How Did I Do Against My Self-Sufficiency Goals 2019?

Okay, so those of you that have followed my blog for any length of time will know that each year I set myself a list of highly optimistic goals for the year ahead and then review it when the year ends.

So here’s how I did (or how I think I did)–

Community

I said that this year I just wanted to try and maintain what I did for the community and I’ve done that. I’m loving being a Beaver Scout leader and I’ve certainly dedicated more than a few hours to this cause, with some really fun weekends away. My younger daughter has now joined scouts as well so she’s feeling the benefit as well.

I truly believe that kids need less school and more scouts, my eldest daughter was having a bit of a tough time at school in the summer and scouts was the one thing she really looked forward to each week, in fact when we broke up for summer she was just disappointed that there would be no scouts for 6 weeks! 

I’m still running the playgroup in the village, although the countdown clock is on this. It’s been a big part of my life but as my youngest starts school this year it will draw to a natural close for me.

Self Reliance Goals For 2019

I quite like having a set of goals to work towards each year. They don't have to be things to do, just stuff to work towards or maintain. Normally hugely optimistic, this year hugely late as well.

Community

I made community a big focus of last year but I think my aim this year should just be to continue what I've been doing. Anymore and it might become too much like a burden. That said I'd like to maybe start a gardening club at the school or at least be involved in one there, I'd love for the pupils to have a crop of veg ready to sell at the school fayre.


Family And Friends

I want to have the TV and phone turned off more. I don't watch huge amounts of TV anymore but I am very aware that it's very easy for me to turn the TV on when the kids get home and whilst I do some jobs they are sat like vegetables in front of the goggle box.

To prevent this I'd like to do more activities after school. Not ones where they go to a club but stuff we can do here, together. In the summer it's easy, they come out and help in the garden or the orchard, but colder months are more difficult. Just the other night we spent the night bagging seed for the seed swap. They helped me for hours, to the point that they moaned when they went to bed because they hadn't watched any TV that evening! I'd be happy if this happened every evening to be honest!

Time away from here is something I need to improve on as well. Last year I think I only spent three nights total away from the homestead! I'd be happy with this but my wife deserves time away where we can all recharge our batteries and possibly breath in some sea air.

I also want to have more friends round to eat here. I grew up in a busy house where there was often other people for dinner and food shared, loud meals filled with laughter are simple the best. With the bigger kitchen it's so much easier to entertain people and it would be great to have people round just for regular meals. It would be great for the kids to see this as normal, amazing for improving their table manners (I've turned into my dad when it comes to manners, constant nagging at the table!) and how they interact with adults as well.


Building Projects

Ah well this is still a long list!

Finish the kitchen for starters, it's almost there. Just some painting left to do, as well as skirting and architrave! I also need to make up some doors for the floor to ceiling storage unit I've built in the old dinning room.

Then crack on with the shower room before tackling the next big bit - the pantry, utility and downstairs loo.

This is the last part of downstiars to be renovated, so will involve knocking in doorways, ripping plaster off walls and taking up floors. Hopefully I'll be able to seal it all away from the rest of the house and work on it that way, only opening up when things are nearly finished. Stupidly excited about the fact we're going to have a pantry, always been a weird dream of mine to have something like that where I live.


Off Grid

I feel I did well with our [low budget] off grid progress last year, but it's hard to do some bigger things (like solar, a well etc) without spending huge amounts of money, which we don't have!

I want to keep my budget small (free stuff only really) for this and see what I can do. I'd love to create an outdoor oven, one that could be used in the summer and one that could be used to cook bread. Although I like the look of pizza ovens they do use a lot of fuel to heat up, so I want to see if there is more efficient designs involving rocket type stoves that I could make.

Having this outdoor area combined with somewhere I could do butchery would be really handy, maybe with a large boiling pot I could scald the chickens before plucking them.

I'd also like to improve our water storage and usage, not sure what or how I'll do it though, but I'd like to use more rainwater on the garden if possible and work out how much I actually use in the summer.


