Self-sufficiency, Self-reliance And Me Rambling, As Usual!

I'm a bit behind as I started this post on Monday!😂 That was the day Jon went back to work after his annual 2 week summer break.! I have a busy life normally but there is always a bit more going on when he is at home all day.

I'm a planner and he is a doer so we fit together very well; I have to take care when asking for something to be done so I can allow for associated mess and clean up time -  when I ask he has the habit of starting it fairly sharpish!

As I wrote most of this whilst sitting in the garden on the tree seat, it was a balmy evening and the sky was pale blue mottled with clouds after a day of thunderstorms and rain. There was not a breath of wind, Jon was planing a seat made out of tree trunks for our elderly sheep-farming neighbour and our new sheep dog pup was running around as unsure of the noise.

On evenings as such it is so very hard to remember that Covid-19 and the pandemic are still having an adverse effect on our lives. I say adverse as we are generally still managing to live our lives the way we were before. 

I started to think about the following definitions, I think I have them correct, as whilst we have been, and still are, in lockdown we are as ever doing as much for ourselves as we can. I began thinking the other day about these terms and as the UK begins to relax the rules of lockdown. 

SELF-SUFFICIENT 

This is where you produce, obtain or already possess what you need - where you have enough.

SELF-RELIANT

This is about your skills and abilities with aspirations of non-dependency, not about having enough of something. 

We are no where near totally self-sufficient regarding our food but in lots of ways we are self-reliant. I know some people may think the two are the same but they are a little different. We are almost self-sufficient in the food we like to eat in the Summer months. We are self-sufficient in the wood we need to heat our wonderful Rayburn over Winter as we can acquire timber from the sawmill where Jon works. In turn we are self-reliant in not relying on paid-for energy to heat our home or water and, if we so desire, we can cook all our food and meals with the Rayburn or on the top of the living room wood burner; obviously we have other appliances that add to our energy bill.

What we are truly self-reliant in is various skills around the house and our little homestead so we very rarely need to call a tradesman. Thanks to Jon's talents we never need a plasterer, painter/decorator, locksmith, plumber, carpenter, fencer, builder, tiler, roofer, glazier but sometimes need an electrician. Jon has been know to sweep the chimneys but both the Rayburn and wood burner have had the professional treatment once since we came to Bronllan.

I can't imagine how much money we have saved over the 17 years we have been together!

If I'm being honest I was never happier than in the early days; when the PM made the historic announcement 4 months ago  "you must stay at home" I adhered to the rules very strictly. 

We live 13 miles from the seaside town of Aberystwyth and are now seeing more people out and about, including tourists. We're going back to not feeling very keen at all on going into the town so I now wear a mask in the shops; there are opinions about the use and efficacy but it does make me feel a bit more comfortable in places where people are not social distancing. 

So, as far as food is concerned we're trying harder with the self-sufficient thing especially now we have the poly tunnel; that has been a real learning curve as we had it just at lockdown and I'm already looking forward to producing food over Winter and into next year! Planning, always planning.

I hope to preserve some of the things I grow; I've a dehydrator on my birthday list. I've always thought it important to have food in stock in case a situation arises, as recently. There'll always be dried goods in the house and will persevere in our aims to keep us all provided for, be it through sufficiency or reliance.

Anyway, talking of sowing and growing, here are a few photos from the garden this morning.

I've borrowed some bean poles from friends so I can support the runner beans I'm trying to grow in the poly tunnel, not sure how they will do but whatever! I have little rubber hats on top of the poles to protect the tunnel roof.

I've planted out nine more dwarf bean plants as these seem to be doing better outside than in, again, see how that goes. .

Some lettuce seedlings grown in the poly tunnel will hopefully give us more salad for a while yet and these are planted outside, too; I've had another good year with salad leaves!

I've fed the tomatoes with my homemade nettle feed for the first time today. I had to dilute it 1:10 before using it and it will last a while as I made 24 pints of it!

My tomatoes are just beginning to ripen; here are some of the variety Black Russian.

In the back right corner you can just see something coming up and they are Snowball turnips.

The corn outside the poly house is coming along really nicely, as are the beans sharing the bed - can't say the same about the squash in the middle! 

