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?

I Made Our Double Bed - The Economy Of Making Your Own

Lay in bed I could literally count the springs sticking into my back. 

I'd wake up feeling worse than when I'd gone to sleep. The mattress had to go and the crappy bed with it. 

The Mattress in question was 10 years old and the first bed that we purchased after having a few second hand ones from family. 

Our new bed!!!

It was from Ikea along with the bed frame. I broke the bed frame the first night by pushing one bit with my foot and it's not got any better, slats fall out frequently and I had to make some modifications the first few weeks of having it. By the end I'm fairly sure it's just my collection of books that's keeping it up!

Apple Diversity

I'm late in "summer" pruning my cordon apples this year. But as I trimmed them back I was amazed by the variety and quality of fruit in this trained hedge. 

It's a great year for apples and for the first time my main orchard is loaded with fruit, as are my cordon trees in the veg garden.

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 To Make A Quinoa Thresher

So my friends who grew the Quinoa last year and wrote about it to share on here have upgraded how they've threshed their grain. Gone is the child labour and in it's place is some home made technology - my favorite kind! 

They've kindly written me another blog post on processing this years harvest and hopefully I'll get to borrow their thresher to use on my own quinoa which is still hanging up in the extension! 

Last year we threshed our quinoa the old fashioned way with sticks on a tarp which was great fun but felt it was very energy intensive and we didn’t get as much of the grain as possible.  This year, after some research I decided the simplest (and cheapest) option was a home-made flail powered be a cordless drill. 

I already had the drill and some chain left over from another project, the rest I bought from Wickes for about £5.

I had an old black plastic bin with holes in the bottom (that I never got around to throwing away) that we used to grow potatoes in at our previous house. We had such a tiny garden! I used it to hold the quinoa for threshing.  I sat the bin on top of a fine garden riddle and put it all in a plastic trug to catch all the grain. 

The quinoa has been hanging up in the garage to dry off as much as possible. 

I found the most successful way to thresh was to strip as much of the seed heads off the stalks and into the bin and discard the stalks into a compost pile.

Once the pile of seed heads is 4-5 inches deep I begin flailing.  

I started off at a slow speed setting for the first bit and once the heads have been bashed about a bit I switched to the fastest speed whilst covering the bin with a feed sack (I lost the lid years ago!). At this point there was a lot of dust. The seed heads got pulverised and most of the grain was knocked out of the seed heads and I was left with light, fluffy and hopefully empty seed heads.  

I checked to ensure most of the seed had been removed 

 and then tipped the contents of the bin into the riddle 

If there was grain left  I went back to the flail with the drill on the slow setting for another gentle thresh.

Once the grain has been riddled it all ends up in the trug with some of the chaff ready for winnowing / cleaning.  You can see in the photos that the seed is actually pretty clean and almost no stalks or leaves got through the process – it will be interesting to weigh it before and after cleaning.

Parts List

Round bin or bucket

Fine garden riddle (optional but makes life easier)

Garden trug / another bucket to store threshed grains in

Flail

M10 Threaded Bar x 1

M10 nuts x 8

M10 Washers x 4

Chain (long enough to reach from centre of bin to side) x 2

Flail Assembly

1.       Cut two lengths of chain to enable them to reach the side of the bin from the centre when spinning.

2.       Thread two nuts up the treaded bar followed by 1 of the washers

3.       Slide the chain against the washer followed by another washer and then 2 more nuts

4.       Tighten the nuts so they lock tightly against each other and clamp the chain tightly to prevent it moving.

5.       Repeat the process with the other piece of chain ensuring it is 180 degrees aligned with the first (to keep the flail balanced when spinning) 

Thank you Spence! What I love about this is that this is written by the other half of the couple that wrote the last last one on growing the quinoa - a real family concern! 

I also like the fact that he seems certain that his yield will be more due to a better threshing method, less grain will be left in the heads and chucked int he compost. they're going to borrow my seed cleaner and see what they come out with and I'll do the same with mine. I should be able to work out what I can grow per square foot to see if it really is worth growing as a self sufficiency staple. 

So let me know what you think! I'm sure you'll all agree that was a great blog post. 

How would you thresh a grain like this?

Tools You Can't Do Without

A Facebook page I follow posts a weekly question for it's members to answer.  The page is called celebrating smallholdings uk if you search for it.

This weeks question was what equipment, tools or machinery can you not do without? What are your must haves to run a smallholding?

