THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

monnagran

Thanks Greenbee. Everything is on hold at the moment due to the unexpected death of DIL's mother. It all got to complicated and emotional. I'm just waiting for the dust to settle.

When my mother was getting the dreaded dementia she had sessions of clearing loads of stuff out and throwing it away. The fish knives and forks met an early and unlamented end, so sadly did the sundae spoons which were very much lamented.

thriftwizard

Back again, after various shenanigans, sadly having had to switch to the Blue side, and using Firefox, as the entire site, along with several others, has now turned to complete gibberish in Safari! On my Mac, anyway, though probably not on anyone else's.

Oh yes, food flasks - possibly the soundest investment ever. A helping of sturdy HM soup, a bar of "cheesy flapjack" (not really flapjack, just delicious, and very filling) and an apple, preferably British (eating up the last of the Ashmead's Kernels now) is the best-ever lunch. DD2 & I are off to the Eden Project again next week, to get the best out of our tickets before they run out, and there will be soup, cheesy flapjack & apples a-plenty...

Cafekate

Hi been lurking and not posting for ages. My daughter is in year 11 and as well as wide mouthed food flask with leftover homemade soup in she also takes either a thermos flask or a thermal cup usually full of a fruit tea as school don't sell them and a coffee from vending machine is over a pound.!! She is seen as cool and says a lot of her friends are now doing the same.

mardatha

I think we've reversed our way of buying food and eating. Instead of eating what's ready and in season, we get out (well some of us but not moi lol) our Hugh-Fernley-Whoosis cookbook and pick a recipe, then run out and buy all the stuff for it. That's playing right into their hands and being a good wee consumer sheep.... and if there was any kind of upheaveal or even blip, you couldn't do that.

Cappella

Mardatha said:

Default
I think we've reversed our way of buying food and eating. Instead of eating what's ready and in season, we get out (well some of us but not moi lol) our Hugh-Fernley-Whoosis cookbook and pick a recipe, then run out and buy all the stuff for it. That's playing right into their hands and being a good wee consumer sheep.... and if there was any kind of upheaveal or even blip, you couldn't do that.

I don't think it's just seasonal eating that's gone though. At the hairdressers last week I forgot to take my book so was driven to browsing lots of magazines and was quite stunned by their "recipe" pages. Tons of recipes for enchiladas, burritos,pulled meats with barbecue sauces, ALL using ingredients that have to be imported NOT ONE showing young housekeeepers how to make tasty dishes using our own seasonal fruit and veg.
Now I often make burritos in the summer, using our own courgettes, peppers, garlic and onions and I freeze tomatoes etc to use throughout the year but these recipes seem equally expressly designed to make people go out to shop just for ingredients which have to be imported and surely that's not a good thing in the long term? I know that society has changed almost recognition in my lifetime but our basic human needs remain the same, warmth, shelter and food. So why are people being deliberately encouraged by the media (it seems to me) to adopt lifestyles which are ultimately unsustainable?

Saipan

fuddle wrote: »

Fantastic! I'll look into it GQ. We've got 2 years of Primary left then youngest will be Secondary bound and I forsee a solution. Eldest will no doubt have a thermos come next September. By 'eck a solution to a problem before it's even a problem. Only on preppers



I do already know this but only recently. One of my elderly chaps I cared for when I was a domicilary carer let me in on the how to as I had no idea and spoilt his teatime coffee as a consequence.

Am I right in thinking that quite a lot of our farmers support the EU exit? If so, what seems to be their reasoning?

I come from a large extended farming family, some of whom support leaving the EU though most voted to remain. All of them run small-to-medium sized family farms and most have had to diversify to some extent either away from just food production (using the land to provide leisure/sporting activities) or into niche, high-value speciality food sectors in order to keep their businesses afloat and a roof over their heads. As with the general population I think their decisions on the EU vote were influenced by many factors, some of which were not at all related to farming.

One thing they all agree on, though, is the need to retain freedom of movement for migrant agricultural workers. The farming industry as a whole has repeatedly demanded that the government exempt this category of workers from any future restrictions.

