THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

THIRZAH

We've needed the candles and camp stove on a few occasions.The entire street was without electricity for over 12 hours one February day. I can't say that cooking by candlelight is an experience that I want to repeat but at least we were able to cook something, have a hot drink and keep warm.

I started storing some water after there were problems with the supply in Lancashire.

[Deleted User]

I am the same, always had a good store of food, now am trying to cut down in case of a house move but still have enough tins of fish, the likes of soya beans, bread subs, tins of soup plus I have a small gaz stove and canisters and a kelly kettle and a little fold flat square thing that just needs a drop of meths for cooking or boiling and the water butts are full again

Its turned damp out, enough to wet the ground but no rain as such and I have just been to look at my crack filling job. The damp was to my advantage, lime attracts damp and the paint has been drawn into the crack, which is now invisible. I am talking overall, three cracks about 2` in total. Some man would have charged me quite a bit for that

mardatha

Heavy snow showers tomorrow forecast here, so we'll be cosying in and enjoying it from the window.

Karmacat

Just seen the forecast, Mar, I was thinking of you.

Prepstering here went well today. Although there's a lot of grunge in the garden, it's been weeded and dug over before, in nearly every corner, so it's not totallly overgrown.

Definite learning experience, though: one way I cut down on weeds was to bag up dead leaves to create leafmould, as per the usual recommendations - and I put the bags on the soil, near the fence. So then the huge roots of perennial weeds made their way under the fence, from next door, and practically ate the leaves _pale_ it was a bit horrendous :rotfl:

Clearing is going well - I'll definitely be able to plant in the right season :j:j:j

moneyistooshorttomention

A weed barrier going down into the soil might help stop any weeds from an antisocial next door neighbour coming through. The logic being that roots of many weeds are only going to go down a certain distance and won't "move sideways" from there.

That doesnt apply to the worst weeds of all - as their roots tend to go very deep (ie Japanese Knotweed and horsetail for instance). But a deep enough barrier should keep the "ordinary" type weeds out.

I've now got wall foundations going down some distance between me and "next door" and that is acting as a weed barrier and I no longer get the worst of their weeds coming through in my garden. Their bindweed was forever popping up at intervals in my garden till then.

But - for a cheaper/less "fixed" solution there is sheeting type stuff available (think it's in metal??) that one can buy and put down the "boundary" line underneath the soil.

ivyleaf

Well done on the painting kittie :T

mardatha Are you feeling any better, pet? Thinking of you

thriftwizard

I sometimes wonder whether those who find prepping amusing live mostly in the cities & suburbs? If you live close to 24-hr shops & hospitals, with roads that get regular maintenance and good public transport, it'd be easy to wonder what could possibly go wrong. But those of us who live more rurally, or in less well-cushioned areas, do see things like power cuts, floods, surgeries & banks without staff thanks to 'flu, & occasional empty shelves in our little supermarkets. Add in sky-high rents & property prices so that our local shops are all being replaced by wickedly-expensive posh clothing shops & upmarket coffee palaces, and our kids can't afford places of their own even when they have well-paid jobs, and life doesn't look quite so rosy or secure and prepping begins to look prudent.

Personally I just prep for the unexpected; illness (not necessarily mine) meaning I can't get to the shops, lack of transport, a big financial hit or some kind of crisis that means cash isn't easily available. Unexpected "returners" - we've had one recently - could throw a big spanner into our resources if I didn't have a well-stocked store-cupboard. Having that cushion means I can cope without panicking & making daft decisions.

I've gone through life acquiring odd-but-useful skills like foraging, sailing & rowing, catching & preparing fish, open-air cooking, bread-making & fermenting and thoroughly enjoyed the process. I do some things, like spinning & weaving, just because I enjoy them, and I go out & demonstrate them partly because I don't want future generations to miss out on the fun, but also because things like first aid, tying knots, making netting, sewing on buttons or knowing how to manage a fire are fundamental skills which under some circumstances could save your life. It may well be because of being snowed up for 6 weeks on Dartmoor at an early age, almost completely out of touch with "civilisation" except by radio for most of that time, but it's always seemed to me to be somewhat silly not to have some preps & ways & means.

CRANKY40

thriftwizard wrote: »

I sometimes wonder whether those who find prepping amusing live mostly in the cities & suburbs? If you live close to 24-hr shops & hospitals, with roads that get regular maintenance and good public transport, it'd be easy to wonder what could possibly go wrong.

Nope, I live 7 minutes from the nearest Strangeburys and the same distance in t'other direction from the hospital. That doesn't help of nothing is working though. In a power cut the supermarket tills go off and they won't sell you anything. I remember regular power cuts when I was a small child....I always have candles and matches and a torch and I can find them all in the dark. I have a camping stove and enough gas to run it for a while. I also insist that my sister in rural Ireland has the same and boy where they glad when their power went off earlier this month. They could still have hot food and hot drinks.

I usually keep a decent amount of petrol in the car and a couple of months worth of food. Only a couple of months because in a serious situation my ultimate plan is not hell bent on survival. The HT (house troll - my 13 year old son) and I had a nasty virus over Christmas. As soon as the first symptoms showed I had medication in the house to give him and the means to make him more comfortable without worrying if there were shops/chemists open over Christmas. I've always had a tendency to prep (there's other stuff) but my efforts became a bit more concentrated when I had the HT as his dad was often away at sea and you can't get out of the house to go shopping if you have a sick baby. His dad died when he was 4 so I've just carried on with the same mind set.

GreyQueen

I still treasure the memory of a bonfire when I was a student, where another 18 y.o. was holding a match to a substantial tree trunk in an attempt to get a fire going.

He was presumably one of the cleverer people in society and wasn't attempting to play dumb for cuteness, he was genuinely baffled that an 8 inch diameter tree trunk will not just combust when offered up to a match.

Things that I had grown up with, the basics of fire-lighting, were a complete mystery to him. I got newspaper, and twigs, and got the fire going and it was eventually big enough to take that chunk of tree.

If you can't light a fire, you may go cold. Or you may be tempted to chuck an accelerant like petrol on it and may die horribly as a result. These are not minor matters and people who have grown up with heat and power at the flick of a switch are likely to be far more vulnerable to difficulties than people like my great granny, who raised 11 kids in an isolated cottage with no potable water whatsoever, and with only pond water for household use.

I prep because there's just me, and my health is fragile, and I may lose my ability to work, because I don't have transport other than a pushbike, and because I don't have relations in my city - my nearest family are 30 miles away.

I can't save the world but I can make staunch efforts to avoid becoming part of someone else's set of problems.:rotfl:

fuddle

It happened in Lidl Cranky. There was a power cut - lights, tills, alarms the lot. As the till went down no one could be served and we all had to leave our baskets/trolleys and leave the store. Having a wad of cash wouldn't have helped in that scenario.

I do agree with thrifty though. At one time my cupboards ran on the bare minimum. It wasn't that I had any mental thought processes about not having to worry about food as I had stores near by. It was I just didn't even think! I had never had problems in obtaining what I needed so my guess I was relaxed and complacent.

I think it's because of experiencing difficulty that we learn to be sensible Mar.