Where do you start!??

[Bonniegirl]

I've been thinking! I know I shouldn't, but it happens sometimes and I should stop I know! It only gets me into trouble!

But the big question that has started to creep in is:

Where do you start, being self sufficientish?

We already grow some veggies and rear our own meat.

But where and what did you start with and how did you get the rest of your family to think the same way.....or do they look at you the same way mine do...like I've just landed from another planet!??

[glenniedragon]

I started by spending time with my Nan. She was of the generation that 'make do and mend' was the ethos during the war. She was a member of the Land army and then she went and made parachutes later in the war. These 2 experiences impacted all through her life, she was an avid gardener with a HUGE 1/2 acre veg garden-which she dug herself right up to the end and the skills with a sewing machine she gained led her to making her own clothes and wedding dress (dont mention parachute silk!). Her father was head gardener at "the big House" and my Dad has memories of coming back from his Grandad's allotment perched on the wheelbarrow on top of a mound of potatoes. The war years bred a type of self-sufficiencey that the next generation seem to have rebelled against creating a disposable, sterile, consumerist mentality that we all are now rebelling against! So I started on the self-sufficient route quite early (I remeber digging up new pots about 8 years oldish)- and the rest of my family have had that germ inthem too. OH and ILs sometimes need a bit of poking along but they all enjoy my homebrew which tends to swing the arguement.

Thats How I started anyway
Kind thoughts
Deb

[Thomzo]

I, too, grew up with the make do and mend mentality. We didn't have much money when I was young and my mother is brilliant at finding uses for things. Very little got wasted. She used to alter and remake hand-me-downs for me which I then did when I was old enough.

I hate throwing anything away so try to find a use for every pot or bottle that comes my way.

I guess the trick is to start with things that save money and time. Using simple, home-made cleaning products, such as vinegar instead of fabric conditioner, saves a fortune. That way you feel like you are achieving something with little outlay.

Cooking for yourself rather than buying ready-made is also a good place to start. That way you can control what goes into your food and substantially reduces the waste packaging. Then you can start growing food that you like to cook with.

I think if you work and don't live on your own smallholding/croft etc then it is almost impossible to be totally self-sufficient so don't panic about the things you don't/can't do. Just concentrate on making small changes as and when you can. If you are better than the average person then that is a real start.

Zoe

[Stonehead]

I'm the rather perverse result of "make do and mend" colliding with Australian bush pioneers and Scottish crofters plus a bit of hard-core Presbyterian thrift, frugality, restraint and self-denial stirred in. (I'm not religious myself but you can't throw certain habits!)

I actually think we, as a family, still live quite luxuriously by my standards although many people around us think we're poorly off.

I'd be more than happy to live on a remote cattle or sheep station that's half a day's drive from the nearest hamlet (20 people with a pub come store and petrol station), with mail deliveries once a week (by air) and where you have to rely on yourself and the people around you 150%. No TV, sat phone and radio for comms, and a gennie or wind turbine for rationed power.

When the OH and I were looking for a croft, I was seriously tempted by places deep in the Highlands or on the more isolated islands for the same reasons. The OH wasn't, so here we are.

I simply find modern Western culture alienating, weird, dysfunctional, over-indulgent, flabby, self-indulgent, insane and pathetic. I had the TV on briefly this morning to check something on BBC News 24 but when I first switched it on it was on a commercial channel in mid ad break - scary alien women drinking bacterial drinks, bony alien women pouring chemicals over their heads, and some barely post-pubescent male alien flogging something to do with cars. Bleuch!

I'd much rather go and wrestle piglets in deep mud as we've finally had two days of consistently heavy rain!

[Andy Hamilton]

Hmm, where do you start. Well for some I think being selfsufficientish can just be about making a meal from scratch or growing a few herbs in pots. For others it is installing turbines or growing everything you eat.

The whole idea behind selfsufficientish is that it is supposed to be an accessible way of life for everyone. Many people grow herbs in pots for years and then when they have a bit of a garden start to grow a bit more. Perhaps to get your family into being a bit more selfsufficientish you should give them a few herbs in pots with instructions of how to keep them alive.

A rosemary bush in a bucket could be a start as that does not require much attention at all. Or perhaps some mint in a window box. (sorry writing a chapter about herbs at the moment so this is all that is on my mind).

It is an interesting point to raise about the rebelling. I think it is also our parents who were bought up with very little want to give us the best they can. As the environment was not in the forefront of peoples minds during our upbringing this meant over consumption.

The tide does seem to be begining to turn. Almost everyone (at least in this country) now knows about environment and what we are doing to it. Fair enough a lot of people are not taking much notice but a lot more are and have been over the last just 2 years.

[Wombat]

I think the value of selfsufficientish is that we each can find the level we are comfortable with, which I suppose is what Andy said but in different words.

