What has happened to this website?

[tosca]

Haha, Arctic it aint at the moment, quite the opposite. Temperatures are in the mid thirties C consistantly which is why I am here and not out there! The chooks are panting, the goats getting cross, dogs flat out and flies a b***** nuisance! But we have a plunge pool by day and air con by night...needs must and we are mostly self supporting....ish!

And we don't have to go out and work for others every day.

You may laugh in the winter if we eventually get a 'proper' Bulgarian winter this year....but we still won't have to go to work.

[Green Aura]

I recently made Lutenitsa(?) which I would never have heard of but for a post by someone living in Bulgaria.

[tosca]

Great for using up a glut of tomatoes, peppers and aubergines...which even if we didn't have (and don;t have aubergines this year) we will get by the bucketload from the neigbours later. A very useful staple packed full of veg for a quick meal.

[Green Aura]

It's wonderful tosca. Of course we don't have a glut of anything here as yet, but fortunately T***o did - in the reduced section, so I made several pound jarsful for very little money. Great to chuck in a pan of pasta for a ready made sauce or, my favourite, on oatcakes with some feta. Mm mm.

[berry]

I think the problem is people are generally lazy. I find It far better to get all my 'news' through a twitter or FB feed just because I can get it all in one place. A facebook page would work if someone was dedicated to schedule updates throughout the day 4 or 5 updates a date to draw folk in. If a site/page or feed looks dead no one will pay attention and move on. I think thats what the problem with facebook is.

would there be a way updating the blog bit a little more regular? even if it was using slightly older content from some of our blogs (with permission of course) until a regular writing schedule could be sorted out?

I think some of those things would really help bring in new people and get the current lot more active again.

Just a thought and I know it takes time and energy to sort out a fair few of these things.

[boboff]

In reality the internet has moved on.

The way of finding out about the place is when you google search elderflower wine recipes, and get to come here, then you stay and chat.

So you need a stable platform where search bots keep coming, and lots of people to chat too.

Forums for me are a habit, and when it stops working for months you tidy up your bookmarks, and your gone!

Also speaking economically, isn't this sort of site better during a recession?

The regulars are lovely, and it was a great site.

Those who now work hard at keeping it going, you deserve thanks and praise.

[Flo]

You mean it's not a way of life to be self sufficient? We should be buzzing in the age of austerity then by your logic Sir Boboff.

[diggernotdreamer]

I still think a lot of people are on the inordinate amount of fb pages, everywhere you look, there are pages for being foragers, self sufficient, backyard gardeners and farmers, and of course the fb thing is instant, I know you can look back at stuff from ages ago on here, which is great, but people want the instant gratification of fb, the likes, the replies. So there is a lot of chatter about austerity etc, but maybe not all of it is channeled in this direction

[boboff]

I can only talk personally that since I stopped trying to be self sufficient, and started trying to earn money, I have been considerably better off! Irony!

Its wanting what you have, not having what you want, and that to me is the thing that makes you sane.

[Green Aura]

I think you're right dnd, but those fb pages become a pain really quickly. I followed quite a few for a while but have dropped most of them one by one. Threads are near impossible to follow unless you're online all the time and the level of aggression in some is horrendous.

I was in a fermenters' group on fb and someone asked if they could make a gluten free sourdough starter. I shared the info re my rice based starter (on our main site if anyone's interested) and added that although I used wheat I saw no reason why it couldn't be continued with a gf flour as it hadn't been started on wheat. Another poster jumped on the mention of wheat and started to give me a totally inappropriate and unpleasant lecture. I put her straight but started to notice, in several other threads, a similar level of - well I'm not even sure what it is, hostility, short attention span, trolling? - I don't know but I left the group very shortly after that. And I've left other groups and unfriended pages for similar reasons.

All those groups seem to be largely unmoderated, or they have very high tolerance levels for nastiness. Or maybe it's my age - I like the slower pace and that I can read through a thread easily, without the hackles rising. Not that we haven't had our moments on here, but we deal with them quickly and well, I think. And even though some groups on fb do try to tidy up their threads into neat files they still don't seem to have a search option so you have to trawl or not (guess which I do)

[tosca]

I don't use facebook much for all the above reasons. It saddens me that people have to get nasty and also that, if you ask a question, it soon goes off topic and becomes irrelevent. There are some who have nothing to do here in BG but sit on a computer, getting drunk on cheap booze and seeing who they can bully today. So I have also come off most sites and stick to just a growing one and a livestock one relevent to life here, and not frequented by the bored and nasty. I have also come off spin-off British sites I was on for the same reason. Much prefer proper sites but fear they will all go one day, all of my regular sites followed for years have dwindled and they are all asking what they can do about it.

[bonniethomas06]

Hello!

Sorry to join this thread so late, but I just wanted to stick my oar in - I am sorry for not posting more, I do lurk occasionally but will make more of an effort to comment. A bit like Boboff, I realised that if I ever want to be truly selfsufficientish, I need a mortgage and some land to do it on! So have reluctantly crawled back on the treadmill for the (hopefully) last time to try and raise some funds (doesn't seem to have happened yet). One thing I have learned - it is great living off the fat of the land, but not if you take the choice out of it. I need to be financially free (or at least stable) first.

Because of this I have tried to be as enthusiastic about my job as possible (she says, browsing forums at work) and I suppose it hurts a bit to spend time on a forum about the things I want to be doing instead! How sad is that?

But this great site is too good to lose, and I am so grateful to all of the dedicated admins. So for me, I will definitely be coming back and trying to contribute more than I have been! Will also try and direct the FB'ers over here too. FB has been great to 'get to know' ishers better, but nobody wants to post at length about the latest brewing methods or sourdough starters on there - everyone knows, FB is just for dog photos!

[Green Aura]

And a very lovely dog you have to, Bonnie. Welcome home, honey.

[diggernotdreamer]

I thought it was a lovely bum she had, or was that someone else

[Green Aura]

That too.