I’m already spending regular time now in the garden whenever I can getting rid of the dense web [...]]]> I intend to spend much more time in the garden than I did last year (I blame endless unpacking and house sorting on that) and aim to get a higher vegetable yield this year (weather permitting!).

I’m already spending regular time now in the garden whenever I can getting rid of the dense web of nettle roots, liberally spreading well rotted horse manure, fresh chicken manure and straw from their housing and home made compost around and mulching heavily with cardboard to reduce the number of weeds. My aim is to spend about an hour each afternoon outside after the day’s indoor jobs have been done.

We’re planning to create small designated raised beds for growing and mulched pathways for walking on all as near to the house as possible recognising that the further away the growing areas are from where we naturally spend time (near the washing line, the large pond, the workshop) the less likely we are to notice when plants need weeding, harvesting or watering.

Runner Bean seeds

Most of my seeds came again from the Real Seed Company who are so lovely and give explicit instructions on how to carry out one’s own seed saving.

They say on their website ‘WE DO NOT SUPPLY HYBRID SEED OR GM SEED,
We only supply Real, Open Pollinated seed. Here’s why:
Real Seed breeds true, so you can save your own seed.
But that’s not the only reason . . . real vegetable seed is better:

You will be told that these new leeks are ‘more uniform’, ‘straighter’ and so on. But what about flavour and adaptability? People seem to forget that we want to eat & enjoy these things – food is not just a commodity!

For all those local to us here this is reposted from the Cwm Harry Community Garden Blog which our permaculture tutor Steve Jones is involved with:

There is a great UK network: Seedy Sunday that encourages gardeners and growers to save seed and to swap them, and it is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Of course it doesn’t have to be a Sunday, and we are holding the first Newtown community seed swap event on a Saturday, 19th Feb, as Cwm Harry Land Trust, from 10.30 am – 3.00 pm.

For all sorts of reasons SELLING saved seed is against the law, but swapping saved seed is encouraged, and even if you have none to swap yourself, you can always make a small donation, or agree to volunteer on our garden project in return for any you do take.

There is a UK national Heritage Seed Library, managed by Garden Organic which exists to conserve rare varieties of vegetables, but it is really important that all gardeners get involved in saving at least some of their own seed.

Why save seed? Lot of reasons really, here are a few good ones..

Saving money is an obvious reason – its all FREE!
Promoting biodiversity and local strains of seed
Conserving older varieties
Building links between local growers in the area
Building local food security
This informal event is free to enter, (donations accepted but not expected), we will be offering some talks on seed saving and growing techniques and offering tours of our community garden. There is lots to know about seed saving, some plants are really easy to save seed from and grow on the next year, whereas others need some specialist skill or attention for success.

If you would like to help organise or contribute to this event in any way please get in touch. Otherwise, just come along on the day, no need to book!

[NB: Look out for a local seed swap event near to you in the coming weeks prior to the beginning of the busy spring planting time. If you can't find one perhaps organise one yourself...]

1. You can never have too many strong [...]]]> Ok I’m not strictly qualified to write this post just yet as the house move has not yet been successfully completed but have a few choice gems to share from others who have recently relocated their family home and am so pleased I listened to their advice.

1. You can never have too many strong boxes and suitcases. Send messages out via Freecyle and local chums that you need every box, basket, crate, case they can spare. We were lucky enough to have a friend move a few weeks before us so I have been unashamedly inviting myself over to her house to help unpack and as each box was emptied it was flattened and squeezed into my car.

2. Take digital photos while you are packing boxes which look different to the rest (most of mine are exactly the same). So you can scroll through the pictures after the move and recall which set of things are in which box.

3. OVER LABEL each box. My poor chum who has kindly donated her supply of 50+ boxes had the removal firm complete her packing while she was away with the children. She had the annoying problem of having a tower of about ten boxes marked only with ‘KITCHEN’ with no idea where the wooden spoons, casseroles might be hiding. Having learnt from her I am now taking care to itemise with a big fat marker pen (‘Blue heavy casserole’, ‘chopping boards’, ‘contents of left hand drawer’)

4. Overestimate how much time it will take you to pack. We started the moment we agreed to rent the new house just 4 weeks ago and although it feels like we have done so much we wil still have to work really hard to get the remaining kitchen items, bedding, bathroom bits and pieces into boxes in time for the removal firm’s arrival early on Thursday morning

5. Have at least a couple of brown tape machines for extra fast assembly and sealing of boxes. Also have plenty of fat marker pens as the house gets really messy and chaotic really quickly and it is very irritating to need to label a box whilst you remember what is in it but then have to run around the house peering over boxes trying to locate one of the marker pens.

