The other group just eating absolutely as cheaply as they possibly can (indeed much more cheaply than is realistically possible) and eating factory-farmed meat/non-organically grown stuff/etc/etc. I'm often not quite sure how aware people are of the drastic effects on their health of eating from the "cheapest possible" way in the long-term.

This is what concerns me - that, as things get worse, there will be more and more people crammed into "ticky tacky boxes" instead of proper homes and eating "food to fill their stomach as cheaply as possible" instead of proper food.

I do hope that "new/cleaner/greener technologies" will save us all - but I'm not convinced. Personally the only certainty I have from all that is that I wouldn't do either the "Hard Slog of our Ancestors Way of Life" or be part of a Slave Society (on either side of that equation) - so I cross my fingers and hope and keep working on getting my own personal finances straight (at last:cool:).

GreyQueen

MTSTM, given that you've mentioned that you've retired, it's unlikely that your lifespan will be sufficient to see what a post-oil economy looks like. At fifty-and-a-half, I will probably get an inkling of the very start of it, if I'm unlucky. The generations coming up behind us won't be so fortunate as we have been, alas.

As to what you personally would or would not be prepared to accept, by way of a lifestyle, all I can say is that most of the time, this isn't in an individual's control. Even something as basic as what you put on your plate is subject to forces outside your control.

I can eat organic food some of the time because I grow it myself. I also eat organic bread (not exclusively) because I get it from a windmiller at a farmer's market. Or, more truthfully, have it fetched for me by my parents, who have the access as car owners to this particular market where it visits Nan's village once a month (they don't come to my city).

I can't afford a premium to buy organic food on the open market. As it is, my bills are, in decending order; rent, council tax and food. The council tax takes just under one-twelth of my annual income for a band A dwelling. By comparion, my utility bills in total are neglible and all can be covered with under 5 hours' paid work per week.

If a person said to herself, I'm not going to jeopardise my health by eating non-organically or my morals by eating factory farmed animal products, all well and good. For a lot of people in this country, such niceties would equate to going very hungry indeed. When I go to the health food shop, I nearly always come away empty-handed as it's just so expensive. The customers are scarce and pretty obvously affluent ladies of a certain age, from certain neighbourhoods.

I call the stock at the health food shop posh bird food.

moneyistooshorttomention

"Posh bird food" = reminds me I must get some millet cooked up for dinner:rotfl:. Nowt like eating like a budgie...:rotfl:

That is precisely what I mean by a Great Food Divide - the difference between eating absolutely as cheaply as possible or otherwise.

I do look at some Cheapest Possible mealplans/menus and think "But I wouldn't even like that - sounds _pale_" and that's one thing - but I don't like thinking that many people are having to buy Cheapest Possible whilst knowing very well that that means risking their health long-term and don't like seeing people being put in that position.

As you say - I'm retirement age (though still currently with the financial problems coming from the State not agreeing I am - as I've still not reached that darn revised State Pension Age yet, so am on untaxably low income at present). Right at this moment - I am well aware that I'm dipping into my savings each time I go food-shopping (as there is only enough income for Cheapest Possible Eating at present). At a guess - I can afford £15-£20 per week for food at the moment - but am spending £30-£40.

I am thankful that "The Worst" is probably on schedule for after I'm due to have died anyway - but am watching that "tide creeping up the seashore" nervously. Fortunately too the advantages of being single/childless/etc are I am in charge of how my life is ultimately and can make "Up with this I will not put" decisions if push really came to shove. But I understand/appreciate that the majority of people don't have that freedom of decision and I am fortunate that I do and could just "exit stage left (or stage upwards to be more precise)" if I felt it was All Too Much.

Frugalsod

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I have long been watching a big Food Division going on - between those who can afford to eat properly (or make it their highest priority to do so first and foremost - in the case of some of us) and eat food we like and that will keep us healthy in one group. The other group just eating absolutely as cheaply as they possibly can (indeed much more cheaply than is realistically possible) and eating factory-farmed meat/non-organically grown stuff/etc/etc. I'm often not quite sure how aware people are of the drastic effects on their health of eating from the "cheapest possible" way in the long-term.

I agree but there are ways to fight back. First is a method that I used initially when it came to making the first big changes to my shopping.

First I started double dipping as recommended by MSE :money:

This is, if you do not know is dropping from branded to standard own range. Each drop will save you roughly 30% on your shop. You could keep dropping down till you have found the level that you are happy with. You could discover that you are happy with the value range rather than the brand. For Ketchup I have found this to be the case.

Next you can start to cook from scratch, it could be done in stages. Lets start with something that does not require any cooking such as trifle. You could start with half a packet of trifle sponges 40p one pack of jelly 50p, tin of fruit, 50p and pint of double or whipping cream £1. Total cost £2.4 yet it will be twice the size of the £3 version in stores. So if you equated the volume of food to show the savings you can make £12 worth of trifle for £4.80, and that is before you started bargain hunting for YS fruit or even making the trifle bases yourself from a Victoria sponge recipe.

Things like bread could be tried using a bread mix for around 80p to see how it suits you. Then you could even make it from scratch and save even more money. I reckon I make a loaf for around 46p to 50p, compared to £1.60 for a decent loaf in the stores.

There are ways to save which if you reinvest your savings initially into kitchen utensils etc you can get even more adventurous and save even more. Though if your back is already against the wall it is not always easy to make the changes.

thriftwizard

GQ, re your blue flowers: our garden is being over-run by Germander Speedwell this year. Self-sown (or more probably bird-sown) I've happily been mistaking it for Forget-me-Not, until an experienced local gardener corrected me. It's pretty similar. Here, it's rather bigger than the ID sites generally suggest, at 30-45cm or 12-18".

We seem to do well with unintentional blue flowers - there's always a patch of borage somewhere, and we've never planted any! But we've had all sorts of invaders, including wild gladioli, which are simply lovely, and the front garden is a haze of wild geraniums & aquilegia under the fruit trees & currant bushes right now the bluebells have gone over. I think it's lovely, and good ground cover, but it's the despair of some of our neighbours, who would prefer nice geometric bedding schemes!

ETA: cancel the above! I've just looked more closely at our blue invaders & realised they have 5 petals, not 4, so they are indeed some kind of forget-me-not. There's a huge stand of the same ones down by the river, so they might be water-forget-me-nots. They're tall (for forget-me-nots) and quite open plants, with hairy stems & leaves; the leaves are paired, oval and pointed, the largest ones being almost heart-shaped. The flowers are quite big at about 1cm across, with almost completely white centres, and some occur singly though most are in groups. And I'd say they are perennials rather than self-seeding, as I can see damage from something I dropped onto the stems last autumn. I think I might gather & sow some seeds in pots this year; they're very pretty & tall enough to be quite visible in a border.