The blueberries are great, sooo pleased with them and picking every other day or so.

This year is definitely one of firsts; tried to grow borage a couple of times but this year actually managed it!

So, today is Saturday just after 8am. Jon is outside painting the listing with the youngest, I've fed the chooks and looking forward to a day of indoor jobs today. It's cooler outside and I've been and taken a quick look at everything. I'll probably go out later and bring in a few goodies like some fresh spuds, kale, blueberries to add to the others in the freezer and salad for lunch; some is going to seed and this will give up some space for other planting to provide us with eatables over the Winter.

As ever, stay safe, enjoy your weekend and hope the weather is not too hot, cold or wet for you in the coming days.

Bye for now,

Love Lou.xx

 

Moving Forward At Our Best Pace And Keeping Track Of Progress!

That's a title, but it sort of draws a finishing line under some things and for us to start others. Personally I've made the decision to keep this as a diary/record of us and our stuff; I think some people are just too busy to visit other blogs and see what people are getting up to; I know I like to read a couple that really interest me and that's about it so checking if people have commented on my ramblings I think is something that will not now be my main aim, but thanks if you do. It also gives me the opportunity to REALLY ramble on without worrying that people can't be bothered to read it!😃

I've kept my Twitter account for the Airbnb rooms, and I do follow people other than those directly aimed at that, but I'm careful what comes into my feed. From next week I am having a couple of days off social media; I'll take it off my phone meaning I'll have to get the laptop out to use it; not exactly the instant way Twitter is meant to be used but that suits me!

And so...Jon and I had a conversation this morning, at length, about what we are trying to do and where we are just now.

This was triggered by the fact that we've come to the conclusion, after some monitoring our electricity meter is not working as it should. I give 2 meter readings each month, one for the cheaper night rate and one for the more expensive day time right. However we have discovered the meter is switching to the low rate at the wrong time of the day - we believe it should correspond with the times given to us by our energy company or how can we expect to make the most of the cheaper rate period? I'll be talking to them tomorrow to get something sorted but we've also arranged to have a smart meter installed at the end of the month. I was against these as the older generations of them meant they were not compatible when you switched energy company but this has now been changed so that is good.

On the back of this we know that it costs approximately £350 per year to use an emmersion heater; as we have this turned on in the Summer only and run, at the most, 2 baths a day and I wash up a couple of times it seems a huge amount of money. Soooo we are going to start keeping the Rayburn lit through the Summer months as well as the Winter. This may sound to some people like duh! we should have made this decision from the get go, but you live and learn. I think for most people energy is the biggest outlay each month.

The energy issue has lead us to think that we have taken our eye off the ball a little recently when it comes to the reason why we moved to Wales and what our aims were. It was never about living what is often described as a frugal life. It was about being self-sufficient and self-reliant in the main, getting back to basics on our little homestead; saving money by not wasting money is our goal along with generating an income so that Jon does not have to work outside of the home.

We are not an extravagant family but our boys will never go without. However they are taught where money comes from and that we can't always have what we want when we want it. However, generally in our house everything comes to he/she who waits and that always works for us!

I talked in my last post about extending our growing area for next Spring and that is very exciting. I'm now working on the layout for all the growing areas because, heavens to Betsy, if I can't supply the four of us with a really good amount of food with the space we are going to have then I don't know what!

So, we're keeping our focus on the job in hand, to reach our goals as we make them, to be are here doing what we signed up for and knowing that we really are, for us, living the dream.

Onwards and upwards!

Pre-Rain Round Up.

The weather here is atrocious, really. The forecast said the rain would be with us hour upon hour upon hour and it surely is. Anyhow I managed to get to and from the room to ready it for a short notice booking we received yesterday afternoon for this evening.

I have some photos to share which as you will see were taken when the weather was MUCH better in the run up to and at the weekend.

Jon has had a couple of quad bikes in the shed needing some work to get running for the boys. He got one working and they both had a good few minutes riding up and down the garden.

Unfortunately they both still need a bit of work but there you go.

Recently I took part in a stationery swap and this was the lovely haul I received; post cards, post it notes, stickers, washi tape - all just lovely; thanks to Fiona my swap partner.

