This poem changed my life

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

- Wendell Berry, Manifesto:The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

The whole poem can be read here. I urge you to drop this blog now and go read it.

Sometimes it is hard to put what you want in to words. My vision for my future certainly does not condense into a neat job description complete with handy flowchart of how to get there. The glimpse has flashed in and out of my life for as long as I can remember - infuriatingly flickering at the edge of my vision in careers interviews at school. 'Oh, you change your mind so much! You will want to be something different next week!'. Indeed.

I came across this poem last year and have read it many many times since then. To all intents and purposes it is my ideal job description - that ragbag of ideas and images that have clashed vividly with just about every advised direction I have ever taken. I wonder if I had discovered Wendell Berry when I was 18, would my life have turned out very different?  This poem articulates how I have always wanted to be in the world, but have never had the courage to fully embrace, in the face of others' well meaning opinion . I want to be a mad farmer.

Going through all my old posts gave me plenty of food for thought. All the posts now tagged 'The map chest' are about where we are going what we are doing - our road map as such. What a confused little pup I was back then. I had the vaguest inkling of what it was I wanted, but it was but a glimpse, washing in and out of sight with the tides of life. Simple living, growing things, making things and an innate need to take care of people and planet - all glimpses, but never fully braided together. 

It is all much clearer now. Time to get braiding.

Independence days

I am currently rereading the book Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation by Sharon Astyk. I will write a review at a later date, but it is basically a 'why, what and (very basic) how' of personal food growing, storage and security. The title comes from the writer Carla Emery, whose The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book I will also review at some point (the TL;DR of which will be that that particular book is nothing short of brilliant and I think you should buy it - like, yesterday).

Independence days were the days that Emery managed to feed her family from their own produce, their own pantry, and from local producers. Through the first part of the growing year she tried to sow something every single day. Halfway through the season her focus would switch to preserving something from her garden every day ready for winter. 

It isn't for everyone, but striving for true 'independence days' appeals to me - it suits my temperament, personal ethics and my obsessive love of growing food and being out of doors. In previous years, I have become discouraged at the 'smallness' of our efforts in the face of our annual grocery bill. Our tiny yard and plot seemed like a token shuffle on a long journey to self sufficiency that we will never complete. But that is not the attitude to have is it? As unrealistic as this goal may be at the moment, working towards it gives me some peace and purpose. I hope that one day we make it to an acre, some ducks and space for a root cellar. In the meantime, we do what we can. We have plans for modest food preservation this year, past the ketchup and chutney of past years. I am looking into buying more from local food producers. We are growing some food. 

In fact every day this week, we have managed to sow something. Today it was chervil seeds, yesterday a couple of pots of salad leaves; and in the days before that hyssop, physalis, alpine strawberries, bergamot, achocha and winter squash. Tomatoes have been potted on and moved outside and for the first year ever the aubergines have survived to grow more than two sets of leaves. All good practice for our future farm. In the meantime - who needs acreage when you are having fun?

Ten things

In the process of moving over my old blog posts to this one, I had to read through each one and recategorise them. I spent two hours reading through what amounts to a diary of three of the most turbulent, change filled, exciting years of my life. It was back in 2010 that we really began to knuckle down and think about what we wanted in life, having started the process a few years earlier before the Credit Crunch hit.

When I started blogging back in 2010:

1. We were in debt. We are now in credit to almost double that debt amount and we put a set amount aside without fail each month. We have a budget that covers everything and we mostly stick to it.

2. We regularly used to run out of basics and be caught unawares by short term changes. We now keep a store of three months worth of basics and try to have something to harvest from the garden allotment during the warmer months. This year we hope to make that a year round deal.

 
3. We had made a couple of batches of beer from kits and a few not great wines. We are now almost self sufficient in beer brewed from grain and fruit wines. Next up - cider!

4. We regularly used to run out of basics and end up buying expensive basics from The Coop. We now keep a store cupboard with a few months worth of essentials and keep our total food budget around £200 each month.

