Introducing The Neighbour
Thursday, July 15, 2010
It has been an interesting 18 months or so for our family, but life has always been a bit of an adventure. At the moment I feel incredibly lucky that we have found this place to live with our chosen neighbours near a really great little town. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by how much we “should” be doing in the garden, but it’s good to be able to share the burden. We are not going to be self sufficient in much produce this year, there is so much to learn and experience is a good teacher. When our landlady said that there could be frosts here as late as June I didn’t take her very seriously. At my peril. We put most of the bean plants outside in the last week of may, and the few that remain are a sorry state. Never mind, Cathie and I have quite a good supply of dried beans stashed and we are lucky enough to have a lovely organic fruit and veg shop in town which we are very happy to support. It’s mainly staffed by volunteers and a local couple have recently started supplying artisan bread to the shop. http://www.theloopproject.co.uk/bakery/
Luckily we will benefit from stuff planted here in the past by the landlords, there is a fair bit of soft fruit that we will soon be enjoying and damsons in the hedges in the fields and a few fruit trees in the orchard. It feels more important at the moment to live through our first season here concentrating on our relationships with each other. If we can get on, support each other and have similar hopes for the future it will be easier to cope with a less than self sufficient bean harvest. We need to get to know the land, the climate, where it’s light and shady etc. We probably need to invest in a far bigger polytunnel if we decide that we are going to stay here beyond our first year.
That will depend largely on the winter ahead. We are expecting the buildings to be expensive and difficult to heat. We are accumulating wood supplies, but I feel we can never have enough. There’s a bit of frantic blanket crochet action going on and merino thermals are on my shopping list. I think we will have to find some creative insulation solutions.
It feels funny to be writing a blog post because I’m unsure who would be interested in my witterings, but I suppose what we are doing may interest people thinking about living in a slightly different way. The intentional community we came from wasn’t right for us, but out of that experience we are here, now with neighbours who want to be our neighbours. It’s certainly easier on a small scale, both with less people and with less land.
At the moment I feel very lucky and positive about our uncertain future. Hopefully the laughs and good times shared with the neighbours will continue.
I should add (in case this is all sounding a bit too good to be true), that future posts will include tales of small and not so small rodents, dealing with a cock that goes bad (that is, a toddler, child and female adult attacking rooster) and how to survive (or not) winter in the hills of mid wales in an ancient building with holes in it.
Posted in The Neighbour | Comments (5)
Tags: stuff
Rachel Gill (was Shelstone) says:
July 15, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Hi, I’m really interested in self sufficiency so eager to read your witterings and what you are all up to. Have started ourselves with some chickens and growing fruit & veg. So far – completely self sufficient in Garlic, Rosemary and eggs. Working on the rest!! Rachel
Jamie says:
July 15, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Sounds good to me!
It seems that the ‘get on with the pragmatics of trying to get vaguely close to self-sufficiency’ approach is way better than ‘massively overthink the theories and principles required to delivery this at a social (or even community) level’.
Good luck, and I look forward to reading about how you get on!
Jamie
Stefan Budianu says:
July 22, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I see you are bit worried about the construction price. Did you consider a geodesic dome? You could have a very cheap 4V frequency dome, UK is not that cold so you could make a geodesic dome using triangle pannels, with 30 CM of insulation (standard for a passive house). Do not put any window on the North and West . I estimate that 15000 would be more than enough for a 2 bedroom dome. Can be built in a week, and it is far more efficient than the existing homes. Also, the sphere is enclosing a great deal of volume in a small “skin” so your energy bill will be 40% smaller than any similar well-insulated 2 bedroom home. Actually , it could be next to zero. You can also make your own hot air pannels for under 200 £ for a very large panel. however, in the UK you got the inconvenience of the short number of sunny hours over the winter, never the less still gives you a lot of KW of energy in the winter.
God bless ,
From Romania
Stefan B.
theneighbour says:
July 22, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Yes, I’m all for a pragmatic approach. We all have jobs and it would be unrealistic to think that we could achieve total self sufficiency anytime in the near future. We do seem to beat ourselves up about it though. We have talked about getting some WWOOFERs in next year, that would help and would be fun and we’d probably learn a lot.
theneighbour says:
July 22, 2010 at 11:01 pm
I’ll be wittering when I have time (read: “should be weeding”)
Your comment made me smile – we are also self sufficient in eggs (good old ex-battery girls), wild garlic, sweet peas and broad beans. There should be a fair bit of soft fruit soon, but we can’t take any credit for that (or the wild garlic) as it was put in in years gone by, by our landlords.