THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

thriftwizard

Jojo, you are so right about the functional strength! It's not always within our control, but it's so very easy to lose strength as you get a little older without even realising. I hadn't realised my legs were losing ground until I went windsurfing a couple of years ago, fell off for the 5th time & simply couldn't get back up again. I'm very lucky to be able to be fairly active still, despite my bionic hip; I go dancing, I walk several miles most days & do quite a lot of gardening (including using an old-fashioned manual pump at the allotments) but those particular muscles simply hadn't been getting much use, and had kind of dwindled away when I wasn't paying any attention to them. So now I make sure I give them some exercise several times a week by crouching & getting back up without holding onto anything!

And yes, of course we'll need people who can finesse things, like you... I suspect it's the people who bark orders & nitpick about staff keeping their heads down that we really, really won't need, and who won't actually be able to function without the people who really get things done.

GreyQueen

Totally agree about functional fitness, it's something I'm working on myself as a fifty-something female. Shedding excess flubbage and working on the muscles underneath. Have no aspirations to be a gym bunny but I need to able to be fit and strong, especially since the State wants me in the workforce 'til aged 67, minimum, grrrr!

jo jo, my farmer friend has just finished the multi-evening pastime of digging ragwort out of his horse pastures. He ended up with a lot of those 1 tonne bags which you get shingle etc delivered in, and burned the lot (not the bags, I hasten to add). This is an annual chore, his horses wouldn't normally eat ragwort in the green, but it can be consumed if ends up in the hay, and some daft foal might nibble on it. He detests the blinking stuff.

Totally agree about practical skills. I learned to knit with help from my mother and from Nan, I got my start in gardening from my Dad and Grandad, an unbroken line of peasantry going back til Noah was a lad, (probably). What seems like second nature to me is a skill that other adults will have to acquire more painfully than us nippers. There's a website called Survival Sherpa which I read, and Todd had a very good attitude (he's a teacher IRL) about what he calls Doing The Stuff - meaning practicing.

Books can also contain absolute dross, such as one gardening book which earnestly told me that slugs only eat dead and decaying material, not living plants, and are thus beneficial. Oh flipping really?! I thought, as I winged said book back to the library, So I was hallucinating when I caught slugs hollowing-out growing courgettes, growing potatoes and cuddled up to and rasping into growing beetroots, radishes, carrots and broad and runner beans..............?!

Another gardening book told me that you can pile up turves of couch grass, cover them with a tarpaulin to exclude the light and in a year they'll have rotted down to a lovely compost with no trace of couch grass.

I was then sharing a 400 m plot infested with couch grass so I was interested in this gambit. I built a 3 ft tall pile of couch grass, tarpaulined it, and got on with the rest while expecting my compost to be forming happily.

Crock o's**t advice. IRL, over 18 months, a 3 ft pile subsided into a 2 ft 6 inch pile and the couch grass was still alive under there and, where the tarpaulin had started to rot (and it will after that time in the elements) it started growing again. Couch grass will grow through wooden panel doors and carpet and roofing felt and even shove its way through weak spots in corrugated iron. It is the very devil and the gardening book lied.

moneyistooshorttomention

Cue for a group of us "city people" a few years back doing some gardening together. One of us said "We'll just pull up all that weed there (ie couch grass) and leave it to lie there 'chop and drop permaculture fashion' and it will rot into the soil and feed it.

Fast forward a while - and we were back there weeding over it again - as it had started re-growing.

I sort of forgot that when I went from "courtyard garden" to "proper garden" in more recent times and duly did "chop and drop" on the weeds here. You guessed it.....

So I now differentiate between more "normal" weeds which I just let lie on the soil to feed it and more "troublesome" weeds (like couch grass for instance) and I carefully remove that.

jk0

That reminds me of my first newbuilt flat which had a tiny garden bordering next door's. These were full of couch grass. My neighbour used to pull the tops off hers, while I actually dug mine out. She had the cheek one day to point out my garden was full of couch grass. I replied that it had spread back from her garden.

fuddle

I hope couch grass won't set itself away having been eaten by a rabbit and subsequent manure applied to the garden! I'll be in trouble if it does.

thrifty I thought I was active enough wandering around without a car, generally busy each and every day but I suffered with my knees somewhat. It's only since slogging up the hill twice a day term-time that I can bend up and down without much of a crunch, an 'oh' and holding on to something to get back up. It fascinates me how the slightest of tweak can help, or hinder, our body.

I'm behind you I'm afraid. Although my grandma lived as I do now (obviously a life time of OS knowledge for her though) I didn't have the teachings at all. I was 30ish when I started to relearn everything. Words don't inspire me if they're empty. What I mean is if I'm just told this is the way I switch off. If the words are about someone's experience, bad and as well as good, I'm there all ears and it's even better if there's visuals to inspire me. I can get excited about the smallest of things as long as there's a usefulness about the process or end goal.

I haven't seen a slug on my plot yet (or a bee but it is overgrown or bare - sowing some flowers next year and learning about hand pollination should I be lucky to get fruit on the pumpkins) but I have seen plenty of snails. Are snails just as damaging to crops as slugs that I hear about all the time and, as they have shells, would feeding snails to chickens be a suitable extraction technique?

DigForVictory

No man (or woman) is an island - in The Event & after or just For The Duration, we'll need to work together a bit. Allotment protocols for abandoned plots make a lot of sense to me, but if you live near a canal & can borrow a canoe, bear in mind the canalside bramble bushes are usually only picked clean where people walk. Come home laden by judicious use of a lesser used angle of approach! (Depending on depth, canoe may be a bit optional & for the total novice, practice with aid in earshot makes sense!) Mum always sent us short souls under the bushes & bid Dad reach the tall stuff. On land a bike leather can be a thing of joy against prickles, on water leather Not Recommended & if you can borrow a wetsuit top hurrah (old & held on with gaffer tape not a problem) but if not just have the iodine on standby.

