THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

I suspect most of us have but when I say VERY good quantity I mean enough to last a whole winter and through the hungry gap to next spring. Not first choice as tinned things seem to be 'unfashionable' in 2018 with the preference being given to fresh but when I think back to childhood tinned fruit and veg was the norm in the colder months as fresh was not only limited to imports but usually very expensive unless it was in season and grown here in the UK.

maryb

I tend to stock up the freezer in the autumn and at that time I buy the sort of frozen veg I find useful to supplement the seasonal stuff. Eg carrots,leeks and cabbage are nearly always available throughout the winter and I buy a sack of maincrop potatoes. But I buy frozen spinach and peppers to put in the freezer and I freeze my own runner beans and courgettes. I bottle rhubarb and apples/apple and blackcurrant (our raspberries nearly all get eaten in season but I do make some jam). I prefer frozen veg to tinned with the exception of tomatoes and I buy those 12 tins at a time.

I think it depends what you need to prep for. If you live in London suburbs as I do then power cuts are unlikely to be a major problem to the extent that food spoils (even if the total failure of any government to think strategically to secure our energy supplies means that we could have hiccups in supply). So frozen food works for me and I don't have much in the way of tinned fruit and veg. But if you live more rurally, then I would be much more wary about relying too much on frozen food because it could take longer to reinstate power

[Deleted User]

Just bought a Geiger Counter.

Fingers crossed, nobody nukes the UK before it arrives.

[Deleted User]

If we get a dire growing summer we might not have the crops to harvest so they wouldn't be available in the shops and if we eventually come to Brexit time even if we do have the crops there might not be the workers to harvest what has grown so again it might not be available in the shops. I'm not imagining power cuts or disruptions but a weather glitch that led to shortages and even possibly crop failure on an epic scale. That's when the tinned produce would be a real necessity and a very good thing to have in hand already.

mardatha

Absolutely spot on MrsL, working on exactly those preps as we speak.

mardatha

We will definitely see a difference this summer - because the eastern Europeans are going home. In this country traditionally it was school children who did the picking - how many of them now would do it? Too pampered and spoiled and lazy. Too busy having false nails done and hair coloured. Fruit and veg will rot in the ground if there is nobody to lift it, there's been reports on BBC Scotland about it already. So fresh produce will be scarcer and dearer.
I was watching Home in Time for Tea yesterday - first time I've seen it. I was thinking how many people now would have the gumption to spread dripping on toast and eat it? I bet if you were hungry, that would taste good.

[Deleted User]

Perhaps people would be hungry enough to discover the gumption in themselves to actually go back on to the land and do the manual harvesting, trouble is the old skills are lost with the last generation to have had them and modern folks aren't used to physical hard work. They just haven't had the need to develop the muscles and endurance to be able to do a days harvesting spuds in a muddy field or the back breaking picking of strawberries grown on the ground whereas the eastern Europeans still do things in their home countries the old fashioned way and not only have the right muscles but the right mind set too!

I go every day when I walk that hound and keep my eyes open for ALL the forageables in season everywhere I go, I make salads, teas, soup etc. in theory so I know where the best and most prolific crops of whatever it is are growing. I work on the thought that most people don't even know what a dandelion looks like let alone all the other edibles so I'd get out really early as the light came up with my basket and gather a days harvest before anyone else was even around.

If we have a cereal crop failure or lose the barley/wheat crop to bad weather or disease of some kind then there will be not only no grain for flour BUT an awful lot of what is deemed 'sub standard' cereal is fed to livestock and if there's no feed, there's no livestock either is there? so that leaves us with no fruit and veg because it's not been harvested and no livestock for meat because it's died from starvation. Sounds positively Mediaeval doesn't it? but it's not impossible as a happening!

mardatha

What happened before we joined the common market? I did strawberry picking and my mum did the tatties. Who now does it? Nobody. So unless the Poles and Romanians and Hungarians are happy to come over and work for the summer, (and the govt makes it possible) - then we are stuffed.

ivyleaf

Probably a lot more possible than many people would expect, Lyn!

Weren't you running down your food stores temporarily so as not to have so much to take with you when you move house? Frustrating to have to decide to hang onto them instead

DigForVictory

And when the shops are high-priced, allotments will get robbed - but how many folk can recognise a potato plant growing in a border?

I've guerrilla gardening pals who have not wholly legal plants thriving on roundabouts (for rope, I presume), along with carrots & french marigolds, and who grouse cheerfully about litter louts chucking cans & wrappers around, who say happily that they could plant up & maintain quite a few crops in the absolute certainty noone would recognise them. Whereas your allotments are sitting targets.

Frankly that worries me. I know how much work goes into allotments & having to take turns on a rota defending them strikes me as utterly wrong. May it not come to that.