A Road To Self Sufficiency

I tried last year to do without a fridge deciding to make a pot in a pot cooler for the milk and butter etc. Primarily this was an eco thing and a desire to go back to the pantry system and daily shopping to get the freshest food and save money and CO2 by not consuming as much electricity. Although this worked I was having to shop daily and this was taking it's toll on my chronic back problems so this more or less died a death quite quick but about 5 weeks ago both the fridge and freezer blew up so we have now been fridgeless and freezerless for the last 5 weeks and with no money to replace them we have had to manage.....!!

These last 5 weeks have been darn hard for the above mentioned problems but we have had the car available to do shopping when my back has been far too bad to use the bus but this has an ipact on my personal CO2 production. On the matter of CO2 production we have saved over 119kg of CO2 from the electric used to power the FF. Some of this will have been used by the car and buses but I've not assertained how much yet.

I don't know how long this will continue but with no money available it may be a fair while, lol. which brings me to another point, Sell by dates. The government is going to do away with the sell by dates and the use by dates because 1000's of tonnes of food that is perfectly good to eat is thrown away because it is not used by these dates. Good for the reduction of waste food but this also means more profit for the supermarkets as they will be able to leave produce on the shelves longer and there will be less food marked down for quick sale wich will mean many people will have less to eat because they need to use the marked down products to eek out a food budget.

So we have an election looming in the good ol' UK and the main two parties are slagging each other off as per normal bear pit politics that we are all used to. Along the rails comes Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats with sound debate and arguments and wins the first TV debate hands down. Even 4 days later the oppinion polls are still showing a good response for NC.

I do hope that the LD's get a good showing at the polls in May even if it's just to give the others a good wake up call.

If anyone reading this can vote then you have until the end of Tuesday to get on the voting register..... especially if you want to vote LD, lol.

At last the world can once again breathe a sigh of relief because the aeroplanes are flying again and people can now get back to the good old UK ready to whinge and moan about having to stay in a foreign land a few extra days and whinge and moan they certainly will do! Most will get at least 4 weeks of drivel out of this episode.

It seems to be OK to go abroad for a week or 10 days, be louts on the beach and help destroy the locality of some distant shore then fly back home only to work your nuts off for another 52 weeks in order to do it again next year but come the time when people might be a bit inconvenienced then all hell has to be unleashed and it HAS to be someones fault in order to get full whingeabillity.

One report I saw was a woman sitting by the poolside in full sun saying it was hard to be stuck away from home, if she felt that way why did she contribute to the damaging ozone depletion by taking a cheap flight in the first place?

If people just take a few minutes out of their precious, hard working, stressful lives to think about the bigger picture of their very individual actions that contribute to global warming and the environmental destruction BEFORE they take the actions then there may well be less issues with "natural events" or "acts of god" [assuming that there is a god of course] and more money will be kept in the UK.

It may also be a good idea to think about why you need a foreign holiday for 2 weeks because if you need this holiday to relax and unwind from the pressures of daily life then surely the best action would be to reduce the pressures and stress of the daily "grind" rather than stick your head in the sand for 50 weeks a year.

it does the soul good to rant, lol......

OMG as they say in text speak land.

The Tory government with the aid of the Liberal Democrats are going to save the country within the lifetime of this parliament.

The CSR or comprehensive spending review has been launched and boy will the poor suffer. I really did hope for a change in political will to help the needy, the disabled and those trying to get by but how wrong was I.

I really fear what is going to happen in the next 5 years and even if the houses of parliament vote to give us mear motals the right to vote in a referendum to change the voting system I fear that nothing good will come of it.

I predict here that labour will win the next election and the Liberal Democrats will virtually cease to be a political party represented in the next parliament.

So the election was run and the public decided they could not decide on who could run the country properly. Today we have the first day of the first coillition since the war years with the tories and lib dems in power.

I hope this works out well as I would prefer a more PR / talking to each other type of politics where slagging off each other, where "briefing against people" is a thing of the past. New labour was needed to get rid of the tories back in 1997 but then they desended into the dirty world of political backbiting for the next 13 years until now. I wonder how this will pan out over the next few weeks and months. Oh and I didn't manage to stay up all night on election night managing to stay awake until the late hour of 22.30 pm, lol.......

So the election in the UK is here, now, today...... For the first time in eons if not ever the whole house is voting Librel Democrat. There is nothing surprising in the fact that we vote, I make sure we both go to the polling station and even if my wife votes different to me, spoils her ballot paper or votes for all of the candidates then we will have voted because I feel that it is our duty and not a right to vote because people died to give all of us the option of democracy.

Of course many, many people have died in the wars to ensure our vote and democracy takes place on a daily occurance but don't forget that women died in the suffrajet movement to get women the vote.

Wether we feel that democracy is taking place is another thing. If you were a believer in the Iraq anti war movement when Tony Blair [allegedly] took our forces to war in support of oil and George bush then you probably think that democricy is not working but thinking of Iraq as an example they always had a 99.9% turnout for elections when Saddam Hussain was up for election....... oh, that's right he was the only candidate in the elections wasn't he....

