Preparedness for when

JayJay14

I need to upgrade my phone, it is an iphone but almost 5 years old now and turns itself off if I alk for too long (might be telling me somewhing ) Trouble is I am happy with my payments (I am PAYG and pay £15 a month which gives me unlimited calls to the family as we are all O2 and I send £10 a month to charity by justtextgiving - whar is left is enought for emergencies) It will cost much more to change (I make long calls to my kids and don't want to lose that ) Need something reliable though. May have to actually venture into a phone shop

Trying not to check the news too often today - too scarey for me at the moment - I'm not one to bury my head in the sand usually but today I just need to pretend the world is sane.

Rosemary_Jane

before I start what I was going to write about, I've been researching quail for a while, I have read these useful sites:

http://www.omniskies.com/quail.shtml
http://www.backyardchickens.com/f/48/quail - lots of useful (timewasting?) stuff here.

What I really wanted to talk about here was a different way of looking at 'storage'. Meat and other proteins are hard to store quite often. Dehydrating meat at home can be risky, and too much meat in a freezer means I'm terrified of power outages. Freeze-dried jerky is horrendously expensive, hard on the teeth and doesn't feel like a meal.

There are threads on the possibility and dangers of home dehydrating eggs - and freeze-dried egg to buy that is not necessarily free-range or organic or if it is, it's too expensive.
Cheese is OK, but has to be kept chilled, and is too high in fat to dehydrate at home, I think.

I can't bring myself to collect roadkill.

So what to do?

Perhaps, for those of us with a little outside space, we need to consider keeping our meat stores as living creatures.
I have been reading loads about aquaponics
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aquaponic-Gardening-Step---Step-Vegetables/dp/1908643080

also quail (as above) but not just for eggs, for meat.
there are also rabbits
microgoats
pigeons
here's a free book on microlivestock
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030904295X


first, I need to know if I like the product, then if I could dispatch (kill) it, and then, if I could prepare it....

and - bother, real-life intervening.
I'll carry on in a later post, but would be interested to hear your opinions

R

maryb

China finds the status quo useful, they don't want a united Korea because the last thing they want is another economic superpower and US ally right on their doorstep. That's why they have protected NK up till now. But they don't want a volatile unpredictable NK. They'll tell them in no uncertain terms to wind their neck in if they go too far. Meanwhile NK will reopen that nuclear facility then negotiate lots of concessions and US aid for closing it again.

Rinse and repeat every few years.

There is a risk it could all get out of hand, true. But so far it is mostly posturing

BessieBooBoo

Hello RJ

Wow, you've been busy!

Thanks for the links, been browsing around, and I think quail would be the way to go for us.

Teeny problem is our dog likes to hunt, and unfortunately kill, well, everything. Frog killing is her favourite hobby at the moment (yuck, poor things).

Looks like the quail could be kept safe from her, perhaps in a large rabbit hutch. As long as they couldn't see each other (they could stress out if she gives them her 'evil eye stare')...

We have a clause on our place which excludes keeping livestock, so, we might get away with claiming quail as pets...


I would love adetached with alarge garden (my space bar isplaying up again!)

AndI would love micro livestock on it, just haven't got the space / enough dog freearea to do it.

BBB

RAS

Rosemary Jane

People wonder why the very poorest landless labourers in South American and India keep scrawny livestock. Essentially when you have no land and may have to move quickly having something that can be moved quickly and even has its own transport system has advantages over plants in the ground and crops in the store that have to be carried somehow.

However it might be worth exploring isinglass and reading up on the storage of eggs in low tempuratures (for those with cellars etc).

D&DD

RJ thanks for the links I've been rejigging my food stores a bit too lately.
Plans for this year *weather permitting* are...

Dehydrate and can ALL garden produce to cut down on a freezer.Grow more carrots and peas for dehydrating and look for sales of these in stores.

Store more powdered egg as I can't have chickens etc for various reasons.(I store ener-g now and its great for baking) We don't have eggs as boiled or scrambled much its more for baking I need it so this will be enough for us.

Expanded the fruit garden again and propagating more this year.
My family eat more fruit than veg so makes sense for us.

Got cheesemaking kit at xmas so need to experiment with this as a world without cheese I can't bear thinking about lol..

I want to sneak in a few more 'storecupboard only' meals too

Plan to experiment more with alternative cooking methods too as I have stockpiles of charcoal and cobblestones

BessieBooBoo

D&DD wrote: »

Plan to experiment more with alternative cooking methods too as I have stockpiles of charcoal and cobblestones

Hey D&DD

Stones - for thefamous stone soup?

BBB

D&DD

BessieBooBoo wrote: »

Hey D&DD

Stones - for thefamous stone soup?

BBB

nah nothing so exciting Bessie I have a Cobb oven BBQ that I use them for.
I only got it last summer and the weather hasn't been good enough to get out there and use it much yet..I need to experiment a bit.

I've done bread,rolls,a whole chicken and baked potatoes so far in it but want to try a lot more stuff.

Still snowing here but not settling on the pavements just the soil..not happy

Popperwell

Afternoon Everyone,
Just dull colourless skies, no clouds, wet and cold. Miserable to be honest. Bored too...and that's something I don't usually suffer with. Though if honest I have become more bored since being on my own...

I know what's coming though...just for something to do...a walk to the supermarket again

mardatha

Glorious sunshine here and for once bits of the garden are thawing!!! Whoohooo!