Ice Age Preparation ?

I had a house fire in July and lost all my food preps and in accommodation while repairs take place.... but hoping it will be all repaired around chistmas. Anyway, in the mean time I've bought a 5kw stove that has a built-in oven which will be installed in two weeks time - I thought that was a cool feature, especially in Europe with fuel prices going up so much and the possibility of blackouts. The top of stove is a hot plate too. £2500 which is not bad.
 

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lilies said:
Parsnips - sugary carrots - are aromatic - have awesome fragrance - and give fantastic taste for heavy pig meat soups combined with bone broth. Just one medium size parsnip (cross cut it in at the widest part) into a pressure cooker of soup - then the second parsnip into another, the long pressure cooker session for the broth [always added in only for the last 15 minute veggie cooking section for both broth and soup] - makes it taste so much better. Also creates mouthwatering, aromatic smell in the kitchen. Didn't know they survive winter. Thanks for the info!
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The learning never ends! With the correct simple technologies and practices it is possible to grow vegetables all winter long. I'm currently going through The Winter Harvest Handbook by the notorious organic farmer Eliot Coleman. In his words - unheated, uninsulated, unbelievable! His method is also inexpensive and simple in comparison to trying to heat a greenhouse.

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A good winter harvest requires four things.

Number one is letting go of the ideas that the plants will die due to lack of heat and lack of light.
Number two is double-layer protected cultivation, using what he calls 'cold houses' (as opposed to 'hot houses').

“The traditional winter vegetables will often survive outdoors under a blanket of snow. Since gardeners can’t count on snow, the best substitute is shelter of an unheated greenhouse. Many delicious winter vegetables need only that minimal protection.

Our winter-harvest cold houses are standard, plastic-covered, gothic-style hoop houses. The largest of our houses are 30 feet wide and 96 feet long. They are aligned on an east-west axis. For the most part the cold houses need only a single-layer covering of UV-resistant plastic, whereas heated greenhouses benefit from two layers, which are air-inflated to minimize heat loss.”

“The success of our cold houses seems unlikely in our Zone 5 Maine winters where temperatures can drop to –20°C). But our growing system works because we have learned to augment the climate-tempering effect of the cold house itself by adding a second layer of protection. We place floating row-cover material over the crops inside the greenhouse to create a twice-tempered climate. The soil itself thus becomes our heat-storage medium, as it is in the natural world.

Any type of lightweight floating row cover that allows light, air, and moisture to pass through is suitable for the inner layer material in the cold houses. The row cover is supported by flat-topped wire wickets at a height of about 12 inches (30 cm) above the soil. We space the wickets every 4 feet (120 cm) along the length of 30-inch-wide (75 cm) growing beds.

The protected crops still experience temperatures below freezing, but nowhere near as low or as stressful as they would without the inner layer. For example, when the outdoor temperature drops to –15°F (–26°C), the temperature under the inner layer of the cold house drops only to above zero (–10°C to –8°C) on average. The cold-hardy vegetables are far hardier than growers might imagine and, in our experience, many can easily survive temperatures down to -10°C or lower as long as they are not exposed to the additional stresses of outdoor conditions. The double coverage also increases the relative humidity in the protected area, which offers additional protection against freezing damage. The climate modification achieved by combining inner and outer layers in the cold houses is the technical foundation of our low-input winter-harvest concept.”
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Here's a pic of what it looks like:
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“The soil under the inner layer of our cold greenhouses experiences no more than light surface freezing even on the coldest nights. That might seem surprising, but it’s not when you recall that our method of twice-tempering the microclimates of the beds gives them the equivalent of a Zone 8 climate. (See the frost-depth map in appendix A.) With the possible exception of one or two days each winter, when an extremely cold night is followed by a heavily clouded day, the soil in the beds is always unfrozen by 10 AM and ready to rake into a fine new seedbed for replanting. ”
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This can be done on a smaller scale, too.
If there's good access to horse manure and straw, it's possible to create a hotbed, which was a mainstay in Parisian winter gardening in the 1850's. The bacterial activity generates ample heat, which is kept in by the glass. This technique, and the Parisian indoor winter gardening allowed them to export vegetables to the English all year long.