Of that fearsome impressive & inspirational list Mrs LW, I can make a shamble of about a quarter of it. Once I grasp an idea, I can then teach others, but the time lapse can be years, as the sacks of wool & the dusty spinning wheel (amongst other things) attest.

As for hitching a hoss - it's not impossible if the hoss knows what you're planing & moderately agrees. If you're both new to the game & the hoss is uncertain about it, better to start with agreed bucket of something to crunch on, and long reining - where hoss gets used to steerage from behind. Then the tackle (practice loading on a rocking horse?!) and more lining, then finally dragging a log for a bit (stop start & steer!), before you add a cart (which should have been in sight & sound of training) & then have a bash at pulling that then driving from it. The brakes are *mostly* between the horses ears, so you don't want to put a novice between the shafts of anything too irreplaceable until all six feet of the pair of you have a clear working understanding. If you & hoss lack prior acquaintance, do not assume it's used to Anything by way of restraint & try to find out gently... If you've seen it saddled & ridden, you can make a few more assumptions.

Rowan berries - high in pectin. See your Hedge Blend jam set without fuss or apples.

Rose hips for vitamin C - ye gods yes, lady mother raised on the stuff & made us ingest dubious-looking spoonfuls (she squeezed the jellybag & it was an unwise move) but we got our vitamins even if dad had to hold us still.

Currently we have three methods for cleaning the kitchen table (wooden). One is to rub away the crumbs etc, mop at the spillages then apply some product, rinse & hope. One is to deal with crumbs & puddles then get out the belt sander & at last re-oil it. Finally, (when we can't find the belt) it's a mix of salt, harsh language & vigorous scrubbing. I would include elbow grease but some canny blighter's used that for a bottled product. Anyway - that latter is vigorous exercise, so not to be undertaken unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly! (Gruesomely medieval as in effortful but effective and no concerns about is it foodsafe at the end - it's salt, so yes it is. Add sand & you need to rinse it a lot harder - salt & sand are better for the dishes than your table.)

The household that can dig clay, process it, (even glaze) & fire it will be assured of pottery vessels & a steady supply of trade goods. It's a load of effort, mind, but if you already have a larder of the chemicals for glazing, you're one step forward.

Me, I'm encouraging sons to learn to brew. Lugging all those buckets of water is a heavy job, for a start. I'd rather nurse a still, but lack a loch to hide the evidence. Either product can trade gleefully, and you can approximate more medicines with alcohol as tinctures. No replacement for modern pharmaceuticals but when the packet's run out? Something may help. (Although a whopping tub of mutivite, and the placebo effect can do astonishing things too.)

[Deleted User]

There are courses out there whereby you CAN still learn virtually all the skills in the 'tip of the iceberg' list (there are so many more everyday things that would have to be covered, too many to list) and many more, so at a price, if you could afford to pay for the tuition, there is a way to learn all of those skills today. Most of the courses I've done have been at the open air museum where they have a very talented set of living history re-enactors with those relevant skills, a working Tudor kitchen where they still brew ale and make bread from the barm and cook over an open fire, also make bread in a wood fired oven too. They have the heavy horse courses there, the pre-history courses, I've done the cookery one and the flint knapping, DD1 who is into these things has also learned bronze casting (she made a sword!), longbow archery, leather work, they run field food courses where you forage their acres and process game and hedgerow provender, they run cheese making, process a whole carcass days, field butchery courses, poultry keeping, brewing and baking courses, still room herbalism and food, medicinal herbal courses, they have a working blacksmith who teaches, they have a working water mill where you can learn not only how to mill flour but then how to cook with it, so very many and that's just one place, think how many open air museums there are in the UK and how much skill there is still to be taught? There are a whole raft of textile courses, woodsmanship courses, furniture making, crook frame building, wattle and daub and hurdle making, thatching, candle making, spinning, weaving, dyeing, so many useful skills that would be relevant to everyday life in alternative situations, we even did Victorian cleaning together and learned how to make stove black, use feathers to dust with many things. Worth checking if there is anything you'd like to know is available anywhere within reach of your locality?

thriftwizard

Fuddle, feeding snails (and slugs) to chickens is an excellent ploy! They are very happy to forage for them themselves, but unfortunately they'll dig up everything in the garden to look for mollusc eggs if you'll let them. So we only let our big girls out for half an hour at dusk; the bantams can free-range as they're feather-footed & can't dig so effectively. Our neighbours collect their snails of an evening, bag 'em up & bring them round next morning & tip them into the chicken run; you should hear the squawks of delight! Result: lots of eggs & very happy chickens.

jk0

I think I have mentioned that modern cleaning products leave me gasping for breath due to their strong smell. I mostly use Ecover products now, but of course they don't clean as well as the modern stuff.

The other day, out of curiosity I ordered some 'Vim' powder from Amazon. The powder does have a strong smell, so I keep some tape over the top. I just used this to get the tea stains off the slide out plastic bins under my sink. It worked brilliantly, and as long as you are diligent about rinsing it off, does not leave too bad a smell.

Only about £1.40 in my paper shop also, so maybe cheaper than other cleaners.

mardatha

MrsL, I really like the sound of Victorian cleaning!
jk0 I miss real proper Vim, didn't know you could get it on amazon.