5. We had a small yard that frustrated our limited gardening abilities. We now have that yard, an allotment, our street frontage and a whole community in which to further expand our horticultural skills.

6. I had never made compost. We now have three compost bins and I love dirt as much as life itself.

7. I couldn't spin. I can now spin. I can also follow almost any knitting or crochet pattern, if I am not winging it and making it up as I go along.

8. We had far too much stuff and a messy house. We now have half the amount of stuff and a tidier, more peaceful home - and it is getting better every day. We also seem to get twice as much fun stuff done these days.
 
9. I was an introverted homebody with few links in my local community. I am now an introverted homebody who is also involved with two different community organizations.

10. My predominant motivation was fear - fear for what the future may bring, of climate change, peak oil and financial Armageddon. I still believe all that is happening, but I do what I do because I LOVE to do it. The future looks pretty rosy when you are harvesting tomatoes, making chutney, knitting your winter socks, planning community gardens and making stew from your stock cupboard. Those things just happen to make us more resilient human beings too.

When I started writing a blog, I also didn't think anyone would actually read it! Thank you all for reading and commenting. I love writing this blog too! And thank you for writing your own wonderful blogs and sharing your projects, successes, failures, fears and dreams too.

*Edited due to ditziness - Yes, I realize I put the food cupboard in there twice... because over the last three years my brain has nodded off a bit too. Because the real number 4 was of course, that we were the hapless, overtired parents of a 20 month old boy. And now of course we are the tired, less hapless parents of a preschooler and a toddler - and lack of sleep does nothing for your blog post editing skills, even if you have the parenting lark mostly covered ; )*

Restocking the pantry - and the food bank.

One of the most popular posts I ever wrote at The Simple Green Frugal Co-op, or at least one that generated the most discussion, was this one about the reasons I keep a well stocked pantry. My definition of well stocked changes with circumstance - I had about six months worth of stores when I went on maternity leave in late 2008 and it saved us a fortune as food prices rose. It also made me feel nicely nested and meant that I didn't have to trawl around shops with a small baby.

The Guardian recently ran a series about 'Breadline Britain'. Food banks are on the rise in the UK after 4 years of rising unemployment and benefit cuts. As well as 'the working poor', the professional classes - teachers, nurses, middle management - are finding themselves with no cash flow and bare cupboards.
Now, I doubt that both of us would lose our jobs at the same time and at the moment we have modest savings to fall back on - but never say never. Nobody can say for sure where things are headed in the next few years; and so it is better to prepare as well as you can with the resources you have. So, it is time to stock up for autumn and winter and anything that might come our way. And as we buy food for our own cupboards, we will begin to buy a little extra for our food bank too. The Trussel Trust is one of the biggest food bank charities in the UK and there website will list your local bank, as well as ways to get involved.

But I think the best way we can support those support systems is to do everything we can not to have to fall back on them. Put as much distance between us and the need for a food bank voucher as possible. I know that there are people for whom this is too late, or who were never in a position to live anything other than hand to mouth.  There are also lots of people in a position now to cushion themselves who think that that kind of thing doesn't happen to people like them. I have a suspicion that during this long recession, a lot of folk are going to surprised at just what can happen to folk like them.

I think the best cushion is actual food in the cupboard, because it is then also a cushion against food chain disruption and other causes of barren pantries. Our stocking up strategy follows a several pronged approach:

• Every few months, using a £10-£15 money off voucher that the supermarkets send out to lure us in, we do an online shop costing around £60 - £90 after deducting the voucher. This buys us cat food, coffee and tea, flour, pasta, pulses, grains,oils and fats and sometimes frozen fruit and veg. A well stocked cupboard to me is now about three months worth. That money creeps up, or stretches a shorter distance with every month that passes. Higher food prices might well be here to stay. 

• In addition to this we frequent our local Chinese and Asian supermarkets for more unusual grains and pulses, tofu, spices and condiments. Most small cities and large towns now have such shops and they provide better value than the big four.

• If I see something on offer that I know we use frequently - say tinned tomatoes - we will buy a few months worth. I will take money from the savings account to do this, although technically £20 of our monthly food budget goes to restocking the pantry anyway.