Tough question to answer I feel - depends on what you do and how you do it and even the time of year! 

Here on my smallholding there are many things that are essential to me to keep things running smoothly so I thought I'd list five things that I think are pretty important to me. I'll leave hand tools off this as otherwise we'd be here all day! 

Wheelbarrow

The wheelbarrow is pretty essential to me. I've got three kicking around here. I think all except one have had their tyres replaced with solid rubber ones.

I use them in the garden to move muck and compost onto the beds and weeds back to the compost pile. Every building project has used them in some way, fire wood gets moved by them and children get a ride if they're lucky.  

Chainsaw

Now where would I be without one of these? I can go for months without touching it but when I need it the machine saves me hours of back breaking work. 

It can be used for rough construction and fencing work, firewood and tree maintenance, as well as clearing any trees or branches that fall after a storm. 

Bike

Couldn't round up the sheep without the "bike". It's not because its fun or anything....

Honest...

Gates
Since getting the sheep there has been a few things that have made my life easier and one of them was some good gates. Last year I brought 10 hurdles and they've made a huge difference, they lock together and make it easy to make a pen or a funnel. At lambing time they made it easier to catch and lamb ewes.

It's a purchase I haven't regretted for a second!


Weed Membrane
Not to over sell it but this has changed my life. I reuse it year on year, it cuts my weed pressure by a stupid amount and without it I wouldn't grow anywhere near the amount of veg that I do!

There are many more things I could include but what would be in your list?

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?

Eden Channel Four - Episode Three

So it seems that the group is falling into arguments and a little bit of chaos already, the arguments in the first half were starting to get on my nerves but things seemed to improve as it went on.

Camps
I think that they need to build separate camps, it fairly obvious that communal living doesn't really work with a group of relative strangers. I love the idea of them building more huts and doing the communal ones together is a great idea, these people come from a wide range of backgrounds and some don;t have the skills to build things themselves, although most seem willing to learn.
The irony here is Tom, who was so against Anton building a separate hut, is now building one with a group of three others.

Rations and metabolism
The food situation is playing on all their minds by the looks of it. They've started rationing their food quite heavily, some with the intention of pushing the weaker members out of the group at the start of the episode.
Whenever I watch programmes like this and it comes to food portions I often think of my wife and I. She's 5ft 3" and is petite whereas I'm 6ft tall, quite broad and weigh 15 stone, put simply I need more food than her to operate, but when it comes to manual jobs I'll produce more than her in the same amount of time due to my extra size.
The Doctor, Jenna, made this point to Jack and I quite agree with her. The sheer fact that this isn't meant to be a pure survival exercise but a community experiment should also be a part of what they think as well because different people are bringing different skills to the group. You can rest assured that if there was ever an apocalypse  and a doctor walked up to my house then they would have a place simply because their skills could potentially save my whole family.

Social
Rob the vet and Stephen had a bit of an argument in this episode as well. I can kind of see it from both points of view but I do think that Rob over reacted about Katie's crying and should have got the other side of the story first, but then he's tired and food is being rationed heavily so it's difficult to say how anyone would react in that situation. I could imagine that situations like this would bubble under the surface for quite some time.

Leadership
Tom seems to have taken a bit of a step back on this episode, which is a good thing and the ex army officer, Jack, has stepped up to the plate. He gave a good speech to motivate people, but what I liked was that when people spoke to him with where they thought he went wrong he agreed with them and adapted his thinking.

So what did you think to this weeks offering?

Off Grid Parents?

Now, without wanting to jump on any band wagons (although I know I am), I read about this family and couldn't help but write about it to see what others think. 

In short they're a family of four that practice what they call "off grid parenting". Some of what she mentions in the video is just normal parenting anyway but some is pretty far to the left.

They have two children, one is a child of five who still breast feeds, no bed times for either or times to wake up and they don't believe in medicines or vaccines of any sort other than lemon juice for a cold or breast milk for an eye infection. They say that in terms of parenting and rules that they don't really have any. 

All this I can live with, each to their own and all that, even if I disagree with some of it (anyone that thinks breast feeding at that age is natural wants to look in the natural world and see how many animals are still breast feeding that far into life, especially when they have a younger sibling).

And I do think that what they've done is to be controversial to get media coverage (and coverage from blogs as well I guess - but I know I'm reacting to something that has been created to make me react so it's alright - if that makes sense.)

