The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Serendipitious

There was a nasty winter in the mid 1960s also, I remember trudging to grammar school in wellies because the school buses weren't running and at home we used to play 'sword fights' with the icicles on the outbuildings. Never gave a thought to where the food came from, it just appeared on the table as usual, but that was before supermarkets in my area and everyone bought locally from small shops.

2010 was horrible too - snowed in, high up in the hills in mid Wales, from Nov 13th to the end of Dec with just one hair-raising trip out by landrover on Xmas Eve to grab some Xmassy bits. A farmer friend brought bread, milk etc by tractor from the local shop 3 miles away, from which the owner sent out word that everyone who needed one could have a tab until they could get out as far as the bank. The postman dropped off the mail at the next farm down as the van couldn't manage the last mile or so uphill, and we had to walk to get that if it wasn't a tractor delivery day. A few days respite in January and then it snowed again. Nightmare.

The Beast was nasty though, my car doors would freeze solid and many mornings found me at 6.30 struggling into the car from the back, leaning over into the driver's seat trying to shove the door open from the inside, and not going into work was never an option when someone was waiting for you to get them out of bed. I used to take a hot water bottle to have on my knees while driving as all the heating needed to be directed at the windscreen.

MingVase

I lived for 30 years high in moorland and we had bad winters every year. I loved it all.

Floss

MingVase said:

I lived for 30 years high in moorland and we had bad winters every year. I loved it all.

Exactly - I grew up in the Pennines and we had snow every winter...granted 1968/9 was worse than most as the snow plough had to come right up onto our estate and the back garden drift was as high as the top of the window, but months of cold, ice & snow were normal. 

It makes me laugh now when folk get so stressed about an inch of snow. Even back in 1986/7 when my eldest was in his pram it was a bitterly cold, frozen winter & everyone got on with life. And again in 2001/2, when me & some friends on our Friday night out made a snowman at a bus stop on our way to the pub, and he was there for 2 weeks - people didn't get as concerned...but then again we didn't have 24/7 news then 🙄

[Deleted User]

Prepping and why we prep as much as the level of prepping we feel necessary is a very individual thing, differing life experiences give each of us different views and different perspectives on how prepared we feel the need to be and what we feel we need to prepare for. No one is completely prepared ever but we all do the best we can with the means we have.  We certainly have been grateful for having meds, food, tools and materials to do repairs to the house infrastructure, books and board games to stop the boredom of enforced isolation due to lockdowns, good to have appropriate outdoor gear for the inconsistencies of the British weather too that has let us walk whatever the weather and many other small things and not so small things that have helped over the last year.  I'm thankful that we've never felt desperate because we've run out of a daily essential and we've had spare to share with others who have run short.  Prepping is an individual take and no one of us does it exactly the same as any other of us.

oceanspirit

The recent snow showed up a couple of gaps in our preps and we are grateful that we had so many other things organised and have time to now fill those gaps.  Snow and ice causes problems because a fall could leave us with life changing injuries so we tend to stay put and make sure we don't need to go outside for anything.  The village tends to get cut off due to drifts across the roads, even with minimal snowfall, so we need to be self sufficient and not become part of the problem. 

My boiler struggled to get my small home up to temperature each day - it comes on at 7am and it was taking until 2pm for the thermostat to click it off again - and night time temperatures were only going down to -4C.  I'm a semi and next door has no loft insulation currently and electric storage heaters which they say don't really keep the place warm in any case.  I have full loft insulation and both properties have good quality double glazing and cavity wall insulation.  I had to keep the kitchen and bathroom doors closed as the wind was blowing through the vents and it would have been impossible to warm the other 3 rooms if I'd left the doors open to try to warm those rooms.

I had the woodburner on from 4pm each evening to top up the living room but couldn't have it on all day as I hadn't brought enough wood in to last the week using it at that rate.  The woodburner backs onto next door's living room so I hope it was warming them a little, too.  I would normally have firewood stacked on the front porch as part of my winter preps, but didn't this time (long story) and I will make sure that next winter this is kept full at all times.  I usually have a bin of smokeless briquettes on there as well but this was behind a snowdrift in the back garden so I couldn't get to it this time - I prefer to use wood but keep smokeless in as an extra prep.

