THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

Cappella

MrsLW - it wasn't egg pasta, but I did wonder if it was because it was wholewheat, given that wholewheat flour actually has a shorter half life than white. I rarely buy wholewheat pasta but it was on offer so thought we'd try it. Won't be buying it again though.
And yes, I HATE throwing food away, especially if it's my own fault for storing it properly

Petrolhead - nightmares aren't nice. I often have them myself so you have my sympathy but this thread is great because it helps to teach you practical sensible ways of dealing with everyday real life nightmares, like suddenly being made redundant, (cash saved, full store cupboard) or not being able to leave the house for 3 months, (full freezer, full pantry) or having your purse stolen and being stranded in a strange town without cash (emergency note or coins stashed about your person).
Lots of strategies here for dealing with things that could happen to any of us.
Although of course we DO take the zombie apocalypse threat very seriously:rotfl::rotfl:

thriftwizard

May I also extend a welcome to Nannywindow and Petrolhead4? Please don't have nightmares; in reality, the nightmare would be if something foreseeable came to pass & you weren't ready for it, and had no resources to fall back on. We're not the kind of peppers who stash compo rations, armaments and bivouacs to dash to the woods in the case of a Martian invasion, more the kind of mild eccentric who persists in keeping a well-stocked store cupboard and knowing how to tie a useful knot or preserve a glut of strawberries for later reference! (There's nothing like the taste of real summer strawberries in January... or elderflower champagne, spicy apple butter, or quince marmalade!) And just ask Bob about various forms of lighting or cooking necessities in case of perfectly ordinary power cuts...

Just knowing that you do have resources - of which, the greatest will always be common sense - helps you keep a calm head and keep that head above water. And those resources don't have to cost a fortune, unlike stockpiling weapons & ammo; snippets of knowledge and practical skills are relatively easy & cheap to acquire. It's amazing how much calmer, happier & better off I've been since building up my storecupboard; if I go down with something, or more likely my 92 y.o. mother goes down with something & I have to go & nurse her for a couple of days, I know there's plenty of food available for those at home & no-one needs to spend their (or more likely, my) last few pennies of hard-earned cash on a bag of chips!

DigForVictory

There is so much freight to the mere word "Prepper". My grandmothers both had pantries (one had that sort of house, one was that sort of shrewd woman who put some unused space to vigorous use) & my parents both had cupboards & built seats that you could open & retrieve tinned tomatoes, beans or kitchen roll from.
M'father is an enthusiast of bulk buying & having a fleet of daughters took us with him on his occasional forays. There's nothing like being raised dragging a wagon around Bookers to make Costco seem almost manageable (mind, I'm taller now). M'father, having a handful of cash, managed to never bother with membership. Three loaded wagons at the till, and the staff or manager would run an experienced eye over it all & decide to humour the bloke rather than try to put it all away again!

So I grew up with storage, used, and the relative peace of mind it brings (although my mother's expression as we lugged box after box in was something of a sight) and while I'm not that devout a prepper, I have a loaded larder. Which is part of my ongoing skirmish to keep three sons fed & out of the sweet & sandwich shops... (Let alone the chippy - who else do I turn to when the chaps have earned a treat?!)

I'll leave you to picture my delight as eldest hauled a trug of laundry off to line dry, unprompted. (He believes his Keep varies with how much it actually costs to keep him.)

Karmacat

Working on the strip of garden at the front - neighbour was eyeing it very discontentedly over the weekent, I don't want to create hassle, and I want to use the space anyway, so I'm digging up as much as I can. Just put an order in to Wickes - 3 huge bags of bark chippings, 3 bags of topsoil, almost as huge. £8 delivery - I'd pay less than that for a taxi from the store to my house, so thats okay. Only trouble is the side gate to the back garden, built less than a year ago, has sagged, and doesn't open any more. Builder has gone out of business - another of those jobs that stay in the background unless you suddenly need it **done** - and it isn't!

[Deleted User]

This is only a question not something I am thinking may happen but if this years crops are so very depleted because of the weather and lack of rain would anyone else consider joining together with neighbouring families to all put in a food item to make a communal meal? would that be something that would build community in times of shortages?

DigForVictory

I'd love to be wrong, but I think society has fragmented a bit too far for that to fly. Where your neighbours were likely your kin, then the womenfolk might collectively assemble a meal - possibly using a saints day or similar festival as a pretext.

These days it's all much more privacy jealously guarded, shameful furtiveness at the food bank, and worst less knowledge on how to make three potatoes, an onion and assorted herb type greens with a bit of bacon go as far as possible.
Even in the War, communities made jam together as they got the extra sugar, & (I'm told) raised communal pigs on such scraps as existed but the pig was butchered & then assorted cuts eaten in the individual home. It's really only religious communities that seem to come and cook and eat together these days as as I understand it - and I wouldn't mind being utterly wrong.

My mother as a GP would grumble at these nuclear families scattering to get work - a simple childhood illness cost her hours of home visits when a competent granny could have looked & soothed & saved her several calls, but these days our beloved competent seniors are often not in a few minutes radius.

So much depends on the knowledge and confidence of the individual, much of which is both supported & eroded by mobile phones & their unending sources of data! Better a trusted book, or the sheer muscle memory, in difficult times to steer you, so you need not worry about power or a signal but can look around & see what's to hand.

