Preparedness for when

BessieBooBoo

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

BBB Do you have a coffee grinder? If you do, then you have a grain mill! Cheers Lyn x.

Hello Mrs LW

Ooh, good idea. Only the only thing I have that grinds is the OH's teeth in the night....

May have to actually shop for one, frugally of course!

Oh, and whoop de doop, got offered 2nd job! There will actually be cash to flow into the 'money fountain' I've set up....

Off now to make lists of hoards, I mean, stores, to stock up... Wonder how long it takes to dig out your own root cellar?

Ddog is sleeping again, after the excitement of her second walkies and grub. Can dogs get sleeping sickness?

Maybe 2 hours a day is too much for her....

Anyway, I am off to prep, prep and away!

:j

BBB

[Deleted User]

BBB try charity shops I often see them at sensible prices, or somewhere like T K M*x or Whittards sale if there is one near you. Or ask on freecycle, someone might have a hand crank at the back of a cupboard that they never use. The pooch is normal, ours sleeps whenever he's not eating or demanding walkies, I think he could sleep for england if they ever introduce it as an olympic sport. Shall we start a team? Cheers Lyn xxx.

2tonsils

At one point this island had 3 million olive trees.. they were all planted when the Venetians who were occupying at the time offered a small bonus to anyone who planted them......that number has gone down considerably since so many people are burning wood for heating this year. However, they trim the trees right down and in two years they have grown enough to give a crop of top quality olives. They are useful though, giving the olives, oil which is used for light, eating and soaps etc and the wood for burning for fires. There are also millions of fruit trees as well as the normal orange and lemon trees there are peaches, apples, apricots, nut trees and pomegranites here. My favourites are the fig trees, both green and black figs are grown here and I adore them. They are dried into cakes after they have been mixed with brandy and tsipero.

Most villages have their own co operatives for food produce which is sold at markets as well as used for the families concerned. Vegetables , fruit and herbs, all home grown are dirt cheap here. It is the imports that are expensive but many people have stopped buying them now. Most Greeks think that a piece of ground with veg and fruit in will provide for the family if the SHTF. I know many families who are having to live on soups and similar filler foods. In Greece they tend to eat bean soup made with dried beans and things like fresh tomatoes and garlic .

Just seen the weather reports on the Greek tv and it showed SNOW alongside our island....oh dear I do hope not. The temperature was minus 4 tonight and 10 tomorrow but it didn't get anywhere near that today it was bitterly cold. Some places on the mainland were already at minus 13 at eight tonight. There is very thick snow in many places including Athens and Crete and the high winds are going to cause it to drift. My heart goes out to the old folks and families who do not have the money to heat the house properly or stock up on food this winter.

Our fire is blazing and we have closed the shutters and the curtains but I still have my thermals on and now my fingerless gloves. I am going to make a hot drink in a minute to warm me through. More soup on the go tomorrow I think, its lovely in this cold weather.

2tonsils

Someone mentioned the Greeks going back to the land..most who have done this are ones who inherited property or land in the villages and only used it in the past for holidays a few days of the year. Others are the ones who have lost their businesses, especially in tourism and they have to go back to farming as they have no other income or benefit to live on. Sometimes the press make it sound like a choice but many have no choice but to do it. I do think its a good thing though, many are going back to their roots.

GreyQueen

Thanks for that linkie to the snowy weather, 2tonsils, I was on the Lasithi Plateau a few years ago. Fascinating place.

If you've never been there, you can be on the coastal strip of Crete which runs approx east-west and it's typically Greek scenery, very dry and orange trees etc. Then you climb the switchback roads through the olive groves up from Malia (I walked it once and biked it and a Greek bloke on hearing this was incredulous and said something with sounded like Mother of God!).

Then, you go over a high pass where there is often a little bit of snow even in late spring and below you opens up what could easily be a circular bit of the English countryside, flat as a pancake in a bowl of mountains, checkerboard fields and a completely-different climate zone to a few miles away on the coast. Temperate fruit trees, grains etc. Astonishing landscape and now under what looks like a foot of snow!

Scary stuff indeed and I feel for those people shivering up there. It was a bit parky in April that year, they had the fire lit in the taverna we stopped at.

Last year I recall reading about people who are back-to-the-land-ing in Greece but not in a positive way. They were talking to one bloke of about retirement age who'd gone to Athens as a boy of about 12 and worked like stink from that age and built a business which was in ruins. People are going back to villages their families were glad enough to leave a generation or two before because they are desperate and feel that if they can at least grow food they won't starve, and they feel scared in the cities that this might befall them.

I think it's easy to get rose-tinted spectacles when looking on peasant lifestyles but it was, and is, bliddy hard work, subsistance farming, and there are good reasons why people are abandoning it across the globe in their thousands every day and moving in to cities. I know very well that my life as a person on a low income would be a lot more expensive and difficult in a village than it is in the centre of a smallish city.

Hokay, time to put the kettle on. No heat on at all today and none needed but there's talk of chilly stuff incoming. I have longjohns, a furry trapper hat and YaxTrax so should be OK for the temperatures as long as the Fashion Police don't come and arrest me for crimes against style.;)

katieclampet

Just been reading up on weather forecast, and looks like we are in for some really chilly weather. I have bought some fab thermal leggings from primark, only £3, and really cosy. Bought them last week, but only tried them on today, so hoping they still have them in stock.

A friend has also given me 2 big pots for my GYO project. So thats a start, just need compost and decide on what to plant. Some good advice re growing stuff, but a lot of it is too technical for me! Will be doing lots of research.

katie

pineapple

GreyQueen wrote: »

I have longjohns, a furry trapper hat and YaxTrax so should be OK for the temperatures as long as the Fashion Police don't come and arrest me for crimes against style.;)

Yes but you are not supposed to wear them in bed! :rotfl:

GreyQueen

pineapple wrote: »

Yes but you are not supposed to wear them in bed! :rotfl:

I've worn more clothes than that in bed in some of the iceboxes I've slept in.

But you mustn't ever wear the YaxTrax in bed, darlings, they're murder on the sheets.

ginnyknit

It was me that mentioned people going back to the land and I was pleased about it because it meant people were helping themselves. I know they have to do but at least they have an option and arent playing at it like I am. We are not (yet) in the situation the Greek people are and Im just glad they have somewhere to grow things. The report showed a professional couple who had lost their income on the mainland and had gone back to join their families and sink their money they had left into working the land. I also know its not an easy option to work on the land I just feel that there is some hope for them managing to feed their families, it upsets me to think of more and more people struggling everyday.

GreyQueen

I wasn't having a go atcha, ginnyknit, just saying.

I think when TSHTF, lots of people have to make hard choices, such as abandoning a way of life which recently provided a comfortable living, such as professional work in an urban environment, for sound practicalities in a rural one.

There are people in the mountains of Andalucia I've seen doing the same ting, having come south from the factory and shop/ office jobs in Madrid etc, to rebuilt the family homestead in the hills, run a few sheep and chickens and gather the sweet chestnuts and almonds. I even met some ex-pat brit hippies camped high in the hills doing the same.

I can think of worse things to be doing with my time but I've had a broad experience of carp jobs to inform my opinions.

Love and peas, GQ xx