In Aber at the weekend I popped into Craft and looked, as usual, at the glassware, crockery etc and found these two bottles for £1 each. They will be great for when I, hopefully, make blackberry cordial later in the year.

We had been trying to sell the ride on mower recently but found it quite tricky. However, Jon was doing his best Forrest Gump impression yesterday mowing the garden and he has decided now to DEFINITELY keep it; much easier than strimming!

Now into the Poly House. These are the latest three tomato plants to be put in their final pots. If all the plants I have growing come into fruit I will have tonnes!...

and there are flowers on two or three of the plants which is great!

I have planted two piquant pepper plants in a trough but have three more plants. I am running out of floor space so will try and keep all these plants bushy, if I can, so they will fit under the benches a bit.

Here are my gherkins, four in total, which may be too many for the space I have given them but I guess they will support each other...

I had a sneaky look at my Arran Pilot spuds yesterday and found one a bit smaller than an egg so earthed them back up again as they shouldn't be ready for a few weeks yet but very exciting!

The strawb plants are fruiting well and spotted a couple of red ones yesterday.

The spring onions in the sink are finally really looking good with more small ones coming up, too. Shame we have eaten all of the lettuces, which also grew brilliantly in the sink; I have sown some more but need to do them more regularly than I have been.

I think that about covers everything. 

I am soooo excited for the harvest to come. After the rain I will do a post about the veg patches as it is all looking how I could only have dreamed before we moved here. The idea of me really producing a good amount of our own food, trying to be self-sufficient and self-reliant is amazing. I know it will take a few years to get the amounts right of things I grow to keep us fed, getting through the gap where much doesn't grow etc but I hope to keep good records from this year's harvest and into next year so I see how the numbers stack up.

Right, going to get some lunch now.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Homesteading v Smallholding

This really is a bit of a blog ramble and I'm not quite sure of it's purpose but whatever. 

I recently came across something here on t'interweb about the difference between the terms smallholding and homesteading and the ideas behind both. I like both these but after reading over a few things I think we are more of a homestead than a smallholding.

Our property doesn't have purpose-built housing for animals on site, although our buildings could very well be converted into animal accommodation - we prefer to make money from them via humans!

We are using the land at the house mainly for sowing and growing because we plan on making use of the three acre field we have up the road from us, in part, for some animals - hopefully pigs first. I really must take a picture of that sometime, but here you can see what the shape of the land looks like; a bit weird I know!

The narrow part is what I always refer to as the walk way, although it is wide enough to get a car down it once there is a decent layer of hardcore or something similar put down; the road shown going straight up from the narrow end is a five minute walk to our house.

However, back to my original thoughts. Homesteading is also about using the things around you to make other items you may need. All the way through our time together Jon has always been very good at reusing and recycling. He always likes to keep things 'in stock' just incase they come in handy. (We had a coffee table that we didn't know what to do with and it is now the base for the school chicken house he is building.) Therefore around the house and garden we have chairs, seating, clothes peg boards, tables, the housing for the chickens and soon to be ducks not to mention my Poly House, amongst many more. 

Anything to save money and not waste what we have come across/acquired along the way! This is a way for us to be self-reliant because we don't have to buy everything we need and also we don't have to pay for tradesmen; this is for simple things like replacing a lock on a door or decorating the rooms to rent, plumbing jobs etc; we are so lucky we rarely have to pay out for that kind of thing.

I am keen to preserve more of what I will, hopefully, grow each year so that I don't have to grow the same things thereby trying different food. Last year was my first attempt at preserving anything and I did manage some great pickled beetroot, apple sauce, a good supply of onions which kept very well in the cellar store room and turnips were a great addition to meals along with courgettes, cucumbers, salad leaves and lots of herbs. I have some root vegetables growing this time along with potatoes so this will allow us to be more self-sufficient when it comes to food shopping.

Oh this really IS a ramble - sorry but my brain is ticking over, sorry!! 

At this point I could say that for the first four months of the year we had 519 eggs from the 11 chickens; this works out at 47 eggs per chicken. We are selling quite a lot, about £26 worth last month. We use some of the money to buy feed but as it seems it is the only way the boys are going to save money for their summer holiday we are buying things like grit for the girls, but at least we are doing something towards spending less of our own money at times. The ducks may come before we go away, depends if the supplier calls Jon again.