Work

As little away from here as possible! I want as much as my work as possible to be based here or at the furthest the village and surrounding areas.

I also need to see the writing and some of the other things I do as work. I'm terrible for thinking anything that doesn't have something I can see and hold at the end of the day isn't work! I guess it's in part to the way I was brought up, but also because I've always done practical jobs!


Garden and trees

The garden I had in 2017 was great from production point of view. I'd love to get back to that stage where I'm happy to walk someone round it! I'd like to grow a similar amount of veg but experiment with some grains or pseudo-grains to try growing staples and animal feeds. I need to increase the number of calories I produce here.

I want to take the seed saving more seriously. In 2017 I did a great job of saving seed but last year everything went to pot. It's a great feeling having a number of plants saved but it doesn't take very long to undo all that hard work. I want to work on having a number of plants that I save the seed from year on year for different purposes. I love saving for the seed swap and I want to start giving back to the heritage seed library, with ambitions of becoming a seed guardian at some point, so I need to prove my worth first!

Get some more fruit trees and bushes in the ground. We all love fruit here so it would be great to produce more, ideally a new soft fruit area where I could get in and pick it all would be great.


Infrastructure
So many jobs need finishing off. I need to hang gates, fix the roof on my workshop and clear my yard. The main one is just to keep the place looking a bit tidier though. It does look messy and it shouldn't really.

I'd also like to apply for permission to build a garage where an old tin shack is.. This would provide some more undercover space and be a great area where I could try my hand at learning some mechanic skills to renovate something, maybe with the kids if they show interest, or I force them...

More undercover growing would be great but not sure time or budget will allow that one!


Livestock

I'd like to make my chickens more self sustaining. Rather than buying in meat birds as day olds, I'd love to have a flock here that I could breed meat birds from, whether from a cross or pure bred. Then I wouldn't have to do batches and they could forage for food more.

I'd also like to have some reliable broody hens that I could trust to hatch out for me rather than using a incubator and heat lamp/pad.

Also resist taking on anything else!


Self

I want to really increase the amount of writing I do. Its something I really enjoy and find therapeutic. Hopefully I'll write a lot more for Country Smallholding magazine this year, but I'd also love to write more on the blog as well as to start writing a book - the idea has been buzzing round my head for years now!

Aikido has been great over the last 9 months or so, I'd love to keep up with this as something I enjoy. It's very hard to think of anything else when practicing and it's good for fitness and increases confidence a little with self defence. IT's also highly social with a weekly visit to the pub afterwards and a good chat surrounded by friends.

Walking is also some thing I want to keep doing, we've been on some nice ones with the family and I'd love to combine this more with learning about nature and what's around us, foraging when we can and just enjoying being outside, taking my eldest "proper" camping (no tent) would be great as well.



So that's some aims for this year. Nothing hugely specific this year but lots of things to work towards. I'm sure there are many more I'll think of when I hit the publish button!

If you've set yourself a ambition this year what is it and what are you doing to work towards it?

How did I do against my self reliance goals 2018?

It's that time of year again where I look at how I've done against some self reliance goals I set myself earlier in the year. Looking back I'm really pleased with all we've managed to achieve this year and I seem to have managed to at least tick a few things from the list!

#### And Don't worry I know some people are chomping on the bit to see the new kitchen - a short video tour will be uploaded soon I promise! ####

Community -

Well I think I can safely say I'm a fixture of the village now, I'm involved with a few few things now!

The play group has run all year and we have had a great friend join our ranks to help, so with three of us running it and a healthy number of mums and dads turning up each week it seems like the playgroup will run for much longer yet! I'll have been going to the playgroup for five years in the spring and helping to run it for two, such a great way for families to meet each other and hopefully makes new parents feel much less isolated.

I've also tried to help at the children's school where I can as it does feel like the heart of the village.

After completing the school library in time for the opening of the new school in January, I seem to have been roped into a few more projects since then.

Composting Toilet Built From Scratch For £26!

This weekend I completed a project I've been thinking about for a long time! I finally built a composting toilet! 

