Limbo

I feel like we’re in limbo at the moment. We talk constantly about our plans to buy land and becoming more self sustainable – believe me, there may not be a lot happening with the blog, but we are full steam ahead with planning – but, until we get enough finances together, we can’t actually start gathering materials and mapping out a specific plan for our land. Oh, and we still have to buy the site, so that’s a pretty major part of the plan that’s still in “discussion” stage. We are so eager to get started, it can feel pretty frustrating sometimes not being able to just go and do. We are trying our best to prepare for our future (real) lives though and over the past few years, I've had a list of skills (that I add to on a weekly basis) that I am trying to get to grips with so when we do buy our land, it will (hopefully!) be a more organic transition from consumers to off gridders.

Site on the West Coast of Ireland that we're very interested in!

I've also acquired a range of books which covers everything to do with homesteading – i.e. bee keeping, preserving meat and fish, making candles, raising barns etc – to books on yurt building, permaculture practices, Lloyd Khan books Tiny Homes and Shelter – on a side note, what a pity (shame, travesty!) the UK and Ireland have different laws from the US on planning permission for tiny homes – in the UK/Ireland, no matter what size the building is, if you intend on using it to live in, you must have planning permission. In the US, you can build up to a certain size (depending on the State) without having to gain planning permission first, very handy! I have general books on preserving food, from fruit and vegetables, to meat and fish and anything else I could possibly get my sticky little fingers on. I have books on tree houses and simple shelters as well as self sufficiency and allotment gardening - which are fantastic for making month to month plans for seedlings and planting out. And a selection of books on traditional methods of cooking and preserving food. These books are my bibles, and I spend a lot of my spare time reading and trying to absorb as much information as possible...

Things I want/need to learn....this list is finite, so these are just the more immediate things I think I need to learn

Building skills

How to make a green roof

Straw bale building

How to can fruit and vegetables

Smoking meat and fish

Making sausages, preserving hams

How to make hard cheese

How to kill and butcher a chicken

How to butcher a sheep/pig/goat

Bee keeping

Things I/we've done over the past few years

Courses/workshops

Sourdough bread making

Mozzarella & Camembert cheese making

Fermented foods – preserving vegetables

Permaculture Design Course

Reiki One – this obviously isn't directly linked to becoming self sufficient, but I loved this course and occasionally practice on M and myself, I find it’s a good way of meditating while realigning and energising chakras

Things I’ve made at home

Strawberry jam

Fig, vanilla bean and ginger preserve

Blackberry & pinot noir jam – from foraged blackberries

Pumpkin (galeuse d’eysines) and orange marmalade – this is probably my favourite so far!

Green tomato chutney

Cherry tomato and ginger chutney

Sourdough bread – still a work in progress maintaining a good starter

Duck confit – very easy, just space consuming, but well worth the effort!

Traditional Irish Christmas pudding

Sloe gin –maturing until December 2014 - we have “sampled” this several times and it is divine, but absolute rocket fuel!

Sloe port – made from the gin soaked sloes, we gave bottles of this to our parents as part of their Christmas present and it went down very well. A small nip is plenty to warm your cockles...and everything else!

Gardening ...on-going but getting better each season! This year, we’re hoping to get a (decent) crop of onions, potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, garlic as our basics, and all sorts of other squashes, pumpkin, sweet peppers and soft fruits to go with them – updates on the raised beds and new additions to the garden shortly!

We spend our weekends doing projects around the house and garden. Most recently, M has almost finished an extension which leads out of the kitchen into the garden; which he’s built from windows and timber we liberated from local skips.  We had a fantastic haul last weekend of old bricks from a skip down the street. It took three trips up and back to get all the bricks, but it was well worth it, and M used the bricks to create a beautiful paved area inside the back extension.

Extension - work in progress - we rescued the blue and yellow stained glass windows (bottom left) from a skip a few months ago, the owners told us we were welcome to help ourselves as they were getting new PVC windows fitted

Between work and travel to and from work, we spend roughly 50 hours out of the house a week; if we could find a way to instead, dedicate that time to building sustainable lives and running our eco/yurt/renewable living center, that would be the dream!

We have the will, now we just need to find a way...