6. Create a moving folder which lives in a handy place – keep removal firm phone numbers, letting agent correspondence and this terrific checklist from www.helpiammoving.com

7.Have kids pack a box for themselves so they have easy access to some of their favourite toys while the big unpack is being done.

8. Assume you will not be able to find anything you NEED for a few days and pack all essentials into overnight bags for each member of the family. My lists go something like this:
5 year olds = Favourite snuggly toy, underwear, pyjamas, slippers, dressing gowns, sheet for bed, school uniform for new school, other clothes lunchbags, water bottles, hot water bottles, small book, colouring things, story book.
Baby = Travel cot and sheet, sleeping bag, baby clothes, nappies & wipes, rattles, book, baby food, beaker, baby monitor
Me = Washbag, clothes, underwear, makeup, tin opener, purse, camera, sheet for bed, address book, mobile phone & charger, notepad and pen.

9. Do not pack the kettle, mugs, milk, tea, coffee and squash also buy a tin of biscuits as removals is thirsty hard work.

10. Work on the principle of ‘little and often gets the job done’. Do 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there and gradually everything gets packed in an organised fashion, the old house gets cleaned, all the people who need to know the new address details get notified, monies are paid on time and everything goes well.

Here’s hoping…

My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to [...]]]>

My poor little head is too full of too many things to do (an exciting dot com project with my beloved, administrative work for our small internet business, a small babe and two little kids on summer holidays to look after, a house to keep in order, tummies to feed, this blog to write AND its so hot!) but I’ve got a tiny moment to share the fantastic book I’ve borrowed from the library.

Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Our Year of Seasonal Eating’ is an insiprational and educational account of the author and her family’s decision to leave Arizona where the population generally doesn’t know that potatoes grow in the ground and are 100% dependent on the petroleum industry to bring them food to their supermarkets all year round to a farm in Virginia where they spend a year only eating what’s in season and grown locally (their own gardens and those of small local farmers). The kids and the husband all write essays, facts and recipes which are inserted into the main narrative. Its a fantastic read.

It has made me determined to eat less food which has traveled a long way. Food which is grown to be transported thousands of miles is generally bred to travel well and not to taste good, and for each 10 calories provided by a vegetable or animal when eaten many more calories are spent producing it (fertiliser chemicals, insecticides) and transporting it. Each time I put the book down I’m even more fired up to continue our quest to live a simpler life in which food is not just grabbed as a pre-prepared product at the supermarket and wolfed down but instead lovingly planned, grown, shopped for, perpared and enjoyed with no hidden preservatives, flavourings, transfatty oils, or meat from poorly treated animals hiding within.

I’ve learnt so much and am only a third of the way through the book (eg. why hybrid seeds are a bad thing – because they don’t produce viable seeds for next time; making cheese at home is easy and fun with normal pasteurised milk; how supporting local farmers and buying their produce at a farmers market can have a huge impact on the local economy and environment) but the main thing I’m going to try to do more of from now on is resist the temptation to buy food out of season (because it will have been shipped halfway around the world to meet my desire for it) and to buy food produced in the UK, locally if possible from small enterprises rather than the huge food suppliers.

When one decides to be more of a locovore (someone who eats only locally and ethically produced food) one needs to be prepared to be inventive and creative with making dinners with only what is seasonably available (but not hard if you start being a ‘locovore’ in the middle of bountiful summer!) storing some of the glut of fresh foods harvested during July-October helps.

It was only a generation ago that out of season vegetables (shipped by train in ice-boxes from California to colder states) where a rich person’s party-piece, now they have become the norm and so unfortunately have all the questionable processes which bring these flavourless, travel-hardy cousins to our table.

The book is on loan to me from my local library but I’ve just bought myself a copy (a rare thing these days for me to actually buy a book instead of just borrowing it until I’ve read) as I know I will want to use the recipes time and again, lend it to like-minded friends and to re-read for more ideas of what to grow in our garden.

There is an accompanying website written by the family where the recipes can be found.
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/02/the-thrifty-fif.html

I’m already doing some of them (cooking in bulk, using leftovers, magazine swapping with a friend each month, using a piggy bank for all my loose little bits of change, reusing pots and bread bags for [...]]]> Here’s a fantastic list of easy ways to save money from The Times Online. Some really good ideas.

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/02/the-thrifty-fif.html

I’m already doing some of them (cooking in bulk, using leftovers, magazine swapping with a friend each month, using a piggy bank for all my loose little bits of change, reusing pots and bread bags for storing sandwiches and leftovers in, using pan lids to keep in extra heat and turning off the hob a few minutes before the food is eaten) but was unaware of several choice gems including:

When taking your car for an MOT use a local council test centre rather than a private garage. The council centres do not offer repairs and therefore have no vested interest in failing your motor. Contact your local council for details of your nearest centre.