• Finally, of course, we make sure we actually eat the food we buy and cook from the pantry and try to minimise our kitchen waste as much as possible. There is always a good meal to be made even if there is no fresh produce in the house, which really is better than money in the bank.

This week I will finally be getting to grips with meal planning. It is something I have never done, but cooking for a fussy preschooler on top of shift work is taking it out of us. Our kitchen waste has crept up. Planning isn't something I really like to do, being happy go lucky most of the time about most things, but this is something I am actually looking forward to, given the pay off in peace come supper time. 

Mulling

 I suspected, before we even locked our front door and joined the stream of late summer weekend traffic, that our second excursion to Norfolk as a family would leave me with much to contemplate. Since we decided earlier in the year that Norfolk is our preferred destination when we leave this place, I have done a fair amount of behind the scenes ruminating, including confronting resurfacing doubts as to whether it's actually a good plan. I suspected that our trip would settle the matter once and for all. 


I am a fickle beast; prone to announcing that I have finally settled on my grand plan (oh how many variations on 'when I grow up I want to be a  ____' I have uttered over the years) only to recant within the month, week or hour, which is why I haven't discussed our plan since first announcing it, for fear of making a complete wally of myself.

We had a great time exploring, gadding about the countryside, visiting some old friends and old haunts. We discussed these troublesome doubts of mine whilst we were there, and we discussed them some more when we got back.

Norfolk still holds, still consumes my thoughts on a daily basis, still looms large in my mind as I rewrite our budget yet again. There are still questions; and answers semi-formed; to mull, however. So that is what I am doing. Which is to say, expect to hear a lot more about it from now on.

What are you mulling over right now?

Waiting

I am three weeks from my due date and mental and physical energy really is escaping me now. I have to confess I haven't done much of anything this last week. I have pottered about, I have tried to keep on top of all the things that need to be done - but mostly I have done an awful lot of lazing around. The nesting instinct is still strong and housework is getting done in short bursts of activity. Walking anywhere seems to take three times as long and sap my strength 3 times as fast.  Mostly I don't feel much like leaving home, or the sofa for that matter.

I have taken the chance to socialize a little the last few weeks, forcing myself even, when necessary. I regret that in the past I have been reluctant to socialize regularly, partly out of shyness, partly laziness, partly that my house was too messy to have people round - even close friends. A barbecue, a few evenings with friends, a visit to the local community arts cafe today, even dinner out with Nick - a once a year occurrence these days - have all been enjoyed, even if they have left me shattered. New babies don't leave much time, will or energy over for socializing, so we might as well make the most of it whilst we can. I am naturally a bit of a homebody, but once I am out of the house and amongst good company I am as happy as the next person - something I will miss out on perhaps for the rest of the summer.

One of my focuses for the next year will be to become more involved with my local community. I am quite reserved and find it hard to just turn up to things where there are big groups of people, but it would be good for me to involve myself a little more. We have good friends, we know a few of our neighbours, but I can't describe us as being embedded in a community. I am yet to take The Boy to any form of structured toddler group and know very few people with children locally - and as a result have probably made this parenting lark a lot harder for myself than I needed to. Now I want to go out and make connections with people and better late than never.

On Saturday we went to a healthy living picnic event at a local park. Considering my lack of energy I surpassed myself and we took along a bean salad, vegetable sticks, sweet potato wedges with homemade smoked paprika mayonnaise, homemade bread and some fruit and ate a leisurely picnic amongst all the other families, surrounded by trees, healthy living stalls and children tearing about in sack races, making the most of all the sunshine. The Boy had his first go on a bouncy castle; a terrifying ten minutes for me; thankfully he just giggled every time he came close to being flattened by the overly energetic seven year olds sharing it with him.

This week has been a good one, for which I am very grateful.

Carrots

As in metaphorical carrots - and sticks. Delicious orange crunchy carrots are also good and we should talk about them someday - but today I want to talk about metaphorical carrots.