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Number three selecting cold-hardy vegetables (and if one can find cold-hardy varieties within these categories, awesome).

I bolded the ones I'd be likely to grow and eat or sell, with chicory and dandelion for the roots as a coffee substitute when the roots are roasted. The rest could be grown as winter greens for chickens or rabbits.
“The list of cold-hardy vegetables includes the familiar—spinach, chard, carrots, scallions—and the novel—mâche, claytonia, minutina, and arugula. To date there are some thirty different vegetables—arugula, beet greens, broccoli raab, carrots, chard, chicory, claytonia, collards, dandelion, endive, escarole, garlic greens, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, mâche, minutina, mizuna, mustard greens, pak choi, parsley, radicchio, radish, scallions, sorrel, spinach, tatsoi, turnips, watercress—which at one time or another we have grown in our winter-harvest greenhouses.”
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Succession planting is number four. The goal is to get plants to near maturity before the day length becomes shorter than 10 hours.

"We begin planting the winter-harvest crops on August 1, the start of what we call the “second spring. We continue planting through the fall. The reality of sowing for winter harvest is that the seasons are reversed from the usual spring-planting experience. Day length is contracting rather than expanding; temperatures are becoming cooler rather than warmer. Success in maintaining a continuity of crops for harvest through the winter is a function of understanding the effect of shorter day length and cooler temperatures on increasing the time from sowing to harvest.”
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“As we harvest the once-and-done greenhouse crops in November and December (lettuce, radish, turnip, baby pak choi, celery, fennel, scallions), spaces open up and we re-prepare and resow them to crops that will start maturing from mid-February on. Thus by the end of December we have picked all the crops that were sown for fall harvest and have replanted the greenhouses to crops that will be ready for the late-winter/early-spring harvests to come. Our four- to five-week vacation commences at the winter solstice.”
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“We aim to harvest at least three crops per year from every square foot of the cold houses—two in winter and one (or more) in summer. A typical rotation in one of the 48-foot cold houses might include a winter-harvested carrot crop followed on March 15 by planting the first of the baby new potatoes. After harvesting the potatoes, we would transplant a summer crop of Charantais melons in late May. After we cleared the melons the house would be planted to a fall-harvested spinach crop. Then in late November we would move the house to cover a later-planted spinach crop for spring harvest.”
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'Cool' stuff. Good quote from the book, too -

“What business man, except a soil worker, will ‘stop and talk’ with a stranger? Who but a farmer or fruit grower or gardener will tell of his experience so fully and so freely, and so entirely without hope of gain? Who else will so frankly reveal his business secrets for the benefit of his fellows? Who else so clearly recognizes the fact that the world is large enough for all mankind?”

HENRY DREER
Dreer’s Vegetables Under Glass”
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jess said:
About suitable clothing or accessories for extreme cold, last year I found on ebay, these sheepskin caps, they are super warm and do not cause sweating or extreme heat, I think the sheepskin regulates the temperature and you can find them used, in very good price still, but in very good condition.
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If you are adept with needles and threads, you can make your own with a simple pattern
Hood cap for kids: Faux Fur Hood Tutorial + Free Pattern in 6 Sizes!
or for those who enjoy Pinterest: lots of patterns there if you want to enlarge and print out
www.pinterest.ca

Aviator hat pattern | Hat patterns to sew, Cap patterns, Sewing patterns

Jul 30, 2014 - This Pin was discovered by Daiana Pensa. Discover (and save!) your own Pins on Pinterest
www.pinterest.ca www.pinterest.ca

For those who are thrifty, get some leather from an old coat from a charity shop and if you have an Ikea shop nearby get a large sheep skin that you can cut up. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can find an old coat with sheep skin inside.