The workers I know of through family and other connections are mostly from eastern Europe and are highly skilled and highly motivated, and everything I hear from the farming community says that this is typically the case. A friend of the family was interviewed on Radio 4 and talked about the near-impossibility of recruiting local people to do this type of work - the way he put it is that people want 9-5 jobs Monday to Friday in pleasant air-conditioned offices, all year round, on guaranteed good salaries that can support mortgages or high rents, and so seasonal agricultural work is of no interest to them. Farmers all over the country say the same thing.

I don't know what the answer is but every farmer I have talked to who employs migrant workers is seriously worried about what will happen if there is not an agricultural exemption, including the impact on food production. Some think it will open the door for workfare (benefits claimants working in return for benefit payments) but their concerns then are about whether the current level of skills would be available.

Interesting times, eh?

[Deleted User]

I wonder if there will come a time when home produced fruit and veg are the cheapest and most readily available on the market? I wonder if the British nation would then have the same view of agricultural work being beneath them? We all need food to live on and if there were unharvested crops in the fields and orchards and people were having to go without is it a naïve thought that some of the population would be lured back to the land because they too want to eat? We have eastern European folk here picking fruit, they are motivated, very hard working and always cheerful. I met a lovely man from Bulgaria at the bus stop a couple of years ago who said he earned more here in an hour than he could earn at home in a day and the being away from home and family for the parts of the year he was working in the UK was worth the pain because it gave them a very much better standard of living than working in his homeland would. His aim was to buy his own farm back there someday and why not? good people all of them. I think we Brits have become a tad too highly set up in our own estimation, soft and pampered as a race ( sweeping generalisation I know and not applicable to all) and have now the opinion that anything manual is 'beneath' us. Perhaps post Brexit Britain will change the national mindset, we'll have to see!

Topher

I may need to update my information but here goes.
The Gardener's World magazine 2 for 1 Offer used to apply to Eden project OFF SEASON. I looked up yesterday in the current G.W.M. And saw that the next issue (due out towards the end of April) will have the offer again. I buy the G.W.M. once a year for the 2 4 1 card & guide book, and get it from a local market stall that sells it a few days after first issue date, for £1.50 (I also get Good Housekeeping when there are good offers in it from the same stall, at the same price.
Topher

Karmacat

Can anybody on here tell me a bit about fruit bushes please ... I have a lovely mature black currant bush in my little garden. It's absolutely covered in ants, though, and I've tried a washing up liquid mix, and a diatomaceous earth sprinkle, no solution. I've been thinking of picking them *with* the ants on, putting them into a soil sieve and just pouring water over them to get rid of the ants. I suppose if I poured over a container I could then re-use the water for watering plants, which would also rescue the ants - I don't mind them in the garden, but I don't want to eat them!!!

Anybody got any ideas, or have I hit on the best way forward?

GreyQueen

Karmacat wrote: »

Can anybody on here tell me a bit about fruit bushes please ... I have a lovely mature black currant bush in my little garden. It's absolutely covered in ants, though, and I've tried a washing up liquid mix, and a diatomaceous earth sprinkle, no solution. I've been thinking of picking them *with* the ants on, putting them into a soil sieve and just pouring water over them to get rid of the ants. I suppose if I poured over a container I could then re-use the water for watering plants, which would also rescue the ants - I don't mind them in the garden, but I don't want to eat them!!!

Anybody got any ideas, or have I hit on the best way forward?

Just a thought; if ants are all over your blackcurrant bush it probably isn't going to be them after the fruit but it's likely that they are milking an aphid infestation on the bush? Can you see any signs of that?

I haven't had to deal with this problem myself but my blackcurrant bush gets infested with snails (hand pick and smash is my remedy) which at least are easier to see.

Having a cooked lunch, a bit of a rest, then going up to make like the peasant I am and plant my spuds.

Re the veggies, fruits etc. I've done this kind of work but note that in previous generations the labour force was drawn from two cohorts; gypsies and working-class housewives. Modern gypsies don't tend to want this work, having found more lucrative options and the working class women (like me) who need to work are already in the workforce.