 This is project I've been thinking about for years. This place is really lacking an outside loo and it makes it such a pain when I'm outside to have to come in and take my boots off. I really needed an old school brick outhouse but I haven't the time or the money to do it. So I looked at what I've got and what I could do with it.

Self Reliance Goals For 2018

I'm going to keep on the same theme here and write down some goals for 2018, not just self sufficiency ones though, ones for me!


Community 
I'm quite involved with my community here and I want to see that continuing. For the last year I've been helping to run the village playgroup and really enjoy this. One of my friends that I do this with is leaving, so two of us are going to carry it on. I think it's really important for a village to have a fun and friendly playgroup, it's how I've made many friends,  although I have to admit it's not a role I ever saw myself in!
I'm hoping to start to do a few things for my daughters school as well, I'm keen to start some sort of gardening club but not sure how things like this will work.


Children and Family
I spend a lot of time with the kids but sometimes it really feels like a roundabout of pickups and drop offs and when I get home I tend to be cooking or doing something. I want to try and set a little time each week to do something together after school, maybe doing more outdoor cooking, foraging and learning about all the wild edibles under our feet or something along that line. I'm going to dramatically reduce my phone usage around them as well.
I've also loved the few evenings and weekends my wife and I have had together without children over this last year. I want to make sure that we get a few of those in the next 12 months, time together without distractions is really important.


Building Projects
Not even sure I need to write this one down as you can probably all guess what it is.
I want to finish the extension. I am determined that we'll be eating Christmas dinner in our new kitchen next year. I'm going to have a couple of mornings a week without children as my youngest is starting nursery so I'm hoping this will give me the time I need to get it done. It's a huge project and hangs above my head the whole time. There's so much of our saving invested in it and we still can't use it!
I want to get upstairs usable and knock through, the kitchen sorted as well as the pantry and utility room.
Once it's finished I can then concentrate on other things, there is still some patio and slabbing that needs doing outside as well. I'd also love to build a butchery area that I can easily hose down, but after the extension...


Off Grid
I'd love for us to be more off grid. I'm very aware that as it stands we're very dependant on everything either coming in via the wires or the pipes.
Our budget won't stretch to moving much towards an off grid lifestyle at the moment. Things like solar panels are way out of our budget whilst we're still building the extension.
But there are a few things that I can look at doing that won't cost too much.
One is water storage, I'd like to store more water here, both drinkable and for the garden and animals. If our budget will stretch to it or I find any containers at the right price then this is something I'll be thinking about.
A compost toilet is something I talk about every year and never get round to. Even if it's just one I can use in the summer it would be a start! A bucket and a screen would do for a start!
Cooking - I'd love a few extra off grid cooking options here, maybe a simple brick oven outside, a proper wood burning one inside when I do the extension or a permanent rocket stove on the patio. I really want to work on this area in the summer.


Work
I want to make sure that I put the building work here as my main priority, last year I put off working here as I had the offer of other carpentry work. In hindsight I should have turned it down and cracked on with the extension.
I also want to push more with the blog and with doing talks at garden clubs and WI's, other forms of income are something that I'm really keen to explore.


Garden
Well I always have big plans for the garden, but not so much this year.
To be honest I was going to increase it massively, up to about half an acre of veg, but I've decided that I need to finish the house first, the garden can just stay the same size. I am going to start a new soft fruit area and plant a few more perennial edibles, hopefully transforming the front garden from somewhere that doesn't get mown to somewhere that grows a bit off veg and herbs.
I am going to get the edges under control this year though, not sure how I'm going to do it yet but I'll figure something out!


Animals
I've reduced the flock of sheep to 25 as I think my land will cope with it better. Hopefully lambing will be as good as 2017!
The laying chickens will stay at the same number (around 20) and I'm planning on doing a few batches of 25-30 meat chickens throughout the year. I may even try and hatch a batch of quails this winter if I get chance.
I'd also like to start a small flock of pure breed chickens to sell fertile eggs from and to learn how to be better at selecting certain traits with animals. Currently I'm thinking of a meat bird so I wouldn't have to buy in day old chicks in the future. I also think Silkies would be great for the kids and the birds seem to sell well as well as being great broody birds. This might get put on hold until 2019 though!
Oh and pigs, the girls talk about nothing other than getting pigs! So maybe I can put them off for another year, maybe I can't!