Sticks are all well and good. The big stick in our case was a fear that we wouldn't be able to provide for our baby son during what we thought would be hard times, labouring as we were under a pile of debt. As a result we began to budget, live a lot more frugally and organized our finances to pay off the debt as quickly and cheaply as possible. In time it was possible to re frame that initial impetus into something resembling a carrot - living within our means has bought us a much more interesting, productive life in many ways. Home cooked food, brewing, DIY, thrifting, handicrafts, gardening and the knowledge that there is cash left in our accounts come the week before payday all make for a much more satisfying life than one lived on the never-never. The fruits of our labours became goals in themselves. We had made the transition from living frugally out of sheer necessity, to making it an enjoyable way to live.

The initial motivating  fear remains and resurfaces every so often - when we have overstretched ourselves, or forgotten a bill payment was due, or know we have to find money for a big purchase. It rises irrationally when we still have money to spare but can't afford to make an overpayment on debt - a completely irrational fear for someone who two years ago didn't even have a budget for debt overpayment, or anything else for that matter. Still, I tend to go a little berserk at these times and start devising ways that we can live on stale bread crusts and sell our remaining possessions to make ends meet, until someone (usually the person having their ear bent at the time) lends me a little perspective on matters.

Since we decided on a vague plan of action for the future that I could feel enthusiastic about - moving to Norfolk - the carrots have multiplied. I have had to rewrite the budget this week having missed out a glaringly obvious expense on the original; and my first reaction was not fear of financial doom, or recourse to my stale crust recipe collection, but sheer annoyance that we would have less money to put aside towards our move in a few years. Then came the fear of doom, but that was fleeting and besides the point. Now that I have a long term goal to work towards, an alternative to just plodding on as I am forever, I have a renewed enthusiasm for all things frugal.

This has been a week of tracking all of our spending down to the last penny. We have baked and eaten bread almost every day with gusto, soaked pulses and dug out half used packets from the back of the cupboard for frugal meals, religiously switched off appliances at the wall and I have earmarked large swathes of my remaining craft stash for various money saving baby projects for The Girl (even going so far as to break out needle and thread once again, which is never my natural inclination). Every little money saving action feels like a gallop in the right direction; and I am making the most of it whilst my energy levels and enthusiasm hold up. At the same time, I have to remind myself not to go to far with the all austerity - the goal is to get to Norfolk in five years and continue to live a good life in a new setting with new activities, not to put off living until we get there.

So, I would be interested to know, what motivates you to live frugally and manage your resources - carrots, sticks or something in between? Do you ever take it too far?

Where to go, what to do, who to be? A goal

In so many ways I have reached a level of contentment in my life that I didn't think was possible given the direction I took. Aged 25, still living in the UK, with a 'husband' (for want of a better word - though as yet no contracts have been signed or expensive receptions thrown), a toddler and another child on the way, working  part time in a job that really is just a job, on a relatively low income, no prestige, no glory. Not the conditions for contentment - a career, adventure, international travel, lots of money, passionate love affairs (and quite probably eventual infamy, 'cause I am that sort of girl) - I predicted as a teenager. I used to change my mind a lot about where, who and what I wanted to be - which might explain why I have arrived so far from any of my visions, such was the meandering path I took. All in all I have ended up in a good place. I know enough about myself to make where I am a comfortable place to be, whilst at the same time being able to see where things could be made so much better.

This state of contentment has crept up on me over the last year, sometime after I quit the misery inducing navel gazing and stressing about what I should be doing with my life and just got on with actually living it. I started writing this blog to motivate me and to record my progress - which it did - and we got on with the business of decluttering our lives. We have paid off thousands of pounds worth of debt. I have given up a few hobbies that no longer fulfilled me and replaced them with activities that do. Our house is mostly decluttered and vaguely tidy on 3 out of every 7 days. Progress indeed, but the biggest changes were internal - ridding my mind of the chatter that caused me to stumble at every turn was harder work. Even then, giving up giving a crap what other people thought (or even what I thought they thought) was the easy part as it turned out - I can take the most snide criticism these days and still usually enjoy the rest of my day. But letting go of all of the conflicting visions that I have held for myself over the years is a lot harder, which might explain why I had such a seemingly irrational attachment to that desk.