All this is their own choice so i think fair play to them in some respect, and I know that they're getting a certain amount of social media backlash which I think every family would want to avoid and they may be regretting their decision to go public with all of this at this moment but there is one thing that is really bugging me about it and it could be the reason they've suddenly appeared in the media - they're asking for money to start up their self sufficient life in Costa Rica from total strangers read their funding page here, although you do get an ebook in return for your donation, once it's been written. 

They want £100,000 to start their life over there to become self sufficient. 

So would you going to donate or do you think that the money should be earnt from the sweat off their brow to live the way they want to?

What do you think? 

Eden - Channel Four

I've been intrigued by a programme channel four have been advertising for a while now. 

It's called Eden and it sets 23 adults into the wilds of Scotland to start again. 

They have a good selection for tools, plenty of food to start with, a large number of seedlings, seeds and fruit plants, and lots of stock.

After watching the first episode I came away feeling like I always do with programmes of this sort, I wish they sent some proper adults with a proper work ethic. 

A lot of it can be down to editing but they don't look the most organised group, goats running through the camp eating what they want, not getting the garden sorted straight away, building a sweat lodge instead of concentrating on better shelter for the group, the list goes on. There's also been early romances and lots of lovey dovey stuff that could make things more awkward at a later date if things go sour, again many of them are acting like children which is annoying the older ones in the group. 

I still think it's going to make for some interesting watching and I enjoyed the first episode. 

Who else has watched it or is planning to? 

What did you think?

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?

The Egg And I

Look a non sheep post!

I'm fairly sure I'm going to be pretty late to the party with this one but I picked up Betty Macdonald's book "The Egg And I" from the library the other day and I thought it was brilliant.

It always amazes me that I can read a book written in the forties and it not feel dated. 

This book made me properly laugh out loud with all her tales of life in rural North West America, living without power or running water. The antidotes about the Kettles and their other neighbours are brilliant and she writes in a way that makes you hear their voices and I should imagine the beginning of the stereotypical "redneck". 

I just can't believe I'd never heard about her before. Apparently they've made films about it and there's even fan websites on-line. 

Here is a great quote to give a taste of how she writes:

"The rooster ... doesn't give a damn if you take every egg in the place and play handball. He doesn't care if the chicken house is knee-deep in weasels and blood. He just flicks a speck from his lapel and continues to stroll around, stepping daintily over the lifeless but still warm body of a former mistress, his lustful eye appraising the leg and breast of another conquest"

 Who else has read her books and why have I only just found out about them!?!

I'm always keen for recommendations for books if anyone has any, just leave me a comment (I'm a bit of a book worm when I get the chance).

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?

Prep Much? Discuss!

I think the word "prepper" has negative connotations if brought up in conversation with "normal" people. Saying you're trying to be self sufficient doesn't raise eyebrows in the same way (people still think you're nuts) but are they so different?

It always make smile, and it's normally taken out of all context. If they think you're a prepper they expect you to wear a tin foil hat and have a lead lined bunker in the garden and if you're trying to be self sufficient many just can't see the point of the effort for what you gain at the end.

But you can prepare for anything really and be more self sufficient/reliant- when do you start being called a prepper?

At its simplest I was talking to someone at a BBQ last week and they were asking how far away our nearest shop was and if we had to stock up as we couldn't just pop to the shops. We do our shopping weekly so we know how much of everything to buy to last us a week or more, we freeze milk and I bake bread most days from a store of flour I keep, fresh produce is growing normally and I keep a good stock of tinned goods as well. 

Going up a stage you have to think about something fairly common but unforeseen in the short term. Here we have to be prepared to survive a few days without power and being cut off by snow in the winter for up to a week. We live in the valley of a big hill and it can get quite cold. So I know we can heat our house through the use of wood (which I have a good supply of stored ready) and we have candles ready to use for light. I also know that this winter my wife is possibly going to have to give birth at home so I'l be preparing for that as well, researching what I'll need to keep close encase we're snowed in when it happens (unlikely but you never know). I've lambed lots of ewes so we should be alright on that one...

The next stage is preparing for the longer term but this is where you enter tricky territory and people begin to think  you're slowly going mad. 