So will make a list of things to put right during the summer this year so that next winter I have my preps placed so that I can actually use them!

annieb64

I was reluctant  to go out in the snow in case I fell. Didn't  want to end up in hospital  with a broken hip! We've been avoiding going up in the hills too. Even without  snow it's  so muddy and our mountain  rescue have been called out so many times this winter.

RAS

I was happy enough out in the snow but what we got mainly was a thin layer that froze to ice and took ages to thaw. So I got a walking pole as a tripod and avoided the worst of the ice when I had to go out. Was under instruction not to fall and break anything. I'd got most things in so it was really about fresh veggies and bread which are strictly optional, and making a trip count.

I certainly remember winters being much harder more often.
62/63  we had no running water for 6 weeks and snow drifted over the bedroom windows. Needless to say there were power cuts as well. My parents were used to winters further north, so the larder was full and snow melted. 
Sometime around 65/66 it snowed very heavily and the milk froze in the bottles, pushing the cream up like a plug.
67/68 we had to walk to school; (in skirts) and I had to dump my sister at a friends house half way as she was never going to make it there.
78/9 it was so cold my HMO housemates and I pulled our mattresses into one room and slept huddled under everything we could find, with an open fire! And one year in between the lake at uni froze, trapping the local swan.
There was another winter about 85/6 when the snow cleared from paths and roads didn't melt for 6 weeks and my housemate ended up skating across the junction at the bottom of the hill, car rear first. And some bright spark walked across the river between Christmas and New Year. 

2010 was bracketed between two harsh winters. January and February it was routinely minus 11 during the daytime and -19 at night, then it thawed briefly and re-froze. That did for many of my surviving veggies as they been safe under the blanket of snow but couldn't cope without.  That was the only year apart from 62/63 when I kept away from buildings with icicles. Summer was late and grey. We didn't have a frost until November, one cold night, the leaves dropped and then it snowed immediately after. It didn't thaw properly until New Year. 

We've not had really a harsh winter since, although Scotland has had heavy snow fall for several recent years.

greenbee

Talking to friends in Texas today, they've pointed out that they're good at hurricanes and floods and heat. And that their houses are designed with cooling in mind, so are well ventilated - including the attics. Lots of problems with snow blowing in though the roof, melting and water flowing down inside the walls. 

DryTheRain

Obviously heartrending to hear about the situation in Texas, but I really liked boazu’s take on it  - that we all come to prepping via different paths. 

Have vivid childhood memories of moving to a huge un-centrally heated single-glazed house in the bitter cold of new year 1986 - being locked out in the snow and hammering frantically on the doors while my mother and her horrid new husband were up to whatever inside, yet for many years I was totally in denial. As in I’m clever/patient/silly enough to track down 99p cashmere on ebay so hey I look great and everything’s fine, isn’t it?

Well no, not really :-/ It was a steep learning curve once I escaped the cycle of seeking escape in awful boyfriends, and it was only by chancing on this forum that I worked out what I needed to do. So I think it’d be kinder to avoid judgement on those who haven’t reached this stage yet, count our blessings and do all we can to assist others in need wherever possible 

[Deleted User]

Thanks DryTheRain for your kind words, it's never easy to be on the receiving end of pointed criticism and preppers really are a red rag to a bull for some folks, even other preppers whose ideas differ greatly from the written words on the screen.  None of us can actually 'walk in the shoes' of  anyone else and gain understanding of their life experiences and the reasons why they are actually preppers and without that understanding it's easy to be scathingly critical and unkind.  I respect all points of view, trying to be tolerant even if I don't fully understand the motivation and the attitude of some folks they have the right to be themselves and have their own take on life, prepping and me! universal popularity isn't possible just as homogenized prepping isn't sensible, if we all did and had exactly the same preps there might be gaping holes in them and we'd all suffer whereas individuals with their own individual preparations can often throw interesting and previously missed ideas into the mix and we al gain.  Thank goodness we are all different eh?