But of course, if you find one cheap that you can purchase right away, so much the better. I made mukluks in the past so i prefer to make my own if necessary.

The point is to choose the right skin and the right kind of fur that won't freeze in the cold. Don't ever choose "fun pile" or imitation fur. These will freeze in lumps and will become useless in really cold weather. If you can find a collar that is real fur: beaver, coyote, rabbit, wolf, foxes, so much the better. No ice will ever form on those furs. Of course, depending on your location, it may become really hard for you to find those items.

Happy hunting!
 
Looks like Zuckerberg may be preparing for unhappy times too, apparently he's building a bunker in Hawaii. I'd think he'd just crawl back deep under the ground, where he came from, but hey, maybe he wants to hedge his bets :-P

Mark Zuckerberg Spent $187 Million Secretly Buying 1,600 Acres of Hawaii Land, And Now He Is Reportedly Building A Massive Self-Sustaining Apocalypse Bunker
Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly constructing an extensive compound in Kauai, Hawaii, featuring a unique blend of luxury and survivalist elements. The compound, known as Koolau Ranch, is set to include a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker, complete with its own energy and food supplies. The bunker’s design incorporates a metal door filled with concrete, a feature commonly found in bunkers and bomb shelters.
The project, which reflects a growing trend among Silicon Valley elites for preparedness and luxury, is estimated to cost around $100 million to build on top of the $170 million spent acquiring the land. This brings the total investment to approximately $270 million, according to Wired.

The project has been shrouded in secrecy since the beginning. Workers on the ranch are required to sign strict nondisclosure agreements, and reports indicate people have been fired for posting on social media that they are working on the project. Workers on the compound undergo constant surveillance from hundreds of cameras, and military-style security measures have been implemented across the ranch.

The methods to acquire the land also give rise to issues and speculation. Zuckerberg initially hid the purchases of land using shell companies and brokers to disguise them. Those shell companies are now involved in several lawsuits claiming they pressured locals with ancestral land rights to sell the land or get into a bidding war at auction with one of the richest men in the world. (...)
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I'm kind of suspicious of those reports as on the one hand they claim that workers have been sworn to secrecy and stuff like that, and on the other hand I found it on Yahoo Finance, so I guess it's not that much of a secret in the end. I found it curious nevertheless.
 
Ant22 said:
Looks like Zuckerberg may be preparing for unhappy times too, apparently he's building a bunker in Hawaii. I'd think he'd just crawl back deep under the ground, where he came from, but hey, maybe he wants to hedge his bets :-P
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Lol
On a serious note, that was kinda odd that of all places he can build a bunker, he chose Hawaii, like is it gonna really terrible on the continental side, for him to do a bunker in a island on the middle of the north pacific? Which at the same time have high volcano activity? Or either he is dumb (which could be the case) or he knows something, and part of wishful thinking plays a part here.
 
Ant22 said:
Looks like Zuckerberg may be preparing for unhappy times too, apparently he's building a bunker in Hawaii. I'd think he'd just crawl back deep under the ground, where he came from, but hey, maybe he wants to hedge his bets :-P

Mark Zuckerberg Spent $187 Million Secretly Buying 1,600 Acres of Hawaii Land, And Now He Is Reportedly Building A Massive Self-Sustaining Apocalypse Bunker


I'm kind of suspicious of those reports as on the one hand they claim that workers have been sworn to secrecy and stuff like that, and on the other hand I found it on Yahoo Finance, so I guess it's not that much of a secret in the end. I found it curious nevertheless.
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I had already heard it yesterday on the radio in a nationally broadcast program in my country.

So the news is planetary or total.

What is delivered is an obvious programming.

People will wonder why this billionaire person is doing that.

If he is a "deep level scorer", he is simply doing his job, offering fear to everyone.
 
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