Selfsufficientish.com

I was just picking up some rubbish on the beach when I found a lost camera lens cap which exactly matched mine - which ironically I had lost on a previous beach cleaning session. I have also found a couple of pairs of goggles on the beach and a diving mask - always worth cleaning up the beach as you...

Wooden would be nice, I got a delivery at work the other day and it came on a plastic pallet and I haven't got a clue what to do with it! No-one seems to want it.

I bought Home Farm by Paul Heiney when it first came out in 1998 and also the John Seymour guide to self-sufficiency. Perhaps these days they do seem derivative but at the time they were quite unique and probably set a fair number people on the path towards a more self-sufficient way of life. I know...

re school uniform, this doesn't work for every school but my child used to go to a very small primary school and we had a wooden box in the hallway - you could put grown-out uniform or clothes in there and help yourself to anything. I just passed things down to younger children too. Where I now work...

Thought I would say hello to add some balance to the forum map of NZ seeing as I am right in the middle of NZ at the bottom of the north island in Wellington. We moved here earlier this year from Scotland, with one child, a cat and 2 dogs. So as far as doing our own thing is concerned I am taking ra...

Lightwater Valley, that made me laugh, I spent all my holidays and weekends working there as a teenager to earn money to travel and for university! Certainly wouldn't have wanted to go there as a prize for working hard!

I used to look at this forum a lot when we lived in Scotland living a much more rural life in a wood with chickens and growing our own food etc. We have since moved to Wellington at the start of this year. My self-sufficient aspirations here have been limited to limes, lemons and herbs but now that ...

Hello,
You have a mention on the Wellington Library website here in New Zealand!

http://www.wcl.govt.nz/

I have used maps I no longer need as wrapping paper and that always works well.

I always give slugs I find to my hens who are always very enthusiastic about them. Having lots of pheasants roaming in my garden I don't seem to have many slugs, but then the pheasants do more damage to my vegetable seedlings than slugs... I have found the beer trap method works very well, as does p...

We have lots of this - it looks like flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) - bees love it in my garden but sorry it's as far as I know not edible.

(Hope this helps, I am not an expert though so could be wrong!)

My chickens are extremely fond of slugs and snails....

I would definitely recommend nettle soup (good recipe in the River Cottage Cookbook) and now is the best time with all those fresh leaves. Hawthorn leaves are also good now to put a few in a salad. I would recommend the Food for Free book by Richard Mabey which has the information you could ever nee...

What number are we up to? The last time I went to the T-place I wasn't given my card back. I realised this 10 minutes later, went back to ask for it back but despite showing everything with my name on, they refused to give it back to me so I had to drive 10 miles to get my passport. A huge waste of ...

Thanks for these inspiring thoughts!