Self
I think I have a good level of strength and fitness just from what living this type of lifestyle entails. But I'd like to work more on making my back stronger, as I have started to feel it a bit as I've got a little older, maybe walking more around this beautiful area that I live.
My daughters school has just moved ever so slightly closer and although we'd have to walk over fields it's something I'd like to do when its dry or frozen. I do worry it would be like something out of an Enid Blyton novel and I'd end up buying the kids a donkey to take them instead...
I also want to keep reading what interests me and develop and practice my skills with anything related to homesteading, smallholding, prepping, gardening, farming, bushcraft, camping, self reliance and self sufficiency!


So that's some of my aims and ambitions for 2018, not sure how far I'll get with them but better to aim high!


Make sure you share with me some of your aims for 2018, I love to read what you're up to and which direction you're going.

How did I do against my self sufficiency goals for 2017?

It's nearly the end of the year so I thought I'd do the cliche post of looking back at how things went. I'll look at how I did against my 16 self sufficency goals that I set for myself for 2017. These were rather optimistic though so please bare that in mind...

1. Gain Better control over my growing areas.

This is a yes and a no to this one! I certainly have the veg garden under control now, but I still need to work on the edges and find a way to control round the outside. I have planted comfrey around the perimeter so I hope this will form a barrier that I can mow up to. Weed mebrane has been a game changer as well.

My fruit garden on the other hand is completely out of control and I'd go as far as saying it's beyond saving. My plan with that is to cover it over with plastic and leave it for a year. I'm going to start a new fruit garden in the orchard, with wide rows and hopefully some annual beds in between, watch this space for that one!

2. Garden Smarter Not Harder

I've been really trying with this one!
All my garden beds are now the same size and I think by the end of the year I am up to 54 beds at 10ft by 30inches. I love this size, find it easy to work, although I do have a few double the length. I have weed membrane burnt with the right holes for different crops, hoops and net that will fit any bed, it just seems a great way to work.
A push seeder has also helped me be far faster when it comes to direct sowing and using standard cell trays has made me better at transplanting.

I also had a few failures as well. The strawberry planter I made up (behind the girls in the photo above) is a great example of this. It just wasn't working, taking too long to water in the hot weather so I just abandoned it!

3. Record Keeping
Well I certainly tried at this one but unfortunately I seem to have stopped around August time!
I will try harder next year, it is the key for success I think! At least I know when I started to grow things and how early things went in. The peas are certainly something I'll be trying to get in just as early this next growing season, as well as beets and carrots. I was pleased with how soon we were getting proper harvests from the garden this year.

4. Money
Well this didn't happen! I did sell excess produce at playgroup and at the school gate. I supplied a couple of friends with veg boxes during the summer, one friend had one every couple of weeks, there isn't much money in selling veg but it helps pay for the obscene quantities of seed that I buy each year!
I had a good lambing and sold the lambs as stores in October, not great money but it's nice lump before Christmas.
I did my first paid garden club talk, this was something I really enjoyed so I'll be looking at putting myself out there more next year, I already have a few talks booked up.
Next year I'm going to concentrate on getting the extension finished then I can look at finding some other revenue streams that can be based from here.

5. Staples

I certainly made some effort with this. I grew a double bed of quinoa which seems to have cropped well. I've still not processed it yet though so I don't know the yields! I think I'll plant it again next year, its a handy crop as it doesn't take much care and fits easily into a rotation as it's not related to many of the standard families.
I grew a good amount of early potatoes, which we really enjoyed. I'm going to grow more potatoes next year and maybe create a bit more growing space for them...

Didn't bother with chickpeas though but grew soup peas instead. They taste great but look horrible so I need to find some that will dry green rather than grey! My wife eats with her eyes!