Check whether it’s cheaper to buy medicine over the counter rather than putting in a prescription. Many commonly prescribed medications, including painkillers, allergy tablets and dermatology creams, are also available over the counter without prescription. Often it’s much cheaper just to buy them this way, rather than paying the £6.85 flat prescription charge.

If you do buy fresh herbs and find it hard to get through a whole bunch, instead of throwing what’s left away make frozen stock cubes. Finely chop the herbs, put them in an ice cube tray and cover with oil. Put the tray in the freezer. When frozen, pop out the cubes and place them in a freezer bag for easier storage. Next time you need herbs for soups; pastas, etc. add a cube to your recipe and warm.

Being thrifty and frugal is definitely becoming strangely fashionable. Everyone’s talking about it, only a few are doing it…

A brief look at our fixed monthly outgoings identified our rent, [...]]]> Ever since we noticed our monthly food bills rising without good reason, since we heard more and more about the so-called ‘credit crunch’ and the predicted downturn in the economy, we started thinking seriously about what options we had to make ourselves recession proof.

A brief look at our fixed monthly outgoings identified our rent, food, fuel, insurance premiums and phone bills as our biggest expenditure areas.

An extremely quick win was to have a short and pleasant chat with nice customer service people at our respective mobile phone providers to agree new (and lower) rates for fixed annual contracts (including a free brand new phone each despite my telling them that neither of us needed new handsets).

This is great news as it means a net monthly reduction of about £70 between us plus two swanky new Nokia handsets which we will immediately try to sell on eBay (it worked last time) without even taking them out of the boxes.

Put in real terms the results of these two short phone calls will cause us no hardship (we will still be able to make phone calls and send sms messages which are the only two functions we use on our phones despite them being apparently capabable of so much more) and will save us the equivalent of the approximate cost of twenty new pairs of jeans, ten pairs of good shoes, about forty take away meals, two thirds of a months rent or one week in the sun for the whole family.

Tremendous.

EDIT: We’ve set up a new blog called Becoming Self Sufficient that you may also be interested in visiting.

Its a new long term project that has just emerged for this family but since Bealers has been Head of Veg Gardening and really enjoying it (having never planted or grown anything before he’s [...]]]>

EDIT: We’ve set up a new blog called Becoming Self Sufficient that you may also be interested in visiting.

Its a new long term project that has just emerged for this family but since Bealers has been Head of Veg Gardening and really enjoying it (having never planted or grown anything before he’s now growing chillis, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peas, pumpkins, all manner of herbs and salad items, raspberries, strawberries and LOADS of potatoes!), since all the recent talk of predicted economic doom and gloom, soaring fuel prices/import costs as well as the UK’s ageing population, increased violence have lead us to believe that there may be some really tough times ahead for those not well equipped to look after their own. We have started to think seriously about becoming more self sufficient as a family and less reliant on others for food and energy requirements.

At present we’re not doing much more than a bit of idle internet research and have found a load of good sites (added to the blogroll here) but have also started to collect books on the subject of self sufficiency, allotment gardening and keeping chickens and livestock.

Bealers is now happily enrolled on a 10 week Beginners Carpentry evening course at the local college from September and I’m really keen to do the NVQ in hairdressing (but at the moment the small baby at home means I’m unable to leave the house without her). Other interests we’ve identified as being useful for those who aim to be more self sufficient are fishing, shooting, first aid, general building skills, plumbing, teaching and counselling, dressmaking, knitting, crocheting. About a lifetime ago I trained to be a primary school teacher and although I never actually got paid for doing it I do still sometimes have an urge to home educate our kids.

At the moment we are fairly close to being a typical modern family but perhaps where we differ is in our new attitude to doing things for ourselves. We are raising our children (twins aged five and a new baby) to know about food (cost, growing, preparation, nutrition), how to enjoy their free time without classes or clubs where people tell them what to do, to spend plenty of time in the fresh air and to understand that money is a finite resource which for most people is hard to come by and too easily spent. We teach them how to sweep, how to make their beds, how to hang clothes up, how to load/unload the washing machine, how to donate old things no longer required to the charity shop, how to borrow books from the library. We holiday in a twelve year old five berth touring caravan and we write letters to friends and family members. All this is fairly new to us as only two years ago we wer, like so many others, enjoying the luxuries that a two salary household could enjoy.

