What useful old time skills do you have?

[Arch]

From a point of view of milder, easier to survive winters and an earlier start to the growing season, after the initial rendez vous at the NRM, can I suggest we go to Cornwall?

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the availability in Cornwall of both Camelia sinensis and Coffea arabica (tea and coffe, both grown at the Eden project)

Superb idea!

<goes to check rail links from York to the southwest>

Anyone between York and Cornwall, hunker down in your location, and we'll send pigeons to tell you when to get to the nearest practicable station, once we've got a couple of locos on the go, and loaded all the more portable machine tools and stuff we've fabricated.

 

[Nij48]

A friend of mine is working on the basis of modern civilisation collapsing due to the spiraling cost of energy, the loss of fossil fuels, the reduction of food crops, the collapse of a workable financial system and the loss of jobs. That normally leads to wars as countries start to fight each other to give the population something to do and someone else to blame.

He is working on become self sufficient for food and energy and is looking for a remote small holding to buy while money still has a purpose.

I think this thread is just for a bit of fun.

Not a bad plan and even if the end of civilisation as we know it doesnt happen, he will save pennies

 

[penguinking9]

Eden have got Theobroma cacao too

 

[Night Train]

Not a bad plan and even if the end of civilisation as we know it doesnt happen, he will save pennies

I have a sort of similar plan myself. Food crops, electric tractor, and cargo bikes.

 

[subaqua]

Eden have got Theobroma cacao too

if they have Cannabis indica that will be extremely useful.

 

[al78]

I think anyone with organic allotment/vegetable gardening experience would be able to work out crop rotation and so on. We'd probably have to rely less on wheat, and as F1 seed ran out, we'd have to save seed each year and results may become a little more variable.

Dairying would have to revert to a cottage level, with milk only available when a cow has a calf, and I think the intensive dairy breeds like Holsteins would die out eventually. Without refrigeration, we couldn't keep raw milk so well anyway - but making cheese and butter would preserve it.

Chickens would still lay eggs, and sheep, goats and pigs wouldn't be hard too to keep, especially older less intensive breeds. I reckon I could have a stab at it - especially with some useful books on hand.

We could try growing Hemp, from which hemp milk can be made, a good source of protein and omega-3, plus I believe hemp itself is useful as building materials.

 

[ufkacbln]

Damn. Ever wish you'd never opened your mouth?

I do NOT think it was your mouth Arch was planning to open with that lot!

 

[ufkacbln]

I can doff my hat!

 

[Piemaster]

We could try growing Hemp, from which hemp milk can be made, a good source of protein and omega-3, plus I believe hemp itself is useful as building materials.

Hemp = rope. Always useful

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Hemp = rope. Always useful

Hemp = dope. Always useful

 

[Arch]

Hemp = dope. Always useful

Not sure about that. If we're trying to produce all our own food, supplies will be limited. We don't all want to get the munchies!

 

[al78]

Hemp = dope. Always useful

Not much use as dope I'm afraid, it has minimal levels of the active ingredient.

 

[gary in derby]

I have a degree in Engineering so if ever anyone needs to work out the thremodynamic performance of a closed system or calculate the torsional stiffness of a complex beam then I can be the go-to guy.


I'm pretty good at plumbing too, which in recent years has proved more useful to me than a degree in Engineering.

i can calculate bending moments and shear forces? with or without UDLs or point loads, lol. though only application i can think of for that is designing clubs to wack people with. lol.

 

[Night Train]

i can calculate bending moments and shear forces? with or without UDLs or point loads, lol. though only application i can think of for that is designing clubs to wack people with. lol.

Ooohh, a bridge builder, useful!

Can you calculate it with chalk and a slate though?

I am currently reading 'Sheet Metal Working - vol1 of 3' (Caxtons). It was probably published in the 1940s so includes a lot of manual calculations and hand working.

 

[gary in derby]

i cant write! forgotten how, lol. wonder what the required shear force is to break a piece of chalk? oh dear time to do some work me thinks,lol.