6. Be better at harvesting and preserving

I've been much better at cropping out beds rather than just leaving a few things in the ground that never get harvested. This has meant that I get more crops from each bed if I'm careful. There are still some crops out there that I should have got in though!
I've been dehydrating lots of things with my new dehydrator, this has meant that we can use summer gluts (squash) in the winter. I'd like to dehydrate more veg though as I seemed to concentrate on mainly fruit (mainly apples, lots and lot so of apples).

7. Be More Proactive at dealing with problems
I've been out there a lot more this year so I guess that's been the main thing helping me keep things in line. I certainly could be better at trapping rodents (although I've made lots of boxes for traps) and I need to be better at covering areas that aren't in use so weeds don't take control.

8. Grow more
I have never grown so much as I have this year! We have had so much food from our homestead it's unreal. We've eaten more veg than ever, with multiple crops from each bed, and having our own lambs and chickens from the land has been great as well.
The meat chickens in particular have been awesome and something I'm looking at doing again next year.

9. Seed Saving
I've had more plants in to save seed from this year. I still need to process some of them but I'm pleased with what I've got.
I joined my local seed saving/swap group and have been going to meetings, this has been a great source of knowledge as well as a good way to meet like minded people.
On top of this I have also joined the heritage seed library and have grown a few things for them as well.

10. Hard and Soft Fruit
My wife worked hard to be able to get at the soft fruit early in the season, battling the nettles, and only because of her did we manage to have so many raspberries. But I do think the area is beyond saving and needs to be covered over and start again somewhere without so many nettles!

We also managed to plant another 13 apple trees in the coppice so in the future that should help to stock our larder!

11. Improve the coppice area
I didn't increase the willow numbers but I did plant lots of apple trees.
We also made a log circle and enjoyed the area earlier in the year.

12. Building work
I'm certainly not where I want to be with this one!

Inside the extension is still not at all usable as I haven't knocked through yet. A couple of rooms are plastered and I've made and fitted the doors but there's still plenty to do. I'm hoping it all comes together next year when my little boy starts going to nursery for a couple of days a week.

Outside things are looking a bit better! The top patio is finished and is totally amazing, we had a few great BBQ's out there in the summer and the space worked really well. I still need to get moving with other areas but at least we have a nice area to eat outside and for the kids to ride their bikes.

13. Herbs and Spices
I grew mostly the same number of things as what I normally do, there was a few new ones, like Korean mint and summer savory for example. I really enjoy growing and using herbs so I'll be looking out for more interesting ones next year. I have been talking to some local restaurants and the chefs have tried some of the more unusual things I've grown. The black mint is one that they are interested in so I might put a bigger patch of that in next year!

14. Baking 
Well I've kept up with this one! Even had a proposal due to my Chelsea buns the one day! I bake so often now that it's become second nature, I don't have to look at many instructions or recipes but just know what I'm doing. If I'd could tell my younger self that he'd never believe me!

15. Animals
The sheep have been good this year and haven't destroyed my will to keep them, like they have in the past, they still don't make much money but they are great for the kids and I do enjoy it.
As I've mentioned above the meat chickens have been a great addition this year and having 20 laying birds in pasture pens has also been great. My new pens have really helped me keep my birds healthy and even when it was down to negative 12 degrees c the other night they were fine in their heras panel pens with just a tarp and one side filled in.

16. Declutter
Nope.
Just nope.
I just think there's something wrong with me.



One thing that wasn't on the original list but should have been was learning and training. This is something that I've put a lot of effort into this year, I've attended talks, spent the day with a market gardener, visited another market garden and spent a day there, went to a days course at garden organic on unusual veg and read lots and lots on the subject. Some might even call me obsessed...
I have tried to put it into practice where I can and I have some plans for next year forming in my mind!


So there's my review of my goals that I set myself at the start of the year. I don't think I've done too bad but there are certainly areas to improve!

What do you think?

Did you achieve your goals for 2017?

