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.
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| 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.
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| 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...
