Selfsufficientish.com

Here's a quirk on organic produce here. (just putting it out there) There is still quite a lot of "undeveloped" land in the far west of NSW (and other parts of Oz) - mostly rangelands woodland that has never had a drop of pesticide or gram of artificial fertiliser put on it; its use has hi...

I agree Ina - people in minimalist houses live at them, not in them. However I do agree with de-cluttering and providing good and sensible storage for all those things not in current use. We are now also offering our children a free service in simplifying their lives (syn - ultimatum) If its yours a...

I recently read yet another article on "minimising"; mainly to do with living (sic) in micro-houses. Amongst many things were advice to get rid of your books, vinyl, cd's, personal photos and paintings and replace them with Ebooks, digital recordings, scanned images and a widescreen TV sho...

No problem with using "second hand" sleeping bags here. For years working in emergency services response (Bushfire, flood, etc.) we had teams of 5 people and camp trailers set up ready to go 24/7 365 days a year - when called out the team would grab the first camp trailer available and go....

tidy up the house by all means but keep out of my kitchen cupboards, shed and study; I know precisely what's in there and where everything is!

The drought and heat have really upset my toms - they have heaps of sweet and tasty fruit but only about 2 - 3 cm round. The Tiny Tom variety are just comical, they look like undersized red currants. I picked about 1.5 kg yesterday and froze them whole for sauce later.

We just bought a new mattress (we needed another double bed for guests -kids et al grow up and become couples) and the recommendations are that 1/ the mattress is never turned over but needs to be swapped end for end periodically and 2/ replace within 10 years. If I recall correctly, in our 40 years...

Regardless of which point of view you take the bottom line is that growth, by its very nature, is unsustainable. Arguing that changing to a plant based diet, or culturing edible algae in tanks etc. is going to solve the world food problem is, at best, specious.

I have read heaps of this stuff over the years, each one seems to contradict the other, none address the massive population move into cities rather than rural areas and the subsequent labour drain, none address the economic / political issues (corporatisation etc) associated with food production and...

I don't know how you intend to ship furniture from NYC to London but I presume in containers. In Oz it is very common for people relocating to buy / lease a shipping container for transport and storage (most larger removalists also offer this service) A new 20 foot container (33 cubic metres) will c...

don't think I could handle your snow and ice; at least not consistently. Probably easier to keep warm than to keep cool though. 43c on the verandah yesterday and forecast to reach 45c + in the next two days. Strangely most of the herbs (growing in full sun) are loving the heat - except the parlseys ...

I don't know what is happening to our weather here but is seems there is no such thing as "normal" anymore. We bought this place 10 years ago on the back of a 10 year drought - since then we have had three years with good production, 4 floods (one completely covered the property) and are n...

Balmy here too - since Christmas we have averaged 38c daytime and 21c nightime - sleeping with every window and door open . No growth outside the shaded beds - soil temp around 22c so nothing is germinating - or surviving long if it does.

Nothing new in at this stage; Tomatoes and capsicums in full production (under shade now) Zuchinis finished by heat; beans a no show due to virus infected seed. Strawbs in the final stages, rhubarb cropping well . No greens at this time of year (they cant stand the 35 - 40+ degree heat)

WE have a council that mandates retail shopping into the town centre (no retail in the new Millenian Ghettos) The ovrall result is that shop space is very limited, rents are very high and the only ones that can afford to be there are the Bogan shops, take wayfoods and bling bazaars - high cash turno...