THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

Thinking of stored foods and home done ones at that becoming an integral part of our diet in the future should there be for any reason shortages of fresh foods it might be a timely thing to familiarise yourselves with wild foods in your local area and find out how to utilise them for their vitamin and mineral content. I was out on a dog walk the other evening and along the river found samphire, I knew there was purslane, sea beet and seakale there already and I also know where there is some sea buckthorn but had no idea there was samphire which would make a very nice change if we were short of fresh foods. I know where wild Alexanders grows, know where the crab and wilding apple trees are, know where the sloes and bullaces proliferate and where the best nutting spots are for hazel nuts also rose hips, clean nettles, dandelions and sorrel. I know we'd be hard put to actually 'live' off a diet made up of these things BUT as a fresh supplement to what we had access to they might make the difference between good health and NOT! Elderflowers and elderberries, rowan berries, chestnuts, blackberries, hawthorn haws grow in most parts of the UK and are easily identifiable and would also make a contribution to health. Find them now, learn how to process them and perhaps get used to the taste (some are acquired!) and if we ever DO need them in earnest, you'll be way ahead of the rest of the population! All seaweeds are edible too, not all taste brilliant but for trace elements they're second to none.

THIRZAH

Don't forget wild garlic , Mrs Lurcherwalker. We stayed in a hotel in Austria last month. One night we had wild garlic soup and later in the week wild garlic quiche was on the menu. The soup was ok-all the soups were fairly bland-but the quiche was a bit too garlicky for me.

[Deleted User]

Many other wild things too Thirza and surprisingly lots of 'decorative plants' that we grow because they're pretty can be eaten too, fuchsias produce little black sausage shaped fruit that is not only edible but delicious (yes I've tried it), Day Lillies (hemerocallis) flowers are edible and taste like iceberg lettuce, shoots of Hostas are crisp and crunchy, Mahonia berries make a really nice cordial, Berberis (Barberry) produces berries which can be be eaten fresh or dried, you can eat the flowers of pansies, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, acacia trees, even the dreaded Japanese Knotweed which we'd all rather not have anywhere near our gardens can apparently be eaten when it's a very young shoot and is supposed to taste rather like asparagus! It's worth having an identification book for wildies with actual photographs rather than drawings, makes it much safer to forage.

monnagran

This s absolutely nothing to do with prepping but the mention of wild garlic reminds me of a teaching practice I did back in the fifties. I was a city girl and although we had a big garden and allotment and I was well versed in fruit and vegetables, some of the county ways were foreign to me.
Anyway, I had a nature table set up in my classroom and the children brought in various items for it. Someone brought in a bunch of attractive white flowers that were strange to me, nevertheless I put them in a jar on the table.
The next morning I opened my classroom door and the smell of garlic nearly knocked me out.
It wasn't a very warm day but the classroom door and windows were opened as wide as possible and when I walked into the staff room at breaktime every member of staff sat there with pegs on their noses.

My first teaching post was in a little village school in the depths of the country, (think Miss Read) and my knowledge of country matters increased by leaps and bounds. I certainly recognised wild garlic when I met it.

[Deleted User]

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

There is a suspicion there might be some buried money underneath land that subsequently got sold and a multi-storey block of flats built on top of it.:cool:

This sounds like a story from he Ronnie Barker sitcom, Going Straight, except it was houses, rather than a block of flats.

Okay own up now - who else has bought a book - only to find they already have a copy of that book? Ahem...

I bought a book, when I already had it, but it was intentional.

GreyQueen

DigForVictory wrote: »

Not wishing to disrupt the flow, but this site is actually startlingly sensible on burying stuff.
OK, you may not need to bury - a judicious stash in a shed, car, at a neighbour etc may all be perfectly viable, but this Yank appears to have considered the matter Thoroughly.
Good fun reading.

Very interesting site duly bookmarked for thorough perusal later. Thank you.

I'm eating well off my allotment inclusing dandelion greens and fat hen, both of whch will keep perfectly happily for up to 48 hrs in a vase of water.

Wilding apples are now visible along the cycle paths, blackberries are starting to turn colour, and rowanberries are turning orange. I've never done anything with rowans, have heard they're tart and better as a preserve to accompany meats - anyone preserve/ dry them?

Having spent some time on Crete over a number of years, you can still see people picking wild greens on the verges for their salads - 'horta' and I've even seen an old boy collecting snails in an olive grove. Snails are part of the traditional foodstuffs - worth remembering that they're edible, and learning the best way to purge them before eating - we may not want to do it now, but we might need to do it someday.

