The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

[Deleted User]

I recently did a complete check of all my preps and came to the realisation that I have been dipping in to the tinned stores over the whole winter and while I have many tins of baked beans and tomatoes lots of the dry stores, particularly porridge oats, are depleted badly and need replenishing. It's partly due to the unseasonably cool weather that we seem (other than a couple of glorious warm weeks in February) to have had no respite from since the beginning of last Autumn and partly having moved to a periphery town where the only supermarket is a very expensive Co Op. Being reliant on shopping in the city I find as I get older I can't so easily carry the heavy goods back in quantity from the shops on the bus. I still have good stocks of soap and loo rolls though as the other difficulty is getting bulky things easily back on the bus.

Si_Clist

For what it's worth, the thing that's been the biggest boon to our prepping has been keeping a tally of how long things actually last us, which in nearly every case turns out to be longer than we thought!

All we did was start either writing the date on the container when we start something (e.g shampoo, toothpaste, washing-up liquid), or noting the date on the calendar.

Net result? Far more sensible stock levels, and less money spent on buying the wrong stuff.

DigForVictory

I share your concern Mrs LW not least as well as the wet weather, the lads have had exams and therefore been at home, where the food stores are in easy reach. I am doing not one top up shop a week but two! (Must get them off cereals & onto porridge!)

Worse, I tried all tests recommended & must sadly admit, the apple tree is dead. It's companion has lost sense in two branches but is trying to fruit - two apples, each the size of marbles, total. The plum tree was covered in blossom, the currants are glorious long stems of luminous green & there are a lot of gone over flowers on the raspberry canes. So I spent time time versus bindweed & walked the edible hedge.

In happier news, if you have (or have ever had) gooseberries, aka goosegogs, step over & have a dekko at them, even in this wet.
My bushes are almost bowed under the water fattened weight of bright green jam futures (which also set like blazes, so go thoughtful on the pectin) and even the jostaberry (a babe of 3 years) is going for it!

I shall now try to view rain, more cheerfully, as fattening my jam fruit futures. I do appreciate those in Lincolnshire, bits of North Wales & all worrying in the South West may not agree, but check fruit while the sun shines?

[Deleted User]

We've just been out for coffee and had a 'along the lanes' pootle to come home and the cereal crops are looking magnificent with really well formed heavy looking heads on the wheat and the barley as they should with the amount of rain we've had to swell the grain, I just hope we get the warmer dry weather now to ripen it all as we'll have an absolutely bumper harvest if we do from the looks of it. HWK is saying we might get an abundance of potatoes too if we get the warmth we need to fatten the tubers and then if there is any glitch if Brexit should ever happen we'll have food in the bank to feed us the basics grown here at home.

thriftwizard

Electrical failure cuts power to all of Argentina and Uruguay, supplier says

Between that, the floods in Lincolnshire (poor people!) & the water being cut off in west London earlier this week - never think it couldn't happen here...

puddle96

thriftwizard wrote: »

Electrical failure cuts power to all of Argentina and Uruguay, supplier says

Between that, the floods in Lincolnshire (poor people!) & the water being cut off in west London earlier this week - never think it couldn't happen here...

Many in Gloucestershire will remember the 2007 floods and the Mythe pumping station flooding . No water from the taps for 18 days

DigForVictory

Times like this those doorstepping Mormons are a useful source of information. Their faith requires storage of three months food and water. (I'm on a food storage & emergency preparedness email list & once you edit out the weaponry & sort the spelling, it's splendid horse sense, just not necessarily horses you'd have thought of. (Like the dishwasher being a sealed unit, so things that must not get wet may do better in there than elsewhere.)

I don't think they'll be terribly popular in Lincolnshire just now though.

I'm watching the rain do its bit for the garlic cloves I planted yesterday. Late, I know, but they'd been sat waiting for a dry spell & someone to care for months. Since I caught a son using one clove as a bioweapon (really, sibling bickering...), I decided that some days must be seized!

Greenglockenspiel

I hadn’t considered storing water for the summer in case of flooding - will refill some of my stocks that I had been less fussed about once the threat of frozen pipes had passed.

I have just negotiated my bill with Thames water down to £15 a month and my fuel bills last week down to £55 which for 100% renewable seems quite reasonable. Still counts as prepping imo because it means keeping the cash in my pocket rather than loaning it out to these companies for free and having to claim it back when I need it! When we move home I am also planning to get a water butt and to look at whether solar panels would be cost effective.


I have also been monitoring how fast it takes us to go through things - we seem to go through porridge oats quite slowly but can demolish a 1kg bag of rice in a couple of weeks. OH is a bottomless pit but also underweight so I don’t want to stop him eating... maybe I just need to divert him to snack on porridge.


Alas on the garden front I am not doing so well. Our peas seem to be coming out nicely but I planted loads of garlic a while back and it is very droopy - I suspect it might have objected to being trampled on by fat pigeons.

[Deleted User]

It's been a very odd growing year this year I think due to too much precipitation and not enough warmth or sunshine. Our attempts at parsnips have involved 4 sowings and not one has germinated in any of them, listening to other folks who vegetable garden they are having the same thing happen so perhaps that very hot and dry summer last year affected the seed in some way this year, parsnips may be scarce in the coming colder months if that is the case. Our garlic was planted early and still looks weedy and very slow to bulb up, again I think it may be the growing conditions because of the weather. The sadness is that all round the area are signs up for PYO strawberries but I think the land will be saturated so no one will want to go to pick and if they do the fruits will be huge waterlogged giants and therefore flavourless but probably damaged by the mud and the heaviness of the showers, the crop might well be massive but will probably be unharvestable.

DigForVictory

Given my chaps' bullheaded fanaticism for strawberry jam, I suspect I'll be doubling up the certo & carrying on.

The tiny wild strawberries which pack such a glorious punch for their size may also be added to lend a strawberry flavoured verisimilitude. Just I'll have to get to them before the lads or the birds do.