Cost Effective Self sufficiency or Self Sufficiency at any cost?

I try not to write posts that tell people what they should or shouldn't do, there are plenty of other bloggers doing that.

This is just about what happened/happens here.

22 years ago we fell into the trap of believing that we could be as self-sufficient as John Seymour in his books- whatever the cost.

 We had just bought this  five acre smallholding and thought we ought to try everything. Back then the plethora of gadgets and gizmos to make you more 'Self Sufficient' were not on general sale (and before internet) So if you wanted to make your own sausages or press your own apples the machinery to use was difficult to find and expensive.

We had goats and sometimes had some spare milk but goats milk is naturally homogenized so it takes a cream separator  to make the cream. Of course we bought a secondhand electric cream separator. This is a gadget that uses lots of cones of metal, which after use all have to be washed and the amount of cream we got from our goats milk NEVER EVER equaled the cost of the separator. How often do we use cream? - Christmas and Strawberry time. We would have needed to keep goats and make cream for 100 years to have paid back what that machine cost!
We sold it.
I bought a cheese press and quickly discovered making hard cheeses is an occupation which needs space, more milk than we ever had to spare, a cool room and lots of practice. ( Soft cheese is much easier )
I sold the cheese press.

One year we had loads of apples and C kept spotting apple trees when he was out at work. So we bought an apple crusher and a press. We spent hours crushing the apples and pressing them to make juice and cider. Which was so sharp it was undrinkable. The next year we used only eating apples, but it wasn't a good year for apples so we only had a few pints of juice. The next year there were even less apples, everyone decided they didn't like the sharp home made brown murky apple juice. When we next had lots of apples we stored the apples or sold them. It made much more sense.
We sold the apple press.

We began to understand that we couldn't do everything - we couldn't afford the cost or the time. We also learned that John Seymour wrote a lot about Self Sufficiency but didn't always practice what he preached.

That's when we started looking more  closely at what we were doing before investing large (or even small) sums of money on things, and when our family shrunk to just the two of us we had to re-evaluate things again.

Here are the things we've thought about and  do because they really are cost effective.

Growing everyday vegetables that we know we will use/sell
Keeping chickens and selling the eggs   
Baking bread.
Making meals from scratch.



And some thing we don't or won't  do because we believe our time/money is more efficiently spent elsewhere

Making soap, washing powder or liquid
Making clothes
Growing winter vegetables to sell. They need too much space for the return.
Keeping other types of birds/animals. Been there, done that.
Freezing too many vegetables ( taking up freezer space better used for more expensive fruit)
Planting any more  trees. We've planted several hundred trees, many planted for the future, but now we think we've done enough here and we won't be here for ever.
Investing a lot of money in  exotic vegetable or fruit growing until we know we have room/like them/can sell them.
Take up pottery and make our own plates as I think John Seymour suggested in one  of his books. There are enough plates in the world already - you only have to go to a car boot sale to see them!


Another thought.
When people talk about self sufficiency they are usually meaning in food.
 Here are a few other little ideas employed here

The clothes prop that keeps my washing line up in the air is a long branch from a Rowan tree with the bark peeled off.
Hair cutting with clippers.
Heating the house with wood
House repairs and building


I think the right way to self sufficiency is not trying to do everything. Sometimes knowing how to do something is a good idea but if doing it will cost you more money or take up time better spent elsewhere perhaps the actual doing of it doesn't matter.

I've just re read this and it's not well written.
Apologies, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Back Tomorrow
Sue
 

Tennis or sitting out?

A beautiful sunny day here, completely different to the last few days. A big decision needed to be made - Watch the mens semi-finals from the French Open or sit outside in the sun?
I decided to do both and sat out for a while then came in to see Andy M thoroughly beaten by Rafa.
Oh well, it means he has more days to rest before Queens club next week.

Kev asked how many Gooseberry bushes we have, I think about 21 although a few are really old - more than the 22 years we've been here and are too close together so that I always forget how many. One is a red gooseberry which never does very much. And he asked if I could do a post about growing for profit. Yep - could do. I will add that to my list of drafts to do if only I had more days in a week.

C was hedge trimming at our neighbours this morning, weeding and enjoying the sun with me this afternoon. I'm not sure what I've been doing, must have got a bit of housework done and all the usual egg and campsite jobs.