In other areas spending is not quite the same but we hoping to have the next Airbnb room done as soon as we can and that takes a bit of investment; but that also has been of great benefit since we began renting it out. Financially of course but also that we are confident people will return when we have more space - we already have our regular business gentleman who has been to us three times already since last month!

So right now I think we're homesteaders; whatever the description we are beyond happy.

I think I'll stop just now or you may get p***** off with my epistle!

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Mid-Week Musings

So the boys left with the Gramps Sunday lunchtime with Jon going back to work on Monday.

I have been keeping myself busy and on Monday...

I finally planted out ALL of the beetroot. You can look at it in one of two ways, either I sowed too many seeds in the beginning or I was cleverly thinking that I wouldn't have to grow it two years on the trot as I will have jar upon jar of it pickled! You decide!

Then I weeded around the turnips, onions and broccoli.

I had a few sugar snap peas in a drainpipe in the Poly House and have now put these in one of the tyres around a tripod; I hope they perk up as they were looking a bit poorly. I think they were a bit overshadowed by the cucumber plants; this is a close up to show said cucumbers which are growing very healthily and that there are lots to come, it seems.

I re-did the canes on the beef tomatoes and they are much more secure now.

I managed to turn over the compost heap with the help of both wheelbarrows. It is definitely coming on well but I really need to get right down to the bottom.

(I should point out that I've had to move the laptop to the other end of the kitchen table because the sun is streaming through the front kitchen window and I couldn't see a thing on the screen!)

Yesterday I gave the Poly House a really good tidy out including brushing out seed trays that are now empty ready for next season's sowing. There is not much going on in there at the moment; I'm sure there is something I could be doing but can't figure out what.

I managed to do some good work on my December Daily and finished three pages. Then domestic stuff was washing done and put outside, some ironing and clothes and bedding put away. I have the boys' school uniform washed and put aside but not doing anything with that yet as not sure how much of it will fit them by the end of the summer hols!

Jon and I went to the builders yard for supplies, more of that in a moment, after he finished work and he bought this for me. Aaah.

You can just see in the background my lettuces coming on. Decided to try growing these along with the leaves that are in the drainpipe above.

I am a little concerned about the tomatoes. I have picked some and we have eaten them, yum, but the bush ones are not turning red at the moment. I have, however, been reliably informed that when they turn red they emit a gas which helps to turn others red; maybe I just need to be a little more patient and not pick any for a while when they DO turn red. My middle name is definitley "learning all the time".

Now, regarding the trip to the builders yard. You may remember back in January I wrote THIS post, and then I wrote THIS one! The end room is really coming on and this is the bathroom. The tiles I mentioned a while back which the boys were helping to carry into the shed were used for the back wall, Jon made the frame for the mirror we had in stock as well as the duck board for the shower tray. That was another freebie; the tray was lying around at the saw mill, was a bit long so Jon shortened it, glued it back together and sanded it down and you would never know, then the toilet was from Freecycle and the door was a bargain on Ebay.

Last weekend Jon painted the living/sleeping space and we chose this fab purple for the end walls and used magnolia on the other two.

Carpet is coming in a couple of days, grouting on the shower, which is to the left of the mirror, will be finished tonight then it will be done for now. Later we need to look at curtains but we have a great side unit that was going for free, you see we love that word! which will go in later of course. So, where am I going with THIS ramble you are probably asking? 

Well, surpsingly we have changed our mind, yet again. The end room was to be a guest room and nothing more but I have a friend with a self-catering cottage down the road from us and she said we should put it on Airbnb. You may remember that I said I didn't want people in the garden, the space taken up which we had dreamed of for so long etc. etc. However, Jon and I think we can do this without too much impact on ours and the boys' lives. The other thing is the field we own down the road from the house would take a lot, and I mean a lot, of money to turn into a viable plot for camping and would take a good year or more to get done. 