My plan here is to slowly increase what I grow, store & preserve so that we only have to shop when we really need to or for cleaning and luxury items and things out of season. Not because I think the worlds going to end or the sky is going to fall on my head, but more because I don't want the responsibility of feeding my family to lie with someone else and be part of that system of control. If the media said to stock up for what ever reason, shelves would be empty in days (or hours even) and people are happy to look to the government to feed them but I doubt it would happen very smoothly. You only need to look at Greece at the moment to see how well that works out. 

The other is trust in what I buy, I want to know what we're eating & cook from scratch. It also save money which certainly helps with our finances. That doesn't mean I'm growing all I eat, we're no where near ready for that, but it does mean I can keep a large range of stuff stored so I know we can eat. 

So do you prepare? 

What do you prepare for? 

Where do you draw the line? 

And what do others think of what you do?

Experimenting With Soda Bread

This last week or so I've been experimenting with making soda bread for the girls and me to eat at lunch time. 

We normally buy all our bread in one go for the week then freeze it, but then there are times when guests turn up or you get through more than you thought you would have and need some more.

I hate going to the shops so the best option for me is to make it! Trouble is I normally only realise I need it when we come to eat it. No time then to let the yeast do it's work and prove the dough. 

Soda bread always sounded like a good option. but when I tried it first of all it was far too bitter. I followed the recipe from River Cottage Bread book but it uses four teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, it turns out that this makes it so bitter it's inedible. Evalyn pushed her plate away and said "I don't like", I didn't like either.

So I searched the internet for a better recipe and to figure out where I was going wrong. In the end I did my usual thing of bastardising a recipe and then messing with it until it tastes nice and turns out good every time.

Here is what I've come up with so far:

500g white flour,

teaspoon of salt, 

Teaspoon of Bicarbonate of soda,

350ml milk with a teaspoon of lemon juice in,

 Extra flour for dusting,

Crank the oven up to max with your bread stone in.

Add the lemon juice to the milk to make it sour.

Sieve the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and mix together well.

Add the milk and mix quickly, kneed for a short while (minute) to pull it all together.

Split it in two, dust it with flour and then slap it on the bread stone.

Turn the oven down to 200 degrees and wait for 30 minute for it to cook.

It should sound hollow when you pick it up and tap it's bottom.

Eat it while it's still warm with butter and peanut butter. this bread goes stale really quickly.

Anyone else got any good instant bread recipes or other soda recipes? I've heard adding oats or an egg can make a difference as well.

Scythe Over Strimmer?

The road to self sufficiency is built on a slippery slope.
You start looking at everything a little differently after a while. And when trying to start my strimmer I thought there must be another way and took a step back. 

I don't do huge amounts of strimming here, but I do like to knock back the clumps of nettles and docks on the edges of the fields rather than using sprays if I can help it. to replace it I'd still have to buy a fairly professional machine if I was to get another one (one that would start and work every time), as it's far more than what the average person needs in their garden. That's more money than I can justify. What's the self sufficient alternative? 

A Scythe!

£10 - bargain?

Spurred on by both Sunnybrook Farm and Vera at Snippets From Labartere, who use a scythe frequently, I decided to give it a go. I got mum to look out for one at a flea market and she came back with this little beauty for £10.

Handles are completely adjustable to wherever you want them

It's an Elwell one so I know it's good quality (I've a few old axes of the same make and the steel is top notch and holds an edge great), its got fully adjustable handles and the blade has four settings depending on your height.

Elwell stamped on the blade, so its a good old make.

The blade has four slots for adjustment depending on your hight.

The blade needs a lot of work to get it back cutting well, but for the moment it knocks down a patch of nettles in the same time as a strimmer does. 

Patch of nettles before...

And after!

The only difference is I can do this at 10 o'clock at night and not upset the neighbours! It uses no fuel, oil or strimming wire, hasn't got an engine to start or keep running, I can wear my shorts and I don't need goggles or ear muffs. A lot going for it at the moment!
Although when I think about sharpening it I do keep thinking back to my geeky teenage years and the Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man - 
"thinking he might fight back against the New Death, Death (Bill Door) sharpens a scythe blade. First on a grindstone, then on an oilstone, then on a steel. It was too blunt. Miss Flitworth supplied, from her rag bag, satin, then silk, finest white silk, never worn (from her wedding dress). It was still blunt. Then it was sharpened on cobweb. Then on the breeze at dawn. Finally, on the light of the new day"
Anyone else secretly turning into a Luddite? Sometimes things designed to save us time cost us more in the long run.