Stats on selling and  self sufficiency today:-

Out for sale on the stall-by-the-gate today were 3 bags of fresh dug potatoes, 3 bunches of Alstroemeria flowers, 1 cucumber, 1 pointed cabbage, 3 pots of Basil,  4 punnets of gooseberries and 16 boxes of 6 eggs. Most sold.
Total income £28.50

 Homegrown  food eaten today - potatoes, beetroot, lettuce and salad leaves, herbs(in potato salad), peppermint (in tea) strawberries.( Just 2 and a half pound picked today)

Home produced and homemade eaten today bread, eggs, quiche, gooseberry and apple crumble.

2 caravans on site tonight and one tent due in later.

Washing dried on the line

Water heated by the Solar Water thingy on the roof.

NOT self-sufficient- using electric to watch tennis!

Money spent today £0

Back Tomorrow
Sue

New shed stage 3 and first Gooseberries sold

Welcome to some new followers on Bloglovin. Sue ( another Sue) has a new blog called Cornish Chickpea - love that name! I have added her to my blogroll for reading.
Thank you to blogging friends for comments yesterday.
Sue ( another Sue, at Our new life in the Country) said she was taught to train cucumbers to grow on slanted supports. Our problem is that we've never been taught anything! so we plant them beside canes and then put baler twine between the canes. The cucumbers grow up then along the twine and we twist them gently over and under. Hopefully the cucs hang down  and grow straight.

 Despite it being only early June some of our gooseberries are Huge and the branches are bending down to the ground so I decided to start picking for sale. My fear is they will still  be a bit sharp and put people off from coming back for more. Last year I sold  more than 200 punnets. What we  need is more sunshine to sweeten them up. I put 4 punnets out and they sold straight away. Once I really get picking it's almost a full time job.

C has been working on  the new shed. The frame was brought down from the hay shed on the trailer and my help was called for to assist with the lifting off and holding upright while he clamped, then screwed together.

 He's now started to cover the frame with felt and weatherboard. The right hand side of the shed already has weatherboard on it as it's the 4th side of the toilet block shed that we built last year, we didn't need this side because the loo block has four doors instead.


 I've been meaning to do a update on the two shy cats we adopted from cats Protection in February. Mabel is still around outside, she appears in the evenings and sits up the path waiting for her food to be put in the shed. If she sees anyone watching her, even through a window, she's off like a shot to hide in the wood shed or over the road to our neighbours stable. I'm not sure if there is anything we can do to make her more friendly.
Polly now behaves like a normal cat, that means she brings in small live mice and then promptly loses interest in them when they run off and hide under something. Such fun!

Back Tomorrow
Sue ( Yet another!)

4 days diaries

There were so many comments about the book shelf pictures, so thank you to everyone. 'Anexactinglife' said they look like custom built. I would have loved to have had real wood, purpose built to fit in better , but we certainly couldn't have afforded anything like that. So they are just cheapies  bought on-line from Ikea and then C cut some down to fit under the stairs and used some spare bits for extra shelves.
The reason they are tidy is because of my 10 years of straightening books in  Libraries! And also being in the hall they are walked past all the time and I would soon be fed up with seeing an untidy collection.

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What with one thing and another I've not mentioned what we've been doing since last Saturday. So this post is four days diaries.

On Sunday I went to the car boot sale - of course - although C said he seen everything over the last few weeks and it was bound to be the same old, same old, so he stayed at home.
I bought 2 herbs for £1 each. One was a Red Veined Sorrel which looks interesting and has filled the space in my new herb garden and the other a Cat Mint. I found a cushion for £1 to replace one our youngest begged off us " I love cuddly feather cushions and we haven't got one at home!" A bundle of 40 sheets of  new peel offs - pictures, words and borders for card making, spent £6 on those, which was a lot but the woman wouldn't accept any less. That was the first craft stuff I've found this year, and I found this book which I hadn't read for £2.

Francine Raymond lived in Suffolk for many years and started The Hen Keepers Association. She wrote several slim books about keeping hens, ducks and geese and this is a story of a year in Suffolk. She is a Sunday Telegraph columnist.