Have just finished reading Beyond Nab End, and particularly noted the bit where author William Woodruff was travelling in Germany in the summer of 1939 as a student, and helped a couple of young friends preserve beans in barrels - they were laying up food in their cellar in dread of the coming war. He also had their elderly mother showing him her bank book, asking him to explain what had happened to all their money - she just couldn't understand even after all the years since their hyperinflation, how all the money she and her late husband had squirrelled away had literally disappeared.:( He also wrote urgently to his family back in Lancashire and told them to buy food - the run-up to WW2 was several months long and there were opportunities for those with cash to spare to position themselves more favourably. Of course, many many people were on the uppers as a matter of course and had nothing to spare anyway.

emmwri

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Thinking of stored foods and home done ones at that becoming an integral part of our diet in the future should there be for any reason shortages of fresh foods it might be a timely thing to familiarise yourselves with wild foods in your local area and find out how to utilise them for their vitamin and mineral content.

Thanks for this, we have moved to a new area 10 months ago and I think I will need to do this to supplement our fresh food intake while money is tight. The area is described as semi-rural, so I'm hoping there will be food to forage! Also, last autumn I saw a farmhouse with all the apples from its tree in the floor never picked, would it seem odd if I knocked the door and asked to pick them before they fall and rot??

I'm so worried about brexit too, but not sure what is best to stockpile!

emmwri

greyqueen I was given wild snails as a meal in a Crete a few years back by a family living behind where I was staying. Delicious! But it's still something I would have to get used to - I ate them then to be polite!

[Deleted User]

EMMWRI stockpile knowledge and skills, the wild stuff will still be there to harvest and even if the standard of living is lower than it currently is if you have skills and knowledge that other people don't then you'll have the means to barter for many things.

GreyQueen

emmwri wrote: »

Thanks for this, we have moved to a new area 10 months ago and I think I will need to do this to supplement our fresh food intake while money is tight. The area is described as semi-rural, so I'm hoping there will be food to forage! Also, last autumn I saw a farmhouse with all the apples from its tree in the floor never picked, would it seem odd if I knocked the door and asked to pick them before they fall and rot??

I'm so worried about brexit too, but not sure what is best to stockpile!

One thing I've learned in life is that you don't usually get abused for asking (nicely) for something which other people clearly aren't using themselves. It's a nice touch to return a token amount of said item incorporated into another item (pie? jam?) as a wee thank you and then you can build an ongoing relationship which may even become a friendship.

If returning some isn't viable, perhaps a small bunch of flowers or other gift might be appropriate? Or even a hand-written note/ card of thanks. Or a favour done in return. Most folks are pretty kind and are happy to help others but many have a great aversion to ingratitude or being taken for a ride. Nice manners, and a smile can go a long way.

Was chatting to a fellow allotmenteer late one night last week about the ethics of foraging top fruit from heavily-fruiting bushes/ trees on untenanted plots. We've decided between ourselves and a couple of other plotholders that any plot which has been untenanted for over a year, and for which the previous season's fruit was seen to rot in situ, is fair game. But to be done with discretion. I've been promised plums in a few weeks, he's keeping an eye on them.

Re stockpiling, you can do various things but you do need to be mindful of natural deterioation in food and non-food items alike, and also that you have suitable storage which is not prone to temperature fluctuations, damp or liable to be visited by vermin.

I have a comically-tiny flat, which is apparently about only two-thirds of the new minimum size standards for a singleton like myself, and thus have to get creative.

I have home-made rolling trollies which live under my bed. They're simple enough; £land casters on boards, with 1 x 1 or similar as beading around the edge to stop things slipping off, and a large screw-eye on one of the short ends, so they can be 'fished' out with a large cup-hook on a stick.

This arrangement works with my particular set of circs; bedroom with tiled floor and no heat, bed which is only accessible from one side, trollies are to allow air-flow around the goods and prevent cold-spots and risk of damp (concrete floor under said tiles). It's worked well for me for several years.

Because the side of my bed can be seen from the front door, I have a faux bed skirt which is attached to the bedframe with Velcr0, which covers that side of the bed only. Looks conventional but works more efficiently for me.

Otherwise, store what you'd eat, and rotate stored items into the pantry for consumption and re-stock the stash when you can. If you see household products/ long-lived toiletries on special, you might want to add them. Worth knowing that both liquid and powdered detergents lose their effectiveness after a couple of years or so, whereas bar soap is immortal as long as it's kept dry.

If it helps, try this for a mental exercise (one of my pals had this IRL); go to your ATM to draw on your wages/ try to use your debit card and find they're not there. Find out shortly afterwards your employer has gone t*ts up and that the law considers you to be a non-proprity creditor. You never ever see the money you earned for that month. Yup, you're now unemployed, with no warning and no redundancy and you're several weeks' away from getting any social benefits, if you're entitled to any at all. With universal credit, you're looking at about 6 weeks with no state support.

How will you eat? Have you got cash outside the banking system you can use to cover your bills? At least 3 months' worth of living expenses is the minimum recommended by financial planners.

Other forms of prepping might be to have what the Yanks call a side gig; a small money-maker which can top up your income although it isn't sufficient to be a total livlihood.