Biography
Andy was born in Northampton where he undertook a collection of “interesting” jobs the highlights including being the mash potato man in a food factory, selling double glazing door to door and the dizzy heights of operative in charge of cardboard box making for the then Burtons warehouse. He briefly moved to Nottingham and restarted his education finally receiving a psychology degree in Bath.
Andy now lives in Bristol where he runs two allotments, forages and lives a low impact lifestyle. He is the co-author of the hughley popular and critically accliamed book The Selfsufficientish Bible, Published by Hodder and Stoughton. He writes a budget gardening column for Kitchen Garden a wild food column for flavour magazine and a outdoor column for the Bristol Magazine. He also works as a freelance features writer and has had articles published for the Guardian, the Ecologist, Home Farmer and Ethical Living. He has also appeared on BBC Autumnwatch (see below), BBC Autumnwatch Unsprung, BBC Countryfile, BBC Breakfast, BBC inside out, BBC Politics Show, BBC Points West, ITV’s west tonight, RTE’s Baz’s Culture Clash and ARTE’s Global Magazine; radio appearances include R4’s the Today program, R4’s Farming Today, various times on Radio Bristol and other local stations.
He takes groups of people on wild food walks sharing his knowledge of edible wild foods, plant folk lore and herbal medicine He still finds time to work on this hugely popular website selfsufficientish.com that he co-created and helped launch his career and is currently working on a new book called “Booze for Free”.
Contact Andy
Andy is available for public speaking, freelance features, corporate and personal forages (wild food walks) and on a consultancy basis. To contact him please Email in the first instance – Andy at selfsufficientish dot com.
Andy and Dave,
Gentlemen this is just a short note to say…
I ran across your book “The selfsufficient-ish bible at the local lending library by chance and took it home to peruse. Excellent job! I enjoyed it thoroughly. I am in Tampa Florida USA and have been reading up on survival and selfsufficient living for some time and found your book covered a very nice variety and will reccomend it to others. May your gardens give all you wish and more.
Sincerely,
Carl
Hello Carl and thanks for the short note I am very happy to hear that you are getting use from our book and it seems that we have made it to the USA then!
Thanks again for getting in touch
Andy
Just found your website thank you for lots of ideas 🙂 am living in Switzerland and we have lots of berries and other fruits here also so will give some of these a try.
Hello Andy and Dave Hamilton,
First I have to congratulate you both for your excellent job in your Self Sufficient-ish Bible.
I came across it while doing research for a collage class. I would want to ask you some questions about what you do and how I can teach it via the use of a community garden here in Kissimmee Florida. I hope to hear from both of you soon.
Great forage in wimbledon! I didnt even know much about the greenspace there! I am now uploading the pics on to my blogsite….not great pics…but with the information you gave it should be very interesting. The best was being able to eat the lime(linden) leaves in my back garden…so a few less leaves to rake in the compost heap (heh heh!). Many thanks!
just found your website,loads of info on it.gona have to try some of the recipes..next thing is to get your book.
thanks.