At present we rent a fairly big Victorian house with a good sized garden on a busy main road in rural Worcestershire but aim to one day live somewhere with enough land, outbuildings etc to grow vegetables, raise some animals for food (chickens, ducks, pigs?), to have access to somewhere to fish. We don’t know where this will be. We sold our house in London last year and now are settled and happy enough for the time being where we are taking the small steps towards a totally different lifestyle to our old city ways.

The only conundrum for me is how we will have enough time and energy to manage such a lifestyle. At present we watch very little television, have not much time for sitting and reading, I get up with the three kids early in the morning and I am just finishing cleaning, washing, drying, feeding etc by the time it is our bedtime. My hope is that as they grow older they will be more independent on us and will have their own role to play, Bealers will presumably work away from the home less as theoretically we will need less cash to pay for things and will therefore have more time to spend on managing our home environment.

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/

http://www.goselfsufficient.co.uk/

http://www.simpleliving.net

http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/

The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer

Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is [...]]]>

The Willow Den in the background will get much leafier this summer

Last March we bought the willow withies to make a willow den for the children as our garden has no shade after midday during the summer months. Withies can be bought from November-March in the UK when the wood is dormant.

We followed the instructions found in a great book called ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?: Great Gardening for Green-Fingered Kids’ and within a few weeks of planting at the beginning of April, the willow had taken root and formed a superb play den in the corner of the garden.

Now it is a year on and I’ve been asked to show a picture of just how leafy it is. We’re not sure whether the maintenance of tying in the bows at the top of the dome will be an annual job. It may be that using the recommended rafia twine was a bad idea for long term growth as it just rotted during the winter and the vigorously growing willow burst its joins. Bealers is going to use more sturdy non-biodegradable ties when he has the time to bend the open roof branches over again.

Not a very good picture as the plum tree growing behind makes it look very tall! 

I was a bit shocked to see that we had overspent by £175 on our Housekeeping account but it is not yet the end of the month. My initial reaction was to be cross with myself for not keeping on top of the spending, for not sticking to the budget and for [...]]]>

I was a bit shocked to see that we had overspent by £175 on our Housekeeping account but it is not yet the end of the month. My initial reaction was to be cross with myself for not keeping on top of the spending, for not sticking to the budget and for not doing things like menu planning. I also assumed that the overspend was due in part to the fact we have had lots of friends and family come to stay recently and on these occasions we tend to cook some special meals and have more beer and wine than we do when are at home alone and had eaten out several times.

I chatted to Bealers about our overspend expecting him to be annoyed but in fact he wasn’t and instead he mentioned the fact that a friend of ours had written about rising food costs

When I read her blog post & comments from others where recent increases in food prices had been noticed by individuals but downplayed by the media I realised that our overspend was not a one off as I scanned our grocery receipts and looked for where the obvious luxuries had increased the food bill but couldn’t actually find any.

If food and other household essentials are to take a bigger part of our monthly income we decided to take the following action steps to ensure that we are still able to live within our means and not nibble away at our savings.

1. Be stricter with our weekly food shop and prepare meal plans in advance
2. Cook simple, low cost meals (shepherd’s pie, vegetable pasta sauces, risotto, omlettes, soups) instead of fancy meals with exotic ingredients (Thai vegetable green curry, pizzas with pepperoni & mozerella)
3. Use online grocery shopping as less tempted by ‘off list’ things and can also tally up the total before getting to the checkout
4. Eat less meat (especially as we buy organic meat which is more expensive than tasteless factory farmed meat) and buy fewer gluten-free cakey treats
5. Buy zero pre-prepared food. Hard as we buy very little but do usually have veggie sausages etc in the freezer
6. Use the food in the freezer, cupboards at the end of the month instead of buying more food (eg. use the bread machine to use the packets of bread flour instead of buying loaves costing £1.10)
7. Have an emptier fridge so we can see at a glance what it contains rather than having things going off at the back
8. Buy fewer convenience foods for the children (don’t buy many anyway but had got into the habit of buying small juice cartons for lunch boxes but the kids take a bottle of water to school anyway)
9. Buy in bulk for things we use a lot of where possible (eg. potatoes, carrots, beer, meat) at the beginning of the month having worked out approximatly how much we’ll need and try to use no more (just like people used to do in days gone by according to Mrs Beeton’s book of household management)
10. Plant and grow plenty of vegetables we use a lot of or ones that can be used for lots of different recipes (eg. tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, parsnips)
11. Explore the ‘Value’ range at the supermarket – already buy Value butter and this week discovered that the kids don’t care about the Value bourbons in the biscuit tin or the Value fromage frais in the packed lunches.