THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

Thanks Capella, our store room stays pretty cool even in summer but as we're so much further south we can get away with not using the central heating other than on the odd VERY cold day in winter when we might put it on for an hour first thing just to warm up the house. Mostly we just run the wood stove though and like you put on an extra layer and a shawl/throw over our shoulders and then if it's really cold snuggle up under a blanket too. We only burn wood, currently have 12 out of the 14 cradles choc full and will get a load of hardwood soon to fill the other two which will see us through perhaps the next 2 years. We never let wood pass us by though and will take any offered even if the stores are full, it can sit out until we've room to process it and season it properly, worth more than rubies is a good woodstore.

fuddle

You can't beat a wood burn!

I've a wood store in the middle of construction but it's also a coal bag store. A bag of coal gives us more in terms of fire productivity verses storage so that's where I'm concentrating at the moment. I've also had an issue with kiln dried wood absorbing the damp in the air outdoors so have struggled to get a fire going sometimes, whereas the coal is bagged, dry and reliable. That and a lack of yard space dictates the strategy but no, coal isn't a pretty burn.

Our wood will be for treat fires, fires that only need to be on on a chilly evening following a warm day. It will take a few years to get a full store. It will take me a less time to get a full store of coal.

I find it fascinating how we're all so different based on where we live in our wee country and I think the weather fluctuations between north and south are a lot to do with it.

DigForVictory

My corner of Lancashire is so darn wet (although I suspect insufficiently Reliably so) that I'd refrigerate things in running water &/or wet newspaper.

Eeeh the fun we had as children, lugging the draught beer up the hill, then swathing it in a couple of sheets of newsprint & pouring a jug of water over it & leaving it. By the time we'd washed our fingers clean of newsprint & the rest of us seemly after that hill (South Wales is blimming steep in places & we were 2/3s of the way up a Beacon), m'father would puff up the path & eye the cooling bottles happily. He too washed up & then despatched a suitably tall child to fetch him a beer glass.

Mum regarded it all as a healthy way to keep us all out of mischief (& her hair while she sorted the baby & the evening meal), but when they decided it was time we got a grip on family evening meals, dad lost out and had to sort his own beer. Baby sis' "cooking" was open sandwiches & a Mars Bar apiece but very popular. We got moderately competitive towards the end - menus, flowers on the table, a choice of beverages, even a cheeseboard! (Which looked a bit odd with triangles of Dairylea heaped alongside the Brie & cheddar but the aim was always to try to please Everyone, so Dad winced a bit but devoured his Brie happily whilst baby sis chomped Dairylea, often pausing to take the foil off first.)

We were on holiday & that meant some rules were flexible. Not least as in the heat, the cows came first & so we learned stripwashing at the sink. (When you're not quite 4', & the sink is at the right height for a 6' bloke to shave at in comfort, feet are problematic to scrub. I used baby sis' potty & washed it out before & after. Mum inspected both potty & feet with equal gravity.)

Our downstairs loo would make an admirable larder but for the radiator someone insisted on. I dare say I can disconnect it somehow In The Event, though sorting shelving may mean eviscerating a bookcase & that's by way of being heresy.

[Deleted User]

I think we'd all be pretty inventive 'In the Event' and we certainly come up with innovative and practical ideas and solutions at least in theory. I think we'd stand a better chance of getting to the end of the event than many, discounting accidents, illnesses and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We wouldn't be living in comfort but I think we'd be living! and we'd have the enthusiasm and drive to carry on living and help rebuild whatever was left to the best of out ability and knowledge. I guess the only sensible thing to do in anticipation of 'The Event' is to carry on learning and carry on living a practical and adaptable life and not be scared to death at what might be coming.

Perplexed_Pineapple

Daz hasn't been on for a few days... his Dad sounded pretty ill to me.
Daz if you are reading hope everything is ok.

mardatha

I was wondering about Daz too and hoping all was ok.
I think we need to really get away from the Sunday-paper-colour-supplement image of living and get real. All those ladies who float around a perfect white house in white clothes, perfect makeup and a smile, while washing white floors and carrying a spotless white toddler and talking to a perfectly-brushed spotless dog. It's not real!
And I think we would all manage just fine without a fridge, we did for centuries before they had shops handy. We had a real fullsize larder in here when we moved in but took it out to give us a bigger kitchen. Next to it was a big cupboard that the old man before us used as a coal cellar! - to save him having to go down the back steps in bad weather for coal.
Fuddle you're right about coal - if you live in a cold place then wood just doesn't provide enough heat - plus it's messy and beastly (EEEEK!) to store. When I see those glossy mags with baskets of logs beside the fire I shiver- have you seen what lives in wood??
We have two coal bunkers and keep them full always, our fire rarely goes off apart from in a heatwave (which means maybe one week in the average year). And with coal you load the fire up and it burns for hours longer than wood.

[Deleted User]

The only beasties we tend to get in the wood are hibernating queen wasps, in fair numbers too who come in on the logs from the woodpile still asleep and stay that way until the fire is lit (sadly we might not see them before they are in the stove) and the room warms up and then emerge in a total 'tizzy' and buzz angrily around the lounge BUT they always head for the light of the window and I have a patent bug catching kit (a lidless jar and a piece of paper) so when they are on the glass I put the jar over them, slide the paper down the back between the glass and the jar and then I can open the window and chuck them outside. It works for the eight legged ones too (I won't write the word Mar) and I can catch them on the wall, ceiling and floor so easily and also pop them outside. I don't like killing things and they don't hurt us so I rescue as many as possible, soft old bat that I am!

mardatha

In 27 years in this house, I think we've had half a dozen of the 8-legged things. And that was 6 too many!

[Deleted User]

Get many octopuses (octopi?) up your mountain then Mar?

Jazee

In my fairly modern house, I don't think I could do without a fridge. There are no suitable cupboards. Those we do have - the central heating pipes run through them.

I catch the eight-legged things with a jar too, Mrs LW, but my DD says they just make their way back in.