Never too old to learn?

I don't think many of us could have realised just what an impact a pandemic would have in our lives. How long it would last, or how it will continue to effect us in the months/years to come.

It would be fair to say that things really don't matter, keeping up with the Jones' doesn't matter, constantly buying the latest this that or the other, really doesn't matter. If it did, hopefully you might have seen that it really doesn't.

Staying alive is important, food and warmth are important, being kind to each other is important. Being able to pay bills is preferable.

We have always tried to maintain a good emergency food cupboard. There hasn't been a reason to recently, but the year DS was born, our village got cut off for just over a week. Nothing got in or out. The very small village shop ran out of essential foods in just two days.

This need to prep, was increased as Brexit loomed, is still in use and will remain a permanent attitude. Lets face it, Brexit problems are coming further down the line, we are still in the grace period, food prices are rising and items are missing on the shelves. We aren't going to eat our food store up, just because some people think we should "as it will all be over soon". Yeah right, what about the next thing then?

Bottle water is not in there, perhaps it should be but I hate bottled water and it would go to waste. At the end of the day, we have water butts and if push came to shove, we would filter, boil and drink that. If we had time, the bath would be filled up as well. We have been looking at life straws or other methods of filtering water.

Ah I hear you say, what if you had no way of heating said water, if the utilities were out, what then? Our village doesn't have gas. As witnessed in Texas, having gas didn't help one jot as the gas mains, along with the water mains, fractured and caused further chaos. An underused (to date) piece of equipment we have tucked away is a single hob gas camping cooker. We bought it originally to use for wok cooking as our cooker at the time, didn't get hot enough. We have quite a few spare canisters tucked away also so that would enable us to boil water, as and when needed, warm food etc.

When we bought this house, it had a fire. Eventually we changed it to a wood burner. We have a small kettle that can sit on the top, again water and food can be cooked on top of it. 

Talking about utilities, what about lights, keeping fridges and freezers going. We are not mainstream preppers and don't have a generator. We don't plan on one either. That would mean some of the food going to waste in the freezer but something has to give somewhere. Our upright freezer is relatively full but a lot of what is in there could be eaten quickly over just a few days. If the worst happens (in winter), then snow or ice (or cold water, if available, in a thermal box in summer) would help to create a mini fridge if necessary. I use to do this all the time pre fridge days. 

Lights - we have oil lamps plus spare oil, and quite a few candles but I do want to buy either a solar or wind up light. For Christmas, DB received a wind up mobile phone charger for emergencies.

What about money. I don't know if this is/was a problem in Texas but are their card machines working? If not, due to power outages, how are they buying food - cash? Can they access cash? Should you keep a small amount of notes in the house? 

More tomorrow.