Nev

[red]

my parents always grew a few of their own veg - mostly due to taste and availability - back in my childhood, if you wanted courgettes in the uk, you had to grow them.. not available in the shops. My granddad always grew his own veg, mos tof their garden was down to veg, and he had an allotment as well as a hard labouring job. when he retired, he took on another allotment! We always had chickens too, even living in town. We always made elderflower champage and the taste always takes me back to my childhood.

My parents moved to a small farm when I was about 18 and had a go at 'the good life' for a bit - I went off to uni and thats were I rebelled - they played self sufficiency.. and i moved into the city and got.. urban!
luckily got it out of my system (as a young adult you can spend alot of time trying not to be like your parents before you work out they are ok really)

As kids we always cooked, and I am still stunned at the notion of using a jar of sauce to make a spag bol etc. and always loved finding a new use for something

its almost a relief now - what was considered 'being tight' before - such as bringing back you bags to the supermarket, or saving marj pots etc is now considered 'caring for the earth'

still some of my extended family dont get it. SIL said her boys love 'elderflower presse' I said, why not make some.. she said no elder in the city. i don't believe her.

[hamster]

I'm starting with herbs in pots!!

I'm not very far down the self-sufficientish route at all (yet!!), cos I live in a student room, but the available growing space I have is all being used to good effect!! I worked in a farm shop straight after leaving school and it really influenced how I think about food, so much so that I cannot look at, say, a pint of milk without automatically thinking about the cows that produced it, the farmer that reared them, what's going to happen to the plastic bottle once I've finished with it, etc...

I also read a very convincing article by Graham Harvey about how fruit and veg that tastes better is also much healthier and was pretty much turned off bland supermarket things. Next year I'm going to put my name down for an allotment and in the intervening 40 years between that and actually getting one, grow lots of things in containers etc wherever I'm living!! Eventually I'd like to move somewhere with some land, keep chickens, though it's unlikely I'll ever be able to afford it....

Concern about food spread out into other things, and am now more careful about where I buy clothes, cleaning products, toiletries, furniture etc. Took up knitting again, planning to take a dressmaking course next year and collecting recipes for home-made cleaning products etc.

Family were important too. Was brought up to believe that you shouldn't buy something for the sake of it, but when you do you should buy the best quality, longest-lasting thing you should. Dad and Grandpa mad gardeners, Granny taught me to knit... So my family are generally supportive, but my mother always says, 'Wait till you have children, that'll test your principles!" The bf agrees with me in principle, but is a bit of a lazy sod at times and needs a bit of a prod to actually do anything, like go to the market instead of the supermarkets, and is firmly convinced that video games are more fun than digging....

[Wombat]

(as a young adult you can spend alot of time trying not to be like your parents before you work out they are ok really)

As an old mate of mine would say -

"When you're 16 you think your parents know nothing, when your 18 you're sure they know nothing, when your 21 your amazed how much they have learned in 3 years."

Congrats Red on approaching the 1 kilopost mark

Nev

[hamster]

"When you're 16 you think your parents know nothing, when your 18 you're sure they know nothing, when your 21 your amazed how much they have learned in 3 years."

[fenwoman]

crikey this made me think. I suppose I can say I started when I still lived at home with my parents. Father wa sin the army and we moved about a lot so options were limited, but dad always grew a few bits and pieces if our current married quarters had a garden and at one stage we even had 2 hens named 'Emma' and 'Gertie'.
Then I got married and moved away (married a soldier) and lived in a flat for years until one day our married quarters was a flat with a huge balcony, on which I grew tomatoes in pots. I did this wherever we moved to and when we got a house with garden, I even had 2 chickens until someone reported me for keeping livestock in married quarters and I had to get rid of them.
When I divorced my ex and remarried, my husband was patient with me as I got first 2 chickens, then a goose in a tiny bubgalow garden. That was in the 1980's around the time that John Seymour brought out his book 'complete guide to self sufficiency'. I bought the book and was hooked.
We moved to a house in the country with half an acre and that's where it really started. I bought some hybrid hens from a poultry sale, contacted a goat breeder and got my first nanny who was in kid. I guess that is when it really started as I ate spare cockerels, goat meat, milked the goat and ate the eggs the hens gave me. Then one day, at the poultry auction, I spotted a huge, butter coloured cockerel in a pen and bid for him, eventually buying him for £5 which was a lot of money for a cockerel. It turned out to be a buff cochin. That's where my interest in the breed started. I guess it all snowballed from there really. Several house moves and life stayed the same with my keeping pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, geese and growing whatever I could in the space I had, also making jams, chutney, marmalade, baking my own cakes and pies etc etc.
I've always been vaguely artistic and enjoyed making do, not wasting and turning someone elses cast outs, to something nice to wear and for my home.
My efforts have always been animal based. I love animals so if I had a choice of growing stuff or keeping animals for food, I would choose the latter. I suppose my late father started me off in a small way.
HAving said that, my mother is a total city girl, not interested in anything but money and shopping, my brother doesn't keep animals and would never keep an although he is very green and grows some bits and pieces, has solar panels, planned a reed bed sewage system and uses renewable source for heating his home but none of the family likes animals as I do and they all think I am potty.