A Road To Self Sufficiency

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.......