I hope the election proves to be a turning point in the UK political system and we do get a situation where no one party "wins". The tories and labour parties call it a "hung" election where hanging is bad whilst the Libral Democrats call it a "ballanced election" but whatever it is called it will make politiciens sit up and think.... at least the optimist in me likes to think so, lol.

I know for one thing and that is I'll be sitting up all night to hear the results, soething I've never done before....... ever.

I watched a programme last week about a vicar who is living without money, initially for 3 months but it seems as if it is ongoing. I was incredibly impressed with this guy and the BBC for doing it mainly because it is following a religeous theme from 800 years ago and the bbc generally don't get into "controversial things" these days but also prove the idea is not new.

Last nights programme was where he tried to walk 240 miles from his home to an environmental guru in Devon. He had to resort to thumbing a lift and also had to beg for food, which apparently is now illegal! He got there in time and the cynic in me did wonder if it was by chance, good fortune or a driver who " just happened to be passing" who would take him all the remaining way but I am enjoying these programmes.

To quantify that a bit, I couldn't hope to live without money for one day or even one hour as we have a mortgage and we are only 60% self sufficient in veg.... and my wife would give me a kicking if I sugessted it, lol.

I must say my wife is going to be nominated as a saint when she dies ( hopefully not for a long time) because she is already saintly in her patience of me and the ideas I get up to but I feel another "experiment " coming on!!

So 20,000 plus delegates, politicians, environmental activists and journalists et al all failed to get a binding agreement in Copenhagen in Dec 2009 so they are all trying again this year in Cancoon, Mexico with all the associated travel, disruption, policing, Co2 and other environmental pollutants just to have another stalemate at the end of it....

The best part is that they will be doing it all again in 12 months time in South Africa........

As I said this environmental jolly hollies are a nice little experience ...... if you can get on the band wagon [run on bio diesel from a non rain forest deforestation country project of course] that is.....

Welcome to our blog.

All this blogging stuff, forum making and website editing is new to us but we feel so strongly about the trouble that the planet is in that we want to put our thoughts up into the WWW in the hope that the people who read it can take some helpful thoughts and infomation in order to help heal the environment. In many cases we as people will also save some money and that can't be a bad thing can it ?

My old blog had occasional month long (or even longer like the car and plastic experiments.) trials to test me out so I thought that this site could do with a new one so here it is for November.

I shop at Asda a lot and they have the whoopsie / yellow label reduced items that are due to come to their sell by date.

I am good at making up meals from nothing or various different things so I thought this challenge would be to cater for my wife, myself sand occasional uni visitor my son from what is available in the yellow label items.
Of course there are a lot of items available in the early moring around 9.30 in my local Asda but the better deals are generally fewer in quantity but better in price, like 1p for 2 salmon fishcakes reduced from £3.00 or bread for 2p reduced from £1.80 but these are available after 2300 hrs.

I wonder how many times I'll be down at the shops at 11 pm or after but that is the test for this month of November, 2009.

One note of caution is that these yellow label deals will soon be coming to an end as the government, in their wisdon has decided to do away with the sell by/ best before/ use before date labels to encourage more food useage and less going to landfill. All well and good for the reduction of methane and CO2 etc but what about the thousands of people who, like me use these low price deals for basic living from day to day ?

UPDATE I tried this for a few days and although it was sucessful in that I was able to feed the family very cheaply I totally forgot about it after about day 5. Because it means going daily to the shops this caused me more pain in the chronic back problem and so I was on stronger pain relievers. I say that because nothing kills the pain so the morphine substraites are not "pain killers". Being spaced out I just bought what I fancied. I will try this again, maybe January...

Well it's happened..... All my skip diving has started to pay off!!

I'm on my way to getting my new " recycled" greenhouse... woo hoo...

It started a few months ago in March when it became evident that I needed a greenhouse to grow more crops. I managed ok this year planting seeds out when the weather determined I could. I did get many plants from my good friend and neighbour who has several greenhouses but on the whole, Like a man needs a shed it would be easier if I had a greenhouse.

Being skint and I mean destitute hence the growing of my own crops I decided that I couldn't afford a greenhouse but then with the usual thinking in a hot bath to ease the aching bones I came across the idea to see if I could get a greenhouse for nothing.

Now my greenhouse in plan form isn't your average little thing, nop, I wanted mine to be 3m x 4m or 10ft x 13ft in good old English money. so how was I going to get one this size.... build one I thought but with my knackered back it would not be possible but if I could salvage the materials from places such as skips and building plots then I might be able to pay someone to build it and although it would not be free it would be well cheaper.

