THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

thriftwizard wrote: »

I'll quite shamelessly knock on doors and ask whether the inhabitants are using their crab apples/Japonica quinces, and if not, please may I pick some? I usually return a jar of the finished product to them, and quite often they contact me the next year (and beyond) to ask whether I'd like the fruit before they dump it. Quite often I get the response, "But they're not edible!" or even "Aren't they poisonous?!" as people don't realise that not everything that's edible tastes good straight from the tree.
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If I listened to my mother, I'd still believe that mushrooms bought from the supermarket were poisonous if not cooked, golden raspberries were poisonous, mint when it flowered was poisonous, cherry plums were poisonous, blah, blah, blah.

Turned out that she associated foraging with Travellers (or the assorted nasty words she preferred to use) and, racism, blah, blah, being landed with a 5th kid that looked more Irish than anything else (I wouldn't have been surprised had it turned out I'd been switched out as a baby, I look so different to everybody else) and I was more interested in getting along with animals than people, anything that she thought made me appear to her to be Not English was ruthlessly eradicated. Including a Cherry Plum and the Gooseberries when she was asked nicely if they could be taken if we didn't want them.

We're off on our various summer stomps across the West Country soon. Whilst the trees and hedgerows are generally stripped bare of everything by the end of this fortnight (OH's a Dartmoor Boy), we might be able to pick a few things on the last couple of days and if we do, that's jam for the next year sorted.

Turned out the storm last week damaged our apple tree so a couple of branches had to come in and I now have about 5kg of nearly ripe apples. I think I will make them into jelly as they are quite small and the majority is still on the tree!

Had to move them into the pantry as the baby loves apples and was getting cross everytime she saw them.

I am yet to solve my jar issue, I have asked locally but everyone appears to be out of jars!

Sadly no blaeberries for us this year unless we find a better spot, the tried and trusted spots were stripped so violently last year that the bushes have not yet recovered and there are barely any berries on them.

We are having some building work done on the house and I will need to go and chase our builders as they appear to have vanished and we really need them to finish the last couple of agreed jobs before I can move onto the next project.

Will book in our chimney to be swept early this year in case it is another early winter as if we burn a fire in the afternoon it is so much easier to keep the heating off longer.

thriftwizard wrote: »

Jojo, I'm also Dartmoor born & bred. Say hello to my beautiful & much-missed home for me...

What part, Thrifty? And do you still have your accent, as the wretch lost his in his 20s because his now ex-wife said it made him sound thick and he'd never get a job if he kept it?

(It does return to some extent when we're back there, but it never lasts - although I seem to pick it up quite unintentionally to the extent of a surprising number of people assuming I'm from Tavi :rotfl:)

betterlife wrote: »

Hi guys, I have a quick question if anyone can help me please. I!!!8217;m thinking about getting a dehydrater for fruit etc, and was wondering if you can make jam with dehydrated fruit? Thank you

Hi Betterlife, I don't have a definitive answer but if you really needed to do it I would expect making a jelly would be better than jam as any skins might remain a bit leathery.


My question would be why? Both are methods of preserving and an electric dehydrator is quite an energy intensive operation, so added to the energy required to make the jam, it would be expensive jam.:D


Or do I have the wrong end of the stick (a common occurance ) and you expect to have a lot of dried fruit to use up? If this is the case, from my experience making a compote of the dried fruit to have with yoghurt or porridge is probably the best.



I'm currently drying cherry tomatoes - they get added to stews in the slow cooker over winter or eaten as a rather chewy snack if not quite dry enough to store. :beer:

Another pound of Blackberries picked, washed and tipped into the tray to open freeze. Got me thinking - bog standard organic blackberries are twenty quid a kilo. These are basically ignored until either they have fruit or they're threatening to turn the house into something more akin to Rapunzel's Castle after a certain cloven footed gentleman is reputed to pee over them.



If I [strike]had the brass neck[/strike] inclination to do so, I could theoretically punt them out at a nearby food market that allows such trade and is frequented by impossibly slender, fresh faced 20 somethings who avoid gluten, all animal products, plastics...etc, etc.

I could theoretically (and quite honestly) declare that they are

Organic
Vegan
Cruelty Free
Peat Free
Only pollinated by willing bees, mostly of the following types;
- Buff tailed Bumblebees
- White tailed Bumblebees
- Free Range European Honey Bees
- Patchwork Leaf Cutter Bees
- Wild Red Mason Bees
(no kidnapping and forcing innocent bees to pollinate them/stealing their honey and pollen - what they choose to take, they keep)
No pest control, other than that willingly provided by
- European Wasps
- Wild Ladybirds
- Wild Birds
- Many, many, many friendly (as long as you're many thousands of times bigger than them) eight legged creatures
Grown absolutely without recourse to mains water (or even harvested rainwater, unless you count the finest specimen growing happily out of the top of the water butt)
And have zero air miles, zero sea miles and about 2 land miles by public transport on a fully electric bus route whilst not being taken from the wild or anywhere remotely near an incontinent canine/supernatural being .

That's got to be worth more than a score, hasn't it?


(I miss the wholefoods shop that used to be a quarter of a mile down the next street - they loved me and happily took everything I grew that I couldn't eat and couldn't freeze because I didn't have a freezer at the time - I know they sold them at a good price, as they let me take whatever I wanted in payment, washing powder, washing up liquid, chocolate oat milk, large bags of pulses - and the day I came in with courgette flowers, rose petals and nasturtiums at 9am, they presented me with the most expensive bottle of lavender essential oil in the shop. With the sage growing so well, I could also have hand made smudging sticks and they would have sold them, too)


Ah, well. I shall just remind myself how much the ones in the freezer would have cost from anywhere other than my weedpatch when I'm turning them into jammy loveliness.