The weather was lovely on Sunday afternoon and we sat out for a while, everywhere was quiet, not a lot of passing traffic because it was the last day of half term holidays  and no one on the campsite.
The only thing missing was the sound of the sea lapping gently on a sandy beach * sigh *.

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Monday we trekked to Ipswich town centre via Sainsburys ( cheap bacon and a few other bits), Aldi  (specially for flour - a lot cheaper than elsewhere and a few other bits) and home via Morrisons ( red diesel from the petrol station and yes you guessed......a few other bits from the supermarket). Poundland, Wilkinsons, The Grape Tree and Superdrug were the main reasons for going into our 'capital'.
In town I treated myself to a copy of Home Farmer magazine which, unless you have it on subscription, is only available at W.H Smiths in our area. I hadn't seen a copy for a while and it had a packet of free Inca Berry seeds from the James Wong Homegrown Revolution range on the front. Inside was an offer of 24 Strawberry plants free except for postage and 2 Cucamelon plants also free just pay P & P. Several articles about Elderflowers and salad crops. Nothing in it to tempt me to subscribe again.  C looked at an article about building a workbench for a potting shed which had so many huge pieces  of wood in that it would have taken a crane to shift it!

We picked nearly 4lb of Strawberries in the afternoon after I had spent ages putting all the shopping away and dividing all the bacon packs before freezing and vowing not to go to Ipswich again until September!

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On Tuesday C was working at our neighbours in the morning and sorting out everything needed for the shed building in the afternoon. I did the weekly bread bake and lots of other catching up housework jobs.  For dinner we had a couple of the bacon steaks from out of the cheap bacon packs, home grown new potatoes and homegrown salad. Cost of meal per person about 40p - bargain.

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On Wednesday morning the weather turned wet and chilly. I had a doctors appointment a.m. and also went to the Co-op to spend my divi. vouchers on some decent sausages from Lane Farm . I usually look out for yellow sticker reduced meat in the Co-op but haven't spotted anything for months, although using Divi  vouchers makes me feel  they are free.
C was in the workshop making up the door for my new shed.
We picked another 4lb Strawberries once the drizzle stopped and decided to put a some of the best out for sale. 3 small punnets went out at £1 punnet ( approx 250g) and were gone not long after  I was back indoors. I'm still selling the Alstroemeria flowers at £1 bunch and also some Aloe Vera plants that our son brought here before he moved house. He took a Aloe Vera baby off the plant I had here about 2 years ago and then potted up lots of babies from that plant. It's a handy plant to have in the house as it can be used to sooth minor burns, plus it seems almost impossible to kill which is useful as I am normally hopeless at keeping indoor plants alive.

I've planted the last two cucumber plants into the polytunnel. These were the ones bought a couple of weeks ago from the carboot to replace the two home sown that keeled over. Our other 6 plants are looking good we've had 4 cucs off them so far, but I'm still taking off several of the teeny babies so the plant keeps growing. They've been fed once with a commercial feed and several times with the home made  Comfrey 'tea'.

A good use for baler twine and all the broom handles rescued from amongst a whole heap of pallets brought home from a local factory.

The early tomato plants are also doing well and we will have a few ready to eat in a week or so. The forecast for tomorrow is good and I hope to start gooseberry picking - 3 weeks earlier than last year.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Pictures of book shelves for new blog readers!

I often mention library books that I'm reading but I ought to read some of the hundreds I have here. Bovey Belle commented on my blog a few days ago and mentioned a book she had just found and was enjoying and I knew I had a copy as yet unread. There it is ....'Island Farm', straight ahead, right hand column, third row down, immediately above Victorian Farm.
Then I had a thought.
As there are lots of new people reading the blog now, I'm re-showing my book shelves.These are pictures first posted last spring.

This is just part of the collection in the alcove bit of the hall under the stairs.

And here is another part along the hall, the 5 shelves on the right are full of canal,train and sports books, that's  Cs collection, which has also expanded since this was taken, so that some random books have been moved from the bottom shelf to give his books more space.

And here is the alcove again but from further out, you can see books have escaped onto the top of the shelves too, and since this picture was taken last year there are even more along the top

And here on this little bit at the end are my Persephone books on the top, poetry,classics, bibles and dictionaries.

There are also cookery books in the kitchen, craft books in the craft room and a few other odds and ends on some shelves by the front door. One day I will count them all.

