Selfsufficientish.com

Hello and welcome from a ex-Watfordian.

Hey folks, I'm starting to think about my herb garden that I hope to build this autumn/winter and plant out in the spring. Does anyone know of any perennial herbs that are tolerant of hot summers and cold winters. I'm talking about temps of 30-35C over summer and maybe a month of snow and temps down...

Hi Demi, My first major period of renovation starts this weekend with the roof and the chimney stacks. I'm going to (I say "I", but I actually mean the guys I've hired) strip off all the old tiles, keep those in good nick, replace all the battens and lay a membrane, then retile it. I'll ha...

View from my bathroom window here in Bucharest, mid-winter. http://i1248.photobucket.com/albums/hh482/maykal1/view_bathroom.jpg View from bedroom window at my house in the countryside in Transylvania. http://i1248.photobucket.com/albums/hh482/maykal1/view_bedroom_sas.jpg Bit of a difference, no? :ic...

We must remember in the days before the invention of the binder or reaper,gangs of men in line cut the grain crops and laid it in swaths for the women to bundle and pick up. This was not so long ago. It's still 'now' in Romania. Teams of men cutting crops with scythes is not an uncommon site here a...

Thanks for the comment and thanks especially for the video clip Rachel.

I'll give it a go but it does look like hard work, and as Durgan says, backbreaking, especially as I've already got a bit of a dodgy back to begin with!

Hi! I have an area of garden about 900m2 which needs cutting. The land is too rough for a mower at the moment and I'm not sure I want to splash out on a strimmer at this point in time, so I'm thinking of cutting it with a scythe the way all the grass is cut here in the countryside and has been since...

Finally got my house in the countryside :cheers: Plenty of space for self-sufficiency projects. It has about 6 redcurrent bushes (just harvested about 2-3kg for jam), 3 plum trees, a pear tree, a small and decrepid apple tree, grape vines (probably about enough grapes for 500-600 litres of wine), ra...

I always thought that referred to an inability to complain to anyone who actually matters ... You know, that thing where people tell the waiter that everything's fine and the food is lovely, and then spend the rest of the evening moaning privately about how awful it was? My grandmother's terrible f...

Some people are just born moaning, it's their personality. Like being happy or sad. Take a moaner, give him a million quid, he'll celebrate, but within a month he'll be moaning about how people treat him differently and how the tax man is screwing him for all his worth. I think my OH takes the biscu...

My OH loves eating brains but I detest the texture. Kidney, liver, heart - all fine. Made some breaded balls a few months back, which were quite nice. Tried doing the same to the liver from a Black Sea turbot - not quite so nice (although again, the OH loved it - but then she also eats cock's combs,...

US documentaries have been doing it for years. Many shows made by or for the big documentary channels (NG, Discovery, et all) are recorded with different narration tracks, using an English narrator for the show's UK broadcast and and US one for US broadcast. As a result, what seems like an English d...

bill1953 wrote:Mice and rats alone far outstrip the human population.

Also, isn't one in three living creatures a beetle?

...One example being, if we all drove cars that did at least 50 mpg, think how much longer the oil would last. ...This not only stops your ordinary local peasant from buying local property, but can ruin the local economy. There is no point in having local shops/pubs/schools/surgery/etc, if the plac...

Obviously it's hard to advise without seeing the wall first but the surveyor is probably right. When you say 'flaking', what exactly do you mean? Are there elongated slits appearing in the paintwork from which the flaking is beginning, or are they more irregular flakes (say, like flaky skin)? You sa...