What do you think should be on my list for 2018? I won't be offended!

I Thought You Were Self Sufficient?

I had to smile as the Morrisons van pulled up the other night. 

I was half way through butchering three chickens when he rocked up, I kept out of sight - more because I didn't want to put the shopping away than anything else.

But it's funny how our own personnel shopping supply is still at very extremes of the spectrum. 

I grow and harvest fruits, vegetables and butcher much of our own meat but yet we're still very reliant on this yellow van that rolls up each week. 

I try to buy things from other places, our flour is all organic and comes from Shipton Mill, the rest of our meat comes from Rick our local butcher and yet there still seems to be many things we buy each week. 

Year round fresh fruit is one, certainly at this time of year - I'm working on this with plans to plant more berries to help bridge the gap, but I still love fresh apples all year round. 

Snacks are another, mainly for the children, I'm trying on this one as well but I tend to bake a lot less this time of year. 

Some staples and tinned products, again I'm working on this, producing a summer surplus that I can preserve and use year round - this area needs a lot of work! 

Milk and dairy are our other major expense, each week we get through 20 pints of milk, a large block of cheese, butter, etc. I "make" our own yogurt from Easiyo but otherwise I have no intention of changing the way we get dairy yet. A milking cow or goat would be a lot of work and more commitment than I'm willing to give! 

Then there's cleaning products and toilet paper and neither of these I'm willing to give up just yet!

What about you? 

How far are you willing to go in the name of self sufficiency? 

16 Self Sufficiency Goals For 2017

My wife has had to go back to bed with the beginnings of a migraine, the boy is having a nap and the girls are watching a film after a busy day at their grandparents yesterday.
I've fed and checked the animals, lit the fire and got enough wood in to see me through until the evening, it's too cold for bedding ridge tiles on anyway so I thought I'd sit down and look at what goals I want to set myself next year and how I'm going to go about them.

1. Gain better control over my growing areas 
I've got two gardens fenced off from rabbits now and this gives me some great growing areas but I'm still not using them as effectively as I could be. Weeds (nettles) have made the fruit garden unharvestable and my large second garden was largely unused last year. This was mainly because I was back at work full time for most of the year so the garden obviously suffered, my time was better spent making money to pay the bills!
This next year should be different though as I'm back at home full time with the children so I'll be spending a lot more time out there. I'm trying to get smarter with weed control, using plastics and mulches. Luckily I did sheet over the whole second garden last year so the weeds didn't take control, this should make it much easier to put into production next year.

2. Garden Smarter Not Harder
I've already made a start on this one. I'm making all my beds modular so that anything I make will fit any garden bed I have. All my beds are to be 10ft by 30" regardless of where they are. Hopefully I'll spend less time looking for the right sized net or plastic and just be able to get straight on to it.
I'm also planning on using comfrey as a boarder to stop creeping weeds getting in.

3. Record Keeping
My record keeping at the moment is pretty terrible! In fact I'd go as far as to say that I don't!
I need to buy a set of scales and a good notebook and record planting times, harvest dates and yields. I like the Mythbusters phrase of "The difference between science and screwing around is writing it down."
At the moment I just plant and use the knowledge in my head if it's going top be enough, a much better approach would be to have some idea of what I'll get at the end compared to how much I'm planting and the yields compared to different times of the year. This would mean that I will have some idea of harvest dates as well and if I decide to go more into growing things for profit then I'll be able to plan the garden much better.

4. Money
I want to make some more money from this place and try to make it so some more of my income comes from me working here rather than away at customers houses. My wife is the bread winner in this household but I still need to earn enough money to cover my expenses and any extras we want.
I want to start making more things in my workshop to sell, as well as growing more produce for sale.
I'm not at the stage where I could start a veg box scheme or CSA but ideally I'd love to be able to supply a few families in the village with their regular supply of vegetables in a year or two.
It's one to work at and in the mean time I can sell any excess produce as well as maybe planting a few crops just for sale. I'm already selling a few apple trees, plants and potting trays through my Etsy shop, but local veg sales would be great as well.

