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Self Sufficiency & Me

Its been a long hard struggle to get my garden into a working self sufficient smallholding, but now four years on I think it is finally getting there. My first purchase were my hens, and I have several since I started way back in 2002, and we have had many dozens of eggs since then, my second purchase was my two beautiful nanny goats, called Milly & Molly, who came to us pregnant, we now four years on have a herd of six 4 Girls and 2 boys who are both castrated, and we have a regular supply of goats milk, for our tea, coffee, and cereals, not to mention, all the cakes, pasties and pies that are made with it too, the third purchase to arrive was my muscovy ducks we purchased one male who we called Clyde, and two females which we called bubbles and bonny, this gave us the opportunity to start breeding ducks and increasing our stock with ducklings. And this year we have increased to 12 ducks and the breeding programme now switches to the chickens, I have mainly isabrown hens but I have just purchased four rather sweet bantams which are all dutch pyle but they are not quite old enough to be put with my beautifully handsome cockerel edd yet so they are being housed seperately until they are old enough to take him on.

We also have a large area to the rear of the property which is home to my vegetable garden, here I grow everything I can to keep the family topped up with good healthy fruits and vegetables, which are frozen, or turned into pies, flans, jams or chutneys, also there is a large area being developed at this moment solely for herbs, both for cooking and medicinal purposes. And I am adding to this at every opportunity I can, and this year we have been also trying to use some wild foods too, searching the hedgerows etc for interesting foods to eat.

We will continue to live off the land for years to come, and in turn this will enable us to cut out the supermarket. 2008 will be the year that I start to cull my ducks for meat, the year I purchase a pair of pigs, for fattening and freezing and increase my vegetable plot by double, allowing for even more to be grown,

We absolutely love this way of life, and certainly would recommend it to anyone thinking of turning their hand to self sufficiency.

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