Selfsufficientish.com

Well definitely with straw bales for house building they're treated with stuff that is fire retardent, deters pests etc. This plus how tightly they're packed, very dry and then the fact they're covered with some sort of render I think stops them from breaking down at all. There's a guy who built a m...

Thanks for all the replies. It seems job prospects are definitely the key worry depending on location. Personally I'd be happy living on a secluded island somewhere but the wife isn't quite into that sort of isolation and I doubt the kids would enjoy it for a long amount of time. I'm not sure if any...

Recently I've been looking into cob as a possible method for building a house cheaply as the materials (depending on location) are easily accessible and I could do a lot of the work myself. It also looks like it's much more acceptable now in terms of gaining planning permission. I'm also considering...

This is a dilemma I've been mulling over for a while. Basic background - I work in I.T. in London and earn good money, my wife stays at home with the kids but does volunteering with St Johns Ambulance on some weekends. Our kids are 6 and 12. We privately rent a nice 4 bed semi in Essex and I commute...

I figured this was probably the most relevant section to post this. Hope it's ok to post a link to these, I don't make any profit or have any advertising on this link - it's just a link to my Chelsea pics in my Flickr account. Sorry about the watermarks but a lot of pics get stolen from the site to ...

Having chatted to a couple of people I think they're actually fairly ok and not too 'old school'. After initial confusion I now know I have 2 beds, each 4m by 14m. The first largely contains what looks like some sort of green manure, and the odd potato and leek. Very workable soil as the previous gu...

well i cant remember if whyquit.com, has been mentioned before or not ( think possibly not, as dont remember ever visiting their site before today) I have had a quick look, and very impressive! well thats not really the right word, frightening, inspirational, and so on are nearer the mark! I have b...

Hi, Just came across this thread. I'm far too lazy to check if someone has already mentioned this somewhere in the previous 10 pages but I managed to quit cold turkey using the method at whyquit.com. The main method is provided free as an ebook download, and there is some very good information there...

So I had to give up the last allotment a couple of years ago as we moved from Kent to Essex. Put my name down for one in the town we moved to as soon as we moved, was told 3 years waiting list but got a call a couple of days ago with 2 to go and view. One was tiny and badly overgrown (to be fair the...

Nutrient and pectic enzyme have now been aquired. And all family members briefed to not throw away wine bottles.

Currently a rather nice smelling blackberry/water mixture is sitting in a cupboard, yeast and nutient to be added tomorrow...

Fantastic, I need to find more containers then!

All of them?

I'm pretty sure what I have here are rosehips, haws, sloes (one tiny bit touched on my lips dried them out instantly!) and hopefully elderberries? The elderberries I'm not very sure about. The 'sloes' have an off-yellow colour inside and a stone inside. The 'elders' come form a large tall bush that ...

Well all the stuff turned up today, and I have bags of frozen blackberries filling up my freezer so here goes. I'm using a very basic recipe and just trying 1 gallon to see how it goes. I have 2 plastic demijohns so I might try starting a different recipe after the first one is in a dj. One thing I ...

I'm about to embark on my first ever home winemaking, using foraged blackberries and a simple recipe found online. I've started reading up on it and got my equipment ordered. I have a coupel of queries I either can't find or am gettin gconflicting information on. There seems to be 2 camps of winemak...