What have done towards your prep?

[Straight Shooter]

Cracking on with the garden , cleaning some raised beds adding in more compost and horse dung ( well rotted ) loads of 30 litre tubs to fill and plant up much slower these days …..the poly tunnels will be maximised this year but plodding on .

Wild child baking bread as usual Welsh cakes Victoria sponge egg custard , pies , pasties …….john the farms face lights up every week and now my eldest brothers also …..it’s a fair bit of work but she never complains ….and never has ! .
We have had some trees down so I am processing them I a go , logging up and splitting the sil brigs it in on the beast …he works hard .

That’s all for now folks .

[bigpaul]

I'm having problems finding well rotted manure, everything on offer is fresh and too strong and it dosent rot down even if I do use it. when I empty my tubs at the end of the season the manure is the same as when I put it in the tub.

[Straight Shooter]

Yes it can be a problem BP it’s the same here here also, , I can go up johns farm and get as much as I want , there is a guy that drops trailer fulls to his place all year round and left to rot down ….its always good stuff ,and it’s free ….i would look see around where you are for people keeping horses , there is one here local that bags it up band places it outside the gate free to anyone who wants it ….but not well rotted , great if you have room to store it .

[bigpaul]

yes thats what I already do, buy from places that have horses but its not well rotted its all fresh, I wonder if I bought some bags in the autumn whether it would rot down enough to use in the spring?

[Pete Grey]

.......hmmm........did someone mention......WELSH CAKES ? .

[bigpaul]

just found a bucket of horse manure I put away at the end of Autumn, opened the lid and its still as unrotted as when I put it in there, anyway put it on a rear garden border, will see what it does.
I have been forced to buy commercial manure from the Farm stores (mole avon) and have decanted one sack into my buckets, looks okay will use that in my growing this year along with some pelleted chicken manure the wife found.

[Straight Shooter]

Opened up a new trench for my runner beans ….filled with homemade compost and well rotted manure , perlite and some fb and bone with a top dressing of fine compost ….its ready for planting , the old runner bean bed has is dug and filled with the same mix for peas and onions …..carrots have bean sown along with onions, turnips, in tubs inside the poly tunnel …tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn ,lettuce have been sown in the poly tunnel and a heater is on ….plus the window cills are full. I decided to carry on with more raised beds after all ,the sil is using all the other raised beds that are spare .
Going to get more manure on the weekend …..split all the logs and stacked them …..there is now a new pile of ash to log up and split , it will not take long to fill the sheds ……Will keep ongoing even if the sheds are full I have got into a routine and will just carry on now .

[Sunna]

And so the cycle begins again , winters just about over longer days and some well deserved sunshine .

But collecting and processing wood for next winter carrys on ,been doing this for 30 yrs now and it's second nature iv grown to love it ... secretly laughing at all the poor souls who are paying through the nose for heating .
Some in my street converted to oil fired heating 15,20 years back couldn't be bothered to light fires this convenience has come back to haunt them .

[bigpaul]

calor gas and oil heating are normal in rural areas.
wont do them much good post SHTF. wood is a naturally renewing fuel.