Yesterday we made the decision that our goal for the next five years would be to move to the county of my childhood, Norfolk, and try to build a good life.  The details will be thrashed out in the next few years but it is exciting to have a direction to strike out in finally, a new reason to be living the way we do. We have discussed at length over the years where we should go when we are done with Portsmouth - home or abroad, city, town or country - an almost infinite range of exciting possibilities - and the end result of years of deliberation is that I will be returning to my roots.

Norfolk is one of the most beautiful places in the UK, has a great climate and offers us a range of options as to small city/town/village/hovel living, all of which would allow us to lead a wonderful, simple, outdoorsy lifestyle if we design it right. Going home makes a lot of sense, but up until now I wasn't able to admit it. When I left, I had no real thoughts of ever returning, fond as I was of the place. I went away, failed at everything I set out to do and eventually came to make my peace with that. All of the visions that no longer fit have been let go of and returning to my roots doesn't feel so much a failure, but an opportunity to create something new and exciting. Today is a good day.

May you live in interesting times

The title of this post cropped up in conversation this week. It was used in jest and so unfortunately I didn't get to utter any counter curses, but it did get me thinking. 

In 2006/7 I began to read about peak oil and the economic unravelling that would ensue. I had assumed that it was a decade away and that there was plenty of time to prepare on a personal level. In January 2008, we found ourselves expecting our first child. By that summer, the world experienced its first oil shock in over 20 years. Food riots broke out across the world. By the autumn of the same year, economic instability turned to full blown collapse, bailouts and sovereign debts; and grandad was reading his newborn grandson bedtime stories from the financial pages of bank collapses and share price falls. Then for a year or so, at least in the UK, everything went rather quiet. House prices rose once again, unemployment rose conservatively considering the scale of the financial bubble that had burst, inflation wasn't taking hold and the oil price had collapsed. I had thought at the time that this was 'the big one' and was amazed that everything turned back to to normal so quickly.

On reflection, having discussed the state of the universe at some length with armchair philosopher types over pints of home brew, we realised that something was going to give. The only question was what and when?

Today I find myself 22 weeks pregnant with a daughter conceived just as the sleeping dragon began to limber up once again last autumn. Once again I am pregnant at a time of immense turbulence. By July, when our daughter arrives, I imagine that things will be coming to a head if they haven't already. In the last few months, food prices have once again risen to record highs. The entire Middle East is undergoing a revolution that was inconceivable to most a year or so ago. Oil prices appear to be heading for a spike once again. Major natural disasters have devastated communities and agricultural regions across the world at a time when the financial resources to deal with them are becoming more scarce.

The world looks an infinitely more interesting place in 2011; and for the last few months I have wavered between exuberant hope and extreme anxiety for what the future holds.  My children will probably not grow up in the relatively stress free world that I have, where we just assumed that we would find ever shinier, newer, energy intensive solutions to solve all of our environmental and social problems. In all likelihood, it isn't going to happen; and on many levels that is terrifying. On the other hand, as in all crises (right up to the final terminal one) their lies opportunity. Some things will fade away, losses will be suffered - and then new things will replace them. I don't believe that a huge, terminal apocalypse is on its way; which means that there must be wiggle room to create something...interesting. Interesting in a good way, not in a fake Chinese curse way.

A few days away from the Internet focusing on everyday things has done me the world of good. Preparation is a good preventative measure against despair real or imagined. Today I knuckled down to seed sowing and allotment planning (more of which another day), laundry and tidying, all whilst drinking in the sunshine. The nesting instinct is strong this time around and with a tidier (though still not tidy) house apparently comes a tidier happier mind. Best to get all the hard work out of the way now, before I become too fat and heavy and grumpy to move further than between the sofa and the biscuit tin, I think.

Incidentally, a quick heads up. If in future years you see me sporting another baby bump (although highly unlikely) - pay attention - with my track record on timing, it's probably time to run for the hills, or at least duck and cover for a while.