Therefore we are going back to, not sure what plan X, Y or Z, where we use the field as more of a smallholding to be as self-sufficient and self-reliant as we can with our pigs, Jon's agricultural building store, his tool shed, maintenance materials, all his other manly stuff and who knows what else. He would be able to give up work then as we are not looking to be millionaires, just get the qualtiy of life we have both been looking for and want for the whole family. I pretty much do as I please and always have since we got here, and I am very lucky in that, but this would mean Jon could be at home, we would work together, have our desired pace of life for us and the boys and do what we want to do.

Another phew! We may get this first room let out in around October just to see how things go and after that Jon can look at converting the next two rooms.

Isn't life a killer? What can I say but what a ride! As it says at the bottom of my blog posts - 

It isn't love that makes the world go round, it's love that makes the ride worth while.

I can't think of anybody other than Jon that I would want to travel on this wild ride of ours.

I think that really is quite enough rambling.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

The World Has Indeed Gone Mad - Possibly.

Somebody mentioned the other day that the world has gone mad.

I am beginning to think this is true. By this morning more people had registered to be a member of the Labour party than the total membership of the Conservative Party to possibly vote for a man who has lost the confidence of most of his fellow politicians.

News states that a serving soldier was possibly almost abducted on the street in possibly a terrorist situation.

You note the frequent use of the word possibly.

All things in life and the world are possible -good or bad it seems.

This is a similar conversation kick started by Ilona of Life After Money.

What can you do if things around you are seemingly falling apart? I came to the conclusion that, as selfish as it seems, I am so pleased we live where we do because we seem quite removed from a lot of things. Plus, we are removing ourselves from a lot of things trying to be self-sufficient and self-reliant where we can.

I have for a while since the Brexit thing, and I really am not a very political person but it made me think, decided that you really have to look after number one and if that is not the train of thought of others then frankly I'm sticking my head in the sand for the sake of me and mine and just getting on with my own *hit. Rant over.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Beating Myself Up Unnecessarily, But I'll Get Over It!

Just found this post by Dawn on Doing It For Ourselves In Wales about smallholding and self-sufficiency. Truly inspirational as you normally are, Dawn. 

Jon and I feel so very, very lucky that, in effect, Bronllan came with the field which we now own - we didn't actually pay any extra for it. It definitely needs work before we can use it to any degree as we cannot get any vehicles onto the land before we literally make an in road down the lovely tree-lined, grassy walk-way leading to it. But we are determined to make use of it because so many people dream of having a smallholding or land of their own but for lots of reasons are not able to follow that dream. 

I keep reminding myself and Jon that we have only been here just over six months and in that time have achieved lots of things and haven't failed just because we are not raising chickens, our grow your own plans are to nothing and are without my yearned-for-pantry full of preserved produce! Primarily the house has pretty much had a complete renovation, we have settled the boys and ourselves into school and the community, had our first Christmas, Jon has found himself a job which is close to home and aids our new life as we have access to additional free wood for heating the house and we now have our day to day life.

However, we do want to do other things and living here now is giving us options to, eventually, make the right decisions for us as a family. We are lucky to have established outbuildings on the land of the house and to many people these would make a wonderful business opportunity as I talked about here. 

However a short while ago Jon and I were sitting by the fire talking, as we do much more these days, and we both came to the conclusion. We spent so much time looking for and finding our dream home where we have no part of our land that includes shared access, no near neighbours to take into account and all that we have is ours. And to be honest we have come to the conclusion that we are not prepared to give that up all that to have people traipsing through our precious paradise.

People reading this will probably think, "crikey, make your minds up will you?" and maybe I should learn to keep my mouth shut so I don't look like I'm full of big ideas but putting nothing into practice, but you have to be happy with decisions you make. Before we came here the plan was for Jon to have his own business making things from wood, re-purposing, re-using and recycling items etc and we are now going back to this but he will not be giving up his job straight away.

As Dawn said, until you get to do what it is you want to do you can prepare, read and organise so you are good to go. Therefore in the meantime we are going to be using part of the garden for US for a greenhouse or poly tunnel and maybe chickens - I hope so and see what we can do for ourselves before Christmas whilst I continue to refer to all the lovely people online for help, wisdom and advice who are doing their own thing and whom we hope to emulate in the future. 

Lou.xx