Selfsufficientish.com

Hello and good luck from neighbouring Romania. Just been looking at your blog, looks like a lovely set up you have there.

Thanks Dunc, I asked because there's a hops farm (brewer's gold and magnum, I think) more or less on my doorstep, so getting a sack or two of fresh hops wouldn't be a problem. I've regularly made kits beers at various times in my life, but was wondering about trying some BITB or all-grain at some ti...

Anyone brewed beer with fresh hops rather than dry hops?

I've made bread a few times in a regular oven (gas/electric) but this was my first time with a wood-fired bread oven. I was a bit worried as I don't have a thermometer of any kind but I picked up a few tips on the interwebs about watching for brick colour and so forth. Here's what I ended up with: F...

I've had my place a year and am only just about finished with installing running water in the house from the well. Wasted about two days last week trying to stop some of the fittings dripping. Was ready to bash the whole lot to scrap metal with the wrench when I finally worked out it wasn't a tapere...

Marketing manager of a nail manufacturer is called in to show his latest advert to the boss. He runs the video. Camera pans across some grass, shows the bottom of a wooden post, slowly follows the post up - a pair of bare feet, legs, loin cloth, then pans out slowly to show a long-haired man on a cr...

You could have the espaliered fruit along the back fence for improved sunlight, and bring the small tree forward parallel with the other one (where the acer is now). They'll still get enough sunlight over the top of the house due to their height and won't shadow the back fence, meaning that can beco...

Thanks for the info. A stere is a cubic metre of wood including air spaces.

Interesting piece, well done. Not far from me there's a place where charcoal is made traditionally. They spend a couple of weeks building an enormous pyramid of wood and then fire it. Out of interest, what's the advantage of using charcoal for a BBQ rather than regular wood and what volume of charco...

I think a lot can be made of the semantics of this issue. I think, after reading the replies to this thread, that we could probably agree that there is 'thifty', which has more positive connotation of not being wasteful, and 'tight-fisted', which has negative connotations. Like tinder, for me, dodgi...

If I want something I wait and I save. I love this philosophy. It's pretty much been my motto my whole life. I've never had a loan (apart from a tiny student loan), never had a credit card, never had a mortgage, although I suppose if I'd stayed in the UK I would have had one by now. I see so many f...

Aha, I didn't read the whole article; sounds like he was taking it to extremes. I also don't especially like holidays. I spend all my free time working on the house (which is four hours away by car in the countryside, so as good as a holiday as it's a complete change of pace/location). I don't think...

Have attitudes towards thriftiness in the UK changed in the last couple of decades? A friend of mine referred to another couple as 'stingy' because they go on holiday and often take their own food and self-cater, rather than spending every night in an expensive restaurant. This basically allows them...

To be honest, I never drink the stuff anyway - except the very occasional craving for it, usually the morning after a night out, which, I suppose, kind of harkens bark to its original concept as a tonic. It's almost as bad as that odious stuff Fanta.

Probably from back in the days when it actually did contain coke. That'd probably account the stress-relieving properties!