New year, new projects

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas/Solstice/holiday season. Here's to 2011!

I am not a great one for resolutions. I realised early on that I tend to set such worthy but dull and joyless goals to achieve over the coming months; I actually do myself a great service when I neglect them half way through January. Besides, all the regular green and frugal goals just roll over from the previous year anyway - pay off debts, use less energy, eat healthier seasonal food. So this year, instead, I have a few experiments to run with.

For all the wonderful presents Santa brought this year, he was outdone before he even took to the skies by a nice lady from the city council. On Christmas Eve a hefty letter thudded through our letterbox, offering us an allotment! We have been on the list for 3 and a half years and I almost cried tears of joy when I read through the contract and rules and regulations (never before have I been so happy to wade through so much bureaucracy). As demand is so high and land so scarce here, our plot is 1/3 the size of a traditional plot, but 75m² is still a sizable space to work with in conjunction with the space on our patio. So my big project for 2011 is to experiment with growing stuff. Specifically, I want to grow as much edible, delicious produce as possible for as little work, inputs and money as possible. I have a hunch that this will take much longer than one year, but I have dusted of my permaculture and gardening manuals and begun my masterplan.

This feeds nicely into my other main project for the year, one that will probably involve lots of little experiments. 4 years of a relatively mindless data entry job, combined with parenting related lack of sleep has unfortunately whittled away what was previously an insatiable curiosity to a mindless consumer of media and current affairs information. The rot needs to stop before I am completely Zombiefied, so this will be a year of reading weighty books, asking deeper questions and thinking deeply about things, along with lots of practical experiments along the way. It will also be a year of checking the national and international news just once a week as opposed to several times a day and perhaps also the occassional Internet fast. So experiment 2 can be summed up thus - an experiment to eradicate boredom from my life.

Both of these projects, alongside all of the ongoing goals that roll over year on year are more than enough to keep me occupied for 12 months. I have no idea where the second one will be taking me yet, but it has to be somewhere interesting. There is a third experiment in the offing - but you will have to wait a few weeks for that one...

What do you have planned for 2011?

Epiphany

I wrote a post yesterday about how I tend to sabotage myself, before I even get started. Ironically, I didn't publish it, because who would want to read that anyway?

No amount of navel gazing will actually move you forward. You can believe that you will never be as good at something as you want to be. You can believe that perfection is an achievable goal.  You can believe that there is always someone else that will do something better than you ever will. You can believe that there are outside agencies that will prevent you from achieving what you want. You can believe that any mistake you have ever made condemns you to failure for the rest of your days. You can believe any of the negative mind chatter that you want to believe about yourself, that stops you moving forward to where you want to go.

When I say you, obviously I mean me. I realise now after all these years there is an easier way to live. Just ignore the mind chatter; much in the way you would ignore someone trying to sell you extra cable TV, or double glazing for a house you don't own, or a handcart trip to hell and other crap you don't need. Those people eventually give up and go home. If you are too busy concentrating on the things you really want to succeed at, whether that be designing knitting patterns, growing prize pumpkins, becoming financially independent, or becoming world Tetris champion, self sabotaging thoughts won't have room to take root. Life is too short to let the ghosts of everyone who has ever criticised you, called you names, told you you are incapable or made you feel that you can never ever be good enough, to rule your life. You can't gaze at your navel and the horizon at the same time; and I know which one is generally more worthy of study.


It's all just a case of deciding to begin; and then deciding to keep on carrying on. So I have decided to begin.

Another obsession in the making

The last few weeks, pingling child not withstanding, my promise not to buy any more yarn or craft materials until I had wound down my stash has been going quite well.

A few days into our holiday however an idea wafted in on the sea breeze and implanted itself in my brain...I could make my own yarn! I could learn to spin, on a drop spindle first, then progress up the ranks. I could then plant a few dye plants, experiment perhaps with growing my own plant fibres, one day keep sheep and alpacas and angora bunnies...have a dye studio, paint some yarn...yup. A few days into our holiday, in a very rural very arable county with few fibre animals and even fewer craft shops, I became obsessed with the idea of finding a spindle and a book about spinning. Obsessed to the point of insomnia at one point.