[Deleted User]

I just wondered if we were all hungry and only had one thing each to eat whether putting it all together to make a big stew to feed us all would do anything for bringing us closer together, I guess it would have to be tried to see.

Cappella

I don't think it would work here at all MrsLW. The demographic of my area has changed markedly, and the old sense of community has I think vanished. Maybe 10 years ago everyone on our avenue (50 houses) might have joined to make a communal meal; (and some people on the allotment still do that, in that we've had communal barbecues and bonfire celebrations).
However I doubt if that would happen here now on the avenue. So many of these 1930s terraces are now 'buy to let' and there is, sadly, already conflict between new short term tenants who really don't seem to give a damn about their environment and longer standing property owners who are seeing their properties depreciate in value as a direct result of the mess some people are creating both in their lack of care for the rented houses themselves and in the filth they are dumping in the shared communal gated alleyways.
A community is created when people share values. This is no longer happening here. When people do not share the same ethics and values even in regard to the simple maintenance of the area they share there can be no community. Here I am seeing at first hand resentment taking the place of tolerance and acceptance. I have no wish to be a prophet of doom, I am not yet as badly affected as some of my neighbours: but I am very concerned that I no longer either know many of the new tenants or and do not even want to get to know some of them. This attitude reflects badly, I feel, on myself as a person, and I do not like the way I am changing.
I would happily share food, and my cooking skills, equally with those who would share with me. I would always share with family and with friends, but I am less than sanguine about helping to feed some members of the wider community who would offer nothing in return.
I do agree with DfV who said

These days it's all much more privacy jealously guarded, shameful furtiveness at the food bank, and worst less knowledge on how to make three potatoes, an onion and assorted herb type greens with a bit of bacon go as far as possible.

I'm sorry, I must sound like a really nasty human being. Perhaps it is different in smaller well established country communities?
At which point, berating myself for my lack of tolerance of greedy landlords, wastrels and ne'er do wells I will go and make a pie to take to my lovely neighbour, who has just come out of hospital: and who Is a shining example of the generous person I would really like to be.

mardatha

It might work up here MrsL. This village only has 2 doz houses in 3 short streets. There is an active WVS and Rural although I am not well/brave/sociable enough to go. A lot of the members are from the outlying farms,

GreyQueen

I talk to thousands of the general public every year, and have done for many years, and have noticed certain trends which seem to collectively add up to an erosion of community spirit. Of course, the definition of community is a group of people who AGREE to live together, not what is actually happening when people just fetch up in close proximity due to the vagaries of the housing market, which is more correctly termed a Neighbourhood.


Folks seem more and more obsessed with privacy in their own gardens, regarding anything less than 6 ft tall panels between them and their neighbours as unacceptable. They express distress that neighbours can see into their gardens, can see themselves and particularly their children.


If you ask if the neighbour concerned has ever done anything to raise concerns or shown an unwholeseome interest in their children, they admit they haven't, but they can SEE them and that isn't deemed acceptable. When you gently point out that their neighbours in the terrace or the semi could, if they so chose, look down into their garden from their own upstairs back windows, they're flummoxed. The issue seems to be a sideways glance from one garden to another is what triggers the privacy panic.


When I was growing up, neighbour-to-neighbur fencing was 4ft posts with two strands of wire and nobody ever thought anything of it. And I'm not yet 55 btw, not exactly talking about ancient history here.



Many people do not know their neighbours, even by first names. Some of them cite differences in age group or ethnicity as reasons for not mixing even on a most superficial level. Sometimes a shared calamity can bridge these gaps, sometimes they are seemingly unbridgeable.


The whole BTL phenomenon is enormously destructive of communities, particularly where the BTL is a shared house including shared student houses. Temporary residents have no need to get along civily with people who they might be sharing a party wall with for 30-odd years in other circumstances and often make no effort to be kind, friendly or even refrain from the grossest acts of antisocial behaviour. BTL landlords all too often regard their properties as cash cows and disrepect the neighbours through thought and deed.


:mad: Plus the endless endless array of carp left behind by temporary residents when they move yet again. It particulary galls me with students, as they free-ride on the council tax payers and leave their bought-'em-cheap-gonna-dump-'em-broken-anyway goods and chattels all over the street or piled up in gardens for others to wince over and pay to have taken away.


Also, and it's not politically correct to even remark on it, but some groups do not want to mix socially with other groups. Often, relatively recent immigrants live and socialise almost exclusively within their own communities. I know several 2nd gen folk who are the british offspring of immigrant parents who've lived in the UK for 40+ years and never bothered to learn more of English than is needed to buy a pound of apples. It's very hard on their kids, who sometimes have a nil or even shaky grasp of the ancestral language and who can barely communicate with a parent (one I know had to use a language app to try communicating with Mum after Dad had died and Mum had lived exclusively in the UK since the 1960s.


It's worth remembering that we are hardwired as a species to live in small tribal groups of closely-related individuals. We cannot maintain good social relationships past 150 others at an absolute maximum. I think a lot of us a struggling to cope with too many folk living in close proximity, and the only way we keep it together is by keeping ourselves to ourselves.