Recent content by slowworm

And it's now less than two years before the machines take over...

We almost bought a large petrol one when we bought the house but it wouldn't have been used much so glad we didn't. Now my OH is doing more work from home some form of battery bank seems wise.

I forgot about being cut off by the snow a few years ago. It didn't take much to fall to drift across and block our Devon lane. It then froze and as it's fairly steep the ice stopped any traffic for almost a week IIRC. It didn't affect us as we work from home and didn't need to go out.

I wouldn't say unexpected, I think I expected things a bit worse where we are. The worst power cut was the Dec 24 storm which left us without elec for over 30 hours. We coped well as we cook on our wood burner and have plenty of candles and torches (more now). The main problem was the freezer...

Not necessarily. When we had hens much of their food was bought in and that had to be grown, moved to be milled, moved to be sold and I had to make regular trips to buy it - so food miles could well be more than a battery farm egg. When we get more hens then along with what they forage around...

I like the idea of a Milton bag, made from brightly coloured shirt material with a good sense of humour.

As I mentioned, when we had a large area power cut, which lasted for over 30 hours, our analogue phone carried on working. Both the available mobile masts stopped working. With the digital switch over we have less resilience or have to buy yet another expensive service, which doesn't seem that...

Well, I've not had the mower out during May at all. In part because it's not currently working and coming to the end of its life! I've looked for new one, just a simple walk behind with grass collection, but I want something with a high cut. I don't like scalping the grass and cutting high also...

The UK does have a text warning system but when we had a 'danger to life' storm hit locally no warning was sent, so a bit useless. Our land line survived but we had no power for over 24 hours and the local mobile transmitters were also down so no mobile signal anywhere in a wide area. This is...

Now our own home phone line is being moved to digital. Annoyingly it appears our provider has tried to move us without ensuring we wouldn't be left without any means of contacting people during a power cut as we don't have mobile reception at home. (See...

Another little update on this. I've come across this about the SOTAP or analogue SOTAP upgrade. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/11/openreach-prep-alternative-uk-analogue-style-phone-product.html

I did see they used straw type filters but when I've looked at filters there was a difference between brands of what they filtered, hence wanting to know what the infection was and what filters were used. I do boil water we filter but if you always need to boil why are the straw type filters...

We've been hearing them for a couple of weeks now and today I noticed a couple of bundles of fluff on the edge of our woodland. You can just make out what they are hopefully, it was a camera pic taken at distance. They are half way up the pic and one at each side. They're a pair of young...

I thought this story might be of interest. It's a shame they don't give many details such as what the infection was and what filters the people used. Anyone know any more details? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98rpgqyqygo

First new potatoes of the year. A couple of spare seed spuds popped into the greenhouse before the tomatoes get planted out.