So I started to look around especially when driving or taking the dog for his walks around the block. I'd get to know the builders and say hello to them etc and take an interest in what they were building. This is an interest of mine as I'd love to renovate an old house into an eco code 6 house but for now can't afford that. Anyway, I'd get to talking to the builders and renovaters and I began asking if I could take bits of wood, pallets etc from the skips. If the truth be known I was the mouth piece and my wife was the one who would get the bigger bits of wood into the car.
This would lead to them asking what I would be doing with them and I'd mention my recycled greenhouse plan. It's amazing on a number of fronts, firstly because many of the builders were genuinely interested and secondly the amount of free materials that were skipped that had nothing wrong with them was unbelievable.
As time went on I spoke to one renovator and he gave me 400 facing bricks that were new. He'd bought a couple of packs of them and started to use them only to find out that they were metric size and his house was built with imperial size bricks.

Those he had used could not be returned so were to be skipped. Later on from this renovation he took the complete roof off as some timbers were rotten and he was extending the roofspace... Guess who got the remaining timber which was something like 100ft of 8" x 2".... again delivered free. I got a couple of old 1953 pantry windows from his skip but to date not used. He even delivered all the stuff in the back of his van just when my son was home from uni so he earned his keep that day,lol.

Total cost... 4 heads of garlic, beetroot a couple of pounds of onions and 2 heads of lettuce. His wife was shy about taking the produce initially but they certainly enjoyed it.

At another skip the builder was knocking down a couple of stoothing walls to build an extension. Virgin 2"x4" rough sawn timber, about 223 ft in 6 ft pieces. Even if I had to splice a couple of bits together I'd still have over 100ft of 2"x4"x12ft long.

In the allotment that I shared with another neighbour the greenhouse is well knackered and really is dangerous. It has a lot of glass still intact so I said I'd clear it out and they can put up their flimsy allu 6'x4' greenhouse that they paid £70 second hand.

I was riddling some soil and collected a lot of loose gravel type stones so these have been washed and stored for the concrete so all I need is some sharp sand, yellow sand and some cement and bobs your uncle fred. I've even got anothe neighbour and his son to do the building and the cost for their services..... 4 boxes of fresh fruit and veg NEXT YEAR.....

I reckon if I have to pay anything it will be around £50 for the sand and cement and maybe some for glass if there isn't enough around the lottie but even so it should be less than £30 I guess. Therefore a 3mx4m greenhouse for less than £80 ... that'll do me fine.

Oh, I nearly forgot, I also found an old calor gas bottle which I plan to make a greenhouse heater out of after all the safety precautions have been taken to remove gas etc.

Updated 29.04.10

The bricks have now been laid by a man who knocked on the door asking if we wanted any trees pruning. I didn't but I did offer him the chance to lay the bricks so while I made tea and bacon sarnies and 2 boxes of free fresh organic food he laid the bricks and concrete founds.

I did have to buy the sand and cement at a cost of £39.00 but I also have about half of it left. Since the original post there has been more wood collected and so there should be enough now for the full frame. All I need now is a joiner, lol.

Update October 2010.

The greenhouse is now virtually finished and in total has cost around £85 and the food given in payment. I had to buy some silicone sealant as putty was to hard to use and some wood preservative to finish the job and make all the odd bits of wood look reasonable.
I didn't get a joiner in the end but I did get an odd job/ scrap man to do most of the wood work and he cost £50 and a box of high quality scented candles for his wife that I had made.
The majority of the glass came from a couple of neighbours who were getting new double glazing installed so I got the old glass.

In total it's taken about 19 months to source the bits and build when if I'd bought new materials then the labour was only about 4 days but the cost of new materials would have been around £875.00. I would have liked to do more on this project but with the chronic back problem I have it is clear to me that I can't do what the mind tells me I can. I need to be careful as I fell through a side window when my legs gave way last week. Thankfully only vuts to my hand but it could have been a lot worse.

Still on the whole I have a 10ft by 12 ft greenhouse built to last for less than £100. All I need now is some seeds.......

Is it possible to be self sufficient in the 21st century??

This seems a daft question and it's only become possible to ask it, and maybe go some way to answering it as we have been looking into the formation of the bselfsufficient website.

The idea of being self sufficient was a thought, a dream, an ideal that we have had for a few years now following a few monumental changes in our life. Mainly these changes were the closure of our candle making business, re emergence of a disabillity and a major issue of burgeoning debt.

These three issues made us look at our priorities and re asses where we were and where we were going. Part of the thought that came out of this angst was the ideal of being able to provide one's basic needs of food, shelter and security.

So, Is it possible to be self sufficient in the 21st century?? The short answer is no but only if you take it to the nth degree.

Wikipedia says:

Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy.

The term self-sufficiency is usually applied to varieties of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed outside of what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals.

Therefore to be totally self sufficient you will need to be able to build your shelter, grow / rear your own food and be able to defend these. So can you build your own house and rear all youre own livestock, grow your own food, find and purify your own water ? for many I think the answer would be no.

If the answer is no then that need not be the end of the dream. In days of yore people were probably self sufficient but on a village aspect. You would have your baker who may have bought / traded flour from the farmer along with a butcher, brewer and candlestick maker. So in terms of self suficiency you could achieve it on a village or settlement basis but as we have "progressed" into the now 21st century we have lost that inter relliance on each other... unless of course you include the supermarkets and our inter relliance on them.

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