5. Staples
This year we grew hardly any staples, I didn't even grow any potatoes and I really missed having some lovely early new potatoes to have with a salad.
Next year I'm going to plant more early potatoes, I'm still not going to bother with main crop as they're so cheap though, there's a couple of places I might add a few new beds so they'd be great to help break the compaction of the soil.
I also want to experiment with some alternative grains, Some of my friends grew quinoa this year and had great success with it so I might pinch a bit of their seed and plant up a bed or two to see what I can gain from it, I'll try to get them to send me the pictures so I can do a post on what they did to get their harvest.
I'm going to try again (one last time) with chick peas. The mice love them so much that I have only had a few fresh peas int eh two years I've had them growing!

6. Be better at harvesting and preserving 
We all waste some food that we grow but I want to decrease how much we waste, freeze it straight away if I'm not going to use it or do more small batch preserving to keep it stored for when we want it. Dehydration is another method that I don;t sue enough.
I also need to harvest things earlier so the bad weather and other factors doesn't wreck so many crops, I left some beans for drying this year but a spell of wet weather made them unusable, I also lost some beets to rodents that could have been prevented if I had lifted them and stored them inside.

7. Be more proactive on dealing with problems
If I see a problem I need to sort it straight away and I need to keep on top of some problems constantly. This is true of the mice and voles in the garden. They are a constant annoyance, stealing or wrecking crops in the garden. I have built these little trap stations to help deal with the problem but I need to be consistent with checking and resetting the traps to try to keep pests out of the garden.

The same is true with netting crops against the birds, just the other day I was thinking how good my purple sprouting was looking and then in just one day the pigeons did some serious damage to them. If I had kept them netted I wouldn't have had the problem (Although I did take the nets off to net my chickens due to the avian flu warning).

8. Grow More 
As our family gets bigger we just need more of everything that I grow. I could have planted 5 times the carrots I did this year and it still wouldn't have been enough!

9. Seed Saving
I've been getting better at this but I'm along way from self sufficency on this one! Having a larger number of smaller beds should mean that I can dedicate areas to growing more crops for seed.

10. Hard and Soft fruit
My soft fruit this year has been terrible and we've all really missed it. I'm tempted to start a new soft fruit garden from scratch and try to keep much better control over it. I want lots of interesting varieties so we have harvests over lots of months.
I also want to plant some more apple trees around the homestead, as well as plums and pears. My girls eat fruit like it's going out of fashion so the more we have the better in future years!

11. Improve the Coppice Area
The willow coppice is growing well but I did nothing to it last year. I still need to increase the number of willows by a few hundred and the bottom area I'd like to create more of a food forest area with soft fruit and herbs.

12. Building work 
Not really a goal for self sufficiency but I want most of the building work finished as soon as possible so I can concentrate on other things. Having the extension usable would be great to give us more space as a family and having the patio and top bit of garden finished would be great for the kids and so we can have friends round for BBQ's in the summer! Repaying friends and family with food is a great way to self sufficiency!

13. Herbs and Spices
I grew a number of different herbs last year and I'd love to do the same again this year. Ideally I'd like to sell a few to local restaurants if I could grow enough. I use herbs in everything I cook so it would be great to have a wider range of them growing here.

14. Baking
I want to keep baking loads of  bread and try to experiment with different types. I need no encouragement here, I love baking and I love my food, maybe I should be more concerned with my waist line!

15. Animals
I want to make sure that I keep on top of the animals here, with me being in charge of them rather than the other way round. I'm going to be better prepared for lambing and keep being proactive in controlling my chicken flock numbers.
The girls also want pigs, the pen is ready and I can't think up of any more excuses so that might happen in 2017!

16. Declutter
I think we have too much "stuff". If we had less then I think we'd be far nore efficient in finding things and getting jobs done. Things like cleaning and tidying would also become easier as well. Trouble is it's hard to break the habit of a lifetime...

What other goals do you think I should set for myself? 

I'm not planning on doing them all, but if I can move forward with each one then I should be on the right road! 