Have you read Susan Hills book " Howards End is On The Landing"? It's about her year of reading and re-reading books already in her possession.
I think I ought to do that, but then I wouldn't be able to post my Library book picture every month!

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and welcome to Deborah who is a new follower in the Google Pictures and Layla, Lynda and Stephanie who have clicked the Bloglovin' button.

It's several days since I did a proper daily diary post so I must remedy that when I'm.........
Back tomorrow.
Sue

Review of the Month - Looking back at May

Here is my regular look back at the ups and downs of life here on the simple Suffolk Smallholding.

1.  Enough money  was earned to cover what we need for Junes budget
2.  Food spending under budget
3.  Other general household spending well under budget with £50 left in my purse, so.........
4.  The Roberts radio was sent for and arrived.
5.  A steady stream of campsite visitors all month 
6.  21/31 were no spend days ( 5 spend days were car boot sales)
7. We didn't travel far so no diesel put into Jeep all month
8.  An offer of free delivery resulted in getting £63 pounds worth of goods for £27 from Approved  Foods
9. 6 Jars of mixed fruit jam made using fruit from the freezer
10. Lots of good books enjoyed
11. Poly-tunnels  planted up
12. A gift from a new blogger friend
13. First potatoes and beetroot from poly-tunnel
14. Peppermint tea from own plants
15. Pumpkin and squash plants were planted out onto the field.
16. New shed base done and framework started
17. Several useful  things found at car boot sales
18. C collected 6 more IBC water containers and sold 3 straightaway -quick profit
19. Spare income saved to cover standing orders etc during the winter
20. Able to borrow log splitter
21. First strawberries of the season

BUT
Wind and heavy rain damaged the climbing French and runner beans, setting them back by a few weeks.
I made some Garlic Focaccia bread from a mix and burnt it!
The Camping and Caravanning club upped their prices for adding extra words to the entry in the Big Sites Book which I found extremely annoying.
Lots of nasty critters damaging plants this year.
Very few campsite bookings for June

I think I can say May was a good month for us. June brings Gooseberry picking and more Tennis on TV and the end of the hungry gap when the garden begins to be more productive.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

A Year In Books Link May/June

Linking in with Circle of Pine Trees - A year in books 

I planned to read some of my own recently acquired books in the first half of May.

 I'll just mention a couple that I finished. First read  was D.E Stevenson - The Two Mrs Abbots. First published in 1943 and featuring Barbara Buncle, who was the subject of two earlier books - Miss Buncle and Miss Buncle Married. I found a whole heap of DE  Stevenson paperbacks for pennies at a car boot sale and this was amongst them. It was chosen to read now simply because Persephone Books have recently republished it and it's set during WWII.  I enjoyed it as a  light read, very much of it's time although they were still  popular when I worked in libraries in the 1970s.
Neil Ansell - Deep Country. I first read when it was originally published a few years ago. It describes the Authors time living in a remote cottage in Wales. Mostly about the wildlife of the area. I enjoyed it second read too.

These were the library books I collected in Mid May

So far I've read
 Sue Grafton - Kinsey and me. Sue Grafton is the author of the American crime series of ABC murders featuring Kinsey Malone PI. This book is half short stories about Kinsey Malone half short pieces about the author.

Anna Quindlen - Still life with breadcrumbs. I think this was on someones book link last month, I liked the sound of it and ordered it from the library. A good read which I enjoyed. I'm no good at writing reviews so find out more about it here

Rory Clements - The Queens Man. This is the prequel to his series of 5 historical crime books about John Shakespeare (brother of William). Set in the time of Queen Elizabeth 1st when "England is a Judas Nest of Conspirators ". According to the cover " a TV series based on these books is in development". I shall look forward to that.

Edward Marston - Ticket to Oblivion. This author churns them out. Historical crime (Victorian) written to a "recipe" about a policeman who is known as The Railway Detective.  They are readable.

Strangely I just couldn't get into the James Oswald book - Hangmans Song. I don't know why. Maybe it was just the wrong book on the wrong day. I enjoyed his previous two in this modern crime series.

If you like cats then I can recommend the Doreen Tovey books.

The others are still awaiting more hours in the day to read!

Back Tomorrow with my review of the month- looking back at May on the Simple Suffolk Smallholding.
Sue