Unfortunately, bankrupted by said holiday until payday, I had to wait. The idea didn't fade into the background. Everytime I picked up my knitting, I wanted to be learning to spin at that moment. It has been a long time since an idea has gripped me with such longing for action (I am quite sloth like at heart). In the end, I bit the bullet and dipped into my savings (to be replaced next month) and bought a drop spindle kit.

I am rubbish. So rubbish. I want to be good right now, I want to be practising at every moment of the day and night, I want those pretty dyed rovings (I can't even remember if thats what they are called, I am THAT rubbish) to be pretty handspun yarn and eventually a pretty hand knitted something. Sigh.

A productive week

When I began to refine my life goals a few months ago, the biggest thing for me was that I wanted to stop damaging and start repairing the world and the people around me. Beyond mindful consumption, that means actually working to repair damage already wrought.

The book Trees and How to Grow Them is a brilliant (though not a field) guide to our native and common trees. I bought it as a gift from Gus to his dad when Gus was just a month old. Finally this autumn, it has come down from the shelf and been put to use. It gives plenty of instruction on collecting and preparing different seeds for planting; as well as planting trees out where they will be only beneficial and not a nuisance.

So far we have collected wild plum and cherry stones, hazelnuts, horse chestnut, bird cherry and rowan. There will be more as we find them locally over the next few weeks. I would like some more edibles, such as sweet chestnuts and apples. After a few sessions looking for seeds and edible treats, we here can highly recommend an afternoon spent in the friendly company of your local trees. They filter out the noise of the city, they welcome inquisitive children (and adults), they sometimes offer up a little food or a place to shelter and watch the world go by; and they lift your spirits after a few hours of walking amongst them. Which is why in a city of 200,000 people, there should be more than 30,000 trees.

In a year or two, with a little TLC, we will hopefully have some strong saplings, ready to be planted out around the city. In a world where I consume so much, including many, many trees, many habitats and many foraged fruits, I know that I have actually put something (small) back with my own two hands. Which is a start.

Minimalism vs. the farm (vs. my brain)

The last few weeks I have been on a decluttering drive and it has made a huge difference to our home. I have vastly scaled back in the kitchen, the book collection, my yarn stash (all that acrylic has gone to a better place where it will be made into something beautiful) and now I am moving on to our wardrobes, again.

As I am clearing however, I feel a certain unease. Many of the things that I own serve a useful purpose - the kitchen equipment, the craft materials, gardening bits and bobs. When I peruse other blogs, where people are settled into their smallholdings and self reliant lifestyles, they do seem to be surrounded by an awful lot of stuff. Tools, books, craft materials, bake ware, canning equipment, extra linens and clothing...all seem necessary if you are going to have a degree of self reliance and sufficiency. Which is making me wonder - do I really want that lifestyle? I love the idea of producing our own food, tending animals, hand crafting many of the things we need in our day to day lives. But does that mean I will have to maintain lots of stuff? Is it that the more skills I learn, the more equipment I will need; and the bigger the space I will need to accommodate it all?

I love my new found lack of stuff - I have enough that I can live a simple lifestyle in a small terraced house in the city. But the part of me that has an eye on possible power cuts and economic disruption in the not too distant future is less sanguine about throwing out that second hand-cranked torch and extra layers of clothing, 'just in case'. Then there is the incredibly optimistic part of me, scouting the horizon for our 'farm' with a veg patch and pantry and workshop, that wants to keep the maslin pan and perhaps invest in some more cookware and knitting needles, for when the time comes.

Decluttering is temporarily halted. My brain is about to explode.

Back home

I have been away for a week visiting relatives in sunny Derbyshire. OK, it really isn't very sunny, but it is fairly picturesque in the moments when the cloud cover breaks and the sun illuminates the peaks. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so I can't show you. It is well worth a visit if ever you pass that way.

