THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

emmwri

That's a brilliant experiment MrsLW, thanks for testing it out.
I love Ikea, need an excuse to go!

GreyQueen

Glad you're having fun, emmwri.

Sometimes, if spices are a bit aged and feeble, you can still get some use out of them by doubling-up the quantity, so mebbe worth a try?

twiglet98

It was reported on BBC Look East that a burst water main in Baldock (north Hertfordshire) has meant HUNDREDS of people queueing for handouts of bottled water. Horror of horrors, they may have to go back for more tomorrow, and some supermarket stocks are said to be running low. School holidays aren't a great time to have no water. At no point during the report did anyone mention storing water at home for just such a contingency. I'll be refreshing 1/3 of mine on Saturday, as I do on the first Saturday of each month, using the 3-month-old water on the vegetables. Outside the growing season it gets tipped into a dedicated water butt which has a bit of Milton liquid added from time to time and would be perfectly good to wash with, it could be made safe for drinking with suitable filtering, or boiling it for long enough.

I don't have livestock now but when I did, the thought of not having access to water for them was a real worry, and I stored a lot more in those days. Now I keep 50 litres indoors, plus the 'clean' water butt, and 8 rainwater butts which would keep the garden growing. In over 25 years here, we've had the water interrupted only three times, but better safe than sorry. There is a well with a hand pump in the garden and I used to draw water for the animals when we were first living here, but it seized up years ago. I'd love to get it sorted, and have the option to connect it to an electric pump, but that's an expensive project for someone else's lifetime.

Power cuts are far more frequent. My only close neighbour has a spare generator which can run my chest freezer. I have a camping stove and plenty of cartridges in case I can't use the electric cooker. Heating is oil but I have an open stove and collect wood all year round. I must make a point of actually buying the solar/crank powered radio and rocket stove that have been in my A maz0n basket for a very long time.

Enjoyed a good handful of fat-hen with tonight's supper - thanks GQ for the reminder, a while back, that not only cultivated crops are there to be eaten. I do eat whatever weeds look promising - Food For Free has been a favourite book for many decades!

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Twiglet98, very interesting report of the water outage. I often wonder why TPTB never seem to suggest that storing some water at home is a prudent idea, on a par with keeping a basic first aid kit. Is it that they fear Jo(e) Public can't be trusted to maintain stored water cleanly and rotate it? Or if they're so ignorant themselves that no one even thinks of suggesting it?

After all, you can go weeks without food but no water isn't an option for more than a day or two, and desperation may cause people to use un-potable water without knowing how to sterilise it, and thus get very sick. If nothing else, you end up in a queue for bottled water when you could be doing other things.

Which reminds me, I should rotate out the 12 litres of bottled water (6 x 2 litres) which are stored in my emergency prep box hidden in the depth of the allotment shed. This contains a 35 L backpack (a spare from the chazzer but a great brand in excellent condition) with some clothing, a relatively-recent 'old' pair of prescription glasses and a basic wash-kit. This is to give me an accessible back-up of emergency supplies - I don't have family living in this city who could store such things for me.

Oh, and saw that H0me Bargains has galv metal buckets for £3.99, which I consider very reasonable. I was in there stocking up on half-price Epsom Salts, which are a really OS muscle soak and a handy thing to have by you - they're magnesium sulphate and this mineral is best absorbed trans-dermally, according to people in the know.

Fat hen is sitting in a jug in my kitchen awaiting incorporation into the breakfast salad. I am also eating a lot of dandelion greens, as I have several plants on the allotment which are conveniently on the edge of the path and ripe for plucking. Dandelions seem to produce a lot of leaves even when you're stripping half of the plant on a twice-weekly basis, so you get a lot of green for nil effort.

Honestly, given the high nutrition from weeds and the ease of growing them, I sometimes wonder why I bother growing veggies at all...:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

DD1 bless her heart has said that for Christmas she will buy me the newest Kelly Kettle 'add on' which is a steel top for the fire container under the actual kettle that turns it into a Hobo Stove, this will extend the range of things I can cook on it in the cook set she got for me last Christmas as you can keep feeding the fire and cook for a longer period, fab!

DigForVictory

Unexpected fact learned today - some landowners deliberately put cattle into an area as they'll eat blackberry plants.

So if you needed a biofriendly way to get rid of brambles, borrow a cow & if you need a spotters guide of areas Not To Bother hunting in, where there's a cow, there will be not be blackberries.

Also the ideal way to dig & fertilise a patch of land is turn a pig loose on it, (the longer snouted the better for digging) but you can't borrow one for an area where there may be broken glass. Also you need a DEFRA licence - but that's presently reasonably easy to get. Controlling the pig is a great deal more difficult. Electric fencing is a dashed good start but a leash or hefty tether & a shockcollar may also be advisable. "They'm curious beings..." grins my uncle.

moneyistooshorttomention

My unexpected fact learnt about cows recently is they can run rather fast if they wish to - for beasts I always assumed were slow-moving.

The other one being that if a cow decides it really likes a human it will leap around all over the place acting really excited to meet them again:rotfl:(just like an excited puppy - but rather a lot bigger).

Cheapskate

Morning, preppers, back on the OS wagon again after I don't know how long!

We've almost finished our house renovations, just a new drive to be laid, and new doors/windows to complete, and then we'll be sound for the winter, but VERY poor!! :rotfl: We can finish the insides during the autumn, just a bit of decorating and a LOT of tidying and de-junking.

When we were clearing mum's house, I wombled some old biscuit tins for storage, all her odd dining chairs, and some other preptastic bits that will Come In Handy. These include 2 drawer units on castors that my great grandad made for the bakery he ran - just need a good clean and they'll be put to use as garage storage for small gardening/DIY tools and things in tins.

I'm slowly increasing the amount of cash in the house again; even though we're on a tight budget due to the build, I can manage to stash a few quid each week, sort of a hedge against even minor SHTF like I can't get to the ATM, etc.

Not sure if I imagined it, but am sure I read something months ago about energy supplies/margins being tighter than ever this coming winter? Partly with this in mind, I'm glad I have more wool in the house than I remembered - with our new windows and a shed load of crochet blankets, it won't matter if we can't afford the CH on, or if supplies are disrupted, at times.

Now that we've taken the children out of school to home educate, they'll be able to learn some OS skills that we didn't have time for before. DD is already a dab hand with cooking knives, and this week is having a go at woodwork, as she wants to make a house for the cat! I've started letting her go up to the village with older DS (he's 10, she'd nearly 8) on their bikes - good practice for keeping eyes peeled for traffic, general eejits, and Happenings. DS is quite a cautious soul, but is keen on learning fire skills, cooking, etc.

A xo

ivyleaf

So very nice to have you back on the threads Cheapskate

maryb

Energy margins are constantly tight these days. How on earth TPTB expect to provide enough capacity for us all to switch to electric cars heaven only knows - because I'm sure they don't know. But it has a feel good sound so why worry about practicalities?