Have you set any goals in a similar vein for yourself this year?

Homestead Outlaws?

I watched a video this morning from one of my favourite YouTube Channels American Homestead (Just so you know I had the name of my place years before).

The video is on "Homestead Outlaws" in America and the things that you can do that can class yourself as an outlaw all in the name of self sufficiency, a good video to watch if you've got the time. 

The rules over here in the UK are quite different but there are still many things we can do, either knowingly or not, to be classed as outside the law. In fact after watching this video I'd say that we have many minor rules that make less sense over here and are pretty easy to break.

Some of the rules that are things like feeding your chickens or pigs kitchen scraps and animal paperwork rules, home meat slaughter and butchery, to name just a few.

Oh course we've never broken a single rule over here (*cough *cough), but what rule annoys you the most where you live? Do you think there is too much regulation in these modern times?

My Nine Self Sufficiency Goals For 2015 - How Did I Do?

In January I wrote a post with nine self sufficiency goals for 2015, they were pretty ambitious. 

So how did I do?

Increase my growing area - Well I certainly did this. I created a whole new veg garden and although I didn't keep on top of it as much as I would have liked, it produced loads of produce with some food still being in the ground in there now (as well as 150 young apple trees growing on).

I also made some new raised beds in my main veg garden to grow more unusual veg.

We also rented an extra ten acres of land next door to our homestead so this has given us more opportunities to expand in other directions!

Produce more protein on the homestead - With the purchase of 32 sheep and lambs I think we've certainly hit this target, even if we've not tasted any of it yet! We also ate a few cockerels and I grew chickpeas (that the mice ate!).

Improve my composting and "loop closing" - Well I tried on this one but I don't think it was a total success. I made some great compost bins back in March but I haven't used them to their full potential yet and I need to rotate them more often.

Look at experimenting with growing staples - I did a lot of research into this area and read books about growing grain on a small scale but I'm not sure I did that well. I did grow a lot more potatoes this year and New Zealand yams, which are both a great source of carbohydrates. I also grew some chickpeas and sweetcorn but neither crop were successful. 

Increase my number of herbs and spices - I did manage to buy a few more herbs that we now use and grow. The best was the Vietnamese coriander which I'd like to grow each year now as a great addition to curries and salads. I also grew papalo but was somewhat disappointed with it, it was hard to germinate and then the taste wasn't what I was expecting as a replacement for coriander. 

Improve my food storage - This I have done in spades! I've done loads more preserving and also started to learn how to can fruit, My dehydrator has been on more this year than for any I can remember and although the dried apples don't last long the girls enjoy them! I have jars of raspberries to use in cakes and cookies as well. Maybe this year I'll buy a bigger one. 
I have also sorted out a dedicated area to keep the produce that we grow but more on that another time. 

Seed Saving - I said I wanted to save much more seed and start keeping plants apart to do this. I have saved quite a bit of seed from plants that we already grow but done little other than research for selecting plants and using biennials, I have brought two books on the subject and learnt a lot but I'm yet to put it into practice. I might keep my best parsnips from this winter and try to get them to go to seed this year to have my own seed that I've selected. 

Firewood - I increased the willow coppice this year and planted lots more varieties. they've all grown and done quite well but are a while off being firewood yet! My brother and I did pollard some trees and produced a lot of firewood from them as well as cutting up storm damage. I should have done much more with seasoning it though! We've certainly got enough for this winters firewood and some of next years as well, my job helps with firewood as well. 

Baking - Well I've baked more last year than ever before. The girls and me have baked dozens of cakes and hundreds of cookies and I managed to start and use a sour dough culture for the first few months of the year. Since my wife brought me a bread maker we've been using it most days and buy very little bread now, I love having fresh bread each day and can't imagine going back to buying it like we used to. 

So I don't think I did too bad with my goals although there's always more I could do and areas to concentrate on. I think this year I'll do goals to do with our home life as well, improving the house, the extension being a big one! 

What areas do you think I should concentrate on going into 2016?