A week away from the city calms and clarifies the mind beautifully. As a child I used to wander for hours in the countryside if I had a decision to make or was feeling out of sorts. I never realised until last week how much I missed the opportunity to roam free, physically and mentally, for just a few hours.

Which leads me to the decision I made whilst we were away and my mind was peacefully rambling. I am not an urban girl, I never will be. Sure I can cope, but I don't thrive. Too much noise, too much commotion, too much competition - and for want of a better word, too much fronting. So when we move, as the darling OH is also not overly enamoured with city living, we will be leaving the city. This will be in a few years when he has finished his nursing training, but I have made peace with that and will throw myself into enjoying to the full all the pluses of living in the most densely populated city in the UK (awesome 'Indian' restaurants and takeaways, for one) and of course, spending time with all of the lovely people here that we call our friends and neighbours.

We are still undecided  just how rural we will go. At the moment I am keen on the outskirts of a town. Being landlocked in Derbyshire, followed by a stopover in the equally pretty-but-landlocked Oxfordshire, also taught me that reservoirs and lakes and streams are no substitute for the open sea and a beach nearby - and therefore we will not be heading too far inland anytime soon.

But knowing where our eventual patch of the earth will not be is a step in the right direction, don't you think?

Low impact living for a high impact life

I think my philosophical meanderings over recent weeks have taken their toll on me a little and I am seeing the future through gloom tinted spectacles. Every goal I decide upon seems wanting somehow and I am once again paralysed by indecision.

So I have decided to start steering a course and hope I land up somewhere...nice. There are a couple of things that I know I want that I now recognize have drifted in and out of my consciousness since I was a child:

• To own my own 'homestead', size to be determined at a later date when I have explored a few other activities I might want to incorporate into my daily existence. May range from terrace house with good garden to large permaculture farm away from 'civilization'. I would like to produce a good fraction of our food and perhaps even fibres (a girl's gotta knit; and possibly even weave by then!) and also be self reliant (not necessarily sufficient) in energy. There would be an outdoor 'room' space too, a porch or fire pit. No idea where in the world it would be, apart from near to the coast, somewhere you can look up and see stars, not sulphur lamp. Abroad appeals. 

• To travel and have adventures, in a low impact way. I like the idea of packing a trailer and going bicycle touring. Perhaps a bit of trekking. There will definitely be tents and camp stoves and marshmallows. I think that this is something that Gus would enjoy too, even if I struggle to convince daddy of the merits of leaving his brum-brum at home.

• To earn a living by being productive, by which I mean producing genuinely valuable goods - whether that be food, music, knitted clothing or good cheer - in the lowest impact way possible. 

• To be involved in some kind of ecological restoration - whether that be forest planting, beach clean ups or a bit of guerilla gardening.

•  To spend more of my hours in good company. I have a tendency to be a bit of a recluse, yet really enjoy the company of good friends when I manage to get it together and get in contact. 

• To be proficient in a (portable, probably stringed) musical instrument. Because the above campfires/porch/friends/marshmallows are not going to provide their own soundtrack.

• I would like to be fluent in another language, because I think that being able to read and speak and comprehend another cultures language will open windows on the world to savour. Again, I don't know which one...perhaps more than one.

That's my list. I know that it isn't very precise, is apt to change and as yet has no measurable targets and mini goals attached to it. But just reading it makes me feel more positive about the future. I have something to aim for, but the striving for it, unlike so many of the other life goals I have contempleated, does not require me to place an unsustainable burden on the biosphere and doesn't induce massive amounts of guilt - or debt. It seems doable in a world with a significantly reduced energy supply and consumption too.

In Depletion and Abundance, the author Sharon Astyk talks about the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, or 'the repair of the world'. Whilst it no doubt has specific connotations within Jewish culture, I like the idea that it conjures up for me, the idea that I could; and should; contribute something meaningful to the world, to mend that which is broken. The place to start is of course with my own life, by first minimising the harm that I could be doing. Anything on top of that is just gravy that makes life a joy to live.