Back to basics.

My name is Sophie and i belong to the old times. i enjoy the simple life , before technology and convenience took over. Although i enjoy having my laptop to share my stories and my xbox to enjoy my games , nothing beats being in nature , raising animals and growing our own food. So me and my partner began our journey to a slower life last year and here is how its going so far and my beginner tips.

The crops:

We started last year in our small garden growing in containers , tomatoes , potatoes and herbs and was also helping a local allotment with their crops too. we did really well last year , the harvest was plentiful. This then stemmed into much more for us , we started looking at different preserving methods and how we can use all our crops. Potato was a great crop , homemade chips are incredibly simple just cut to shape , toss through some olive oil , salt pepper and then in the oven they go till golden , you can even make chips for freezing too by cutting to shape and boiling them for around 8 minutes before cooling and tossing through oil , then on baking paper on a tray lay the chips flat and freeze overnight before putting into a freezer bag all together. Potatoes give you so many different food options , boiled , roasted , mashed , baked , the meal list is endless! Tomatoes was another fantastic idea , fresh tomatoes on salads , baked potatoes or i like mine with fried egg and toast topped with salt, tomatoes are handy for making sauces too which is another great thing for the freezer , but tomatoes can be frozen whole too which i freeze mine that are starting to go slightly soft. This year we didn't end up adding any new crops other than peas as we ended up focusing all our time on building our new chicken home and having fun with our 6 new chickens ! but my main advice for growing food is to invest in a second freezer for preserving , stock up on empty pasta sauce jars and reuse them to store dried herbs or homemade pickled items. Canning is a brilliant preserve method but is very expensive to start up and can be very tricky too so ill leave that for the professionals! The last of the crop section so far is actually foraging , me and my family went blackberry picking and we picked enough to make 3 take away tubs full of blackberry ice cream and i have a freezer bag full of left over blackberries , they are a free resource that needs to be used more.

The Animals:

As said above we ended up building a big chicken run this year and adding 6 chickens to our family. Chickens can be kept in your garden but always check your local council website for rules first. Our chickens are kept at our allotment plot and have been a huge benefit for us, we get 6 eggs per a day and honestly we have eggs coming out of our ears ! We have started to sell a few eggs to friend's but the beautifully fresh eggs have become very popular and now we are planning over this winter to build more sheds and runs to get more chickens ! chickens are surprisingly pretty cheap to look after and they are so fun to watch. At the moment we don't plan on having any other animals but i have thought about having quails as they are lovely little birds and would lay little eggs perfect for snack sized pickled eggs. We have also spoke about adding a few turkeys to the flock of chickens as they are apparently great pets and perfect guard dogs to look after the hens. Remember that animals are a lot of responsibility and just like you would with pets please plan the purchase properly and make sure you're fully prepared for the responsibility of having them.

Other useful things:

Part of this journey to sustaining ourselves is also reducing waste , reducing costs and reusing what we have. I ditched sponges for dish washing and cleaning the house, instead I've bought micro-fibre clothes that can be washed and reused. I've bought wash cloths for body washing too. My new favourite thing is the homemade cleaning products , not only is it cheaper to make your own , its also better for you as it takes chemicals out of your home. All of these things have saved me money but a big thing for me was letting go of subscriptions and materialistic things , i cancelled all subscriptions and now we just watch youtube and standard tv, i always try to buy things second hand from charity shops, second hand shops or online on vinted, i also always try to donate or sell my other things instead of throwing them out to add to landfill.

There is still so much more for us to do to become more self sufficient but as a family that cant afford to just buy a nice house with a huge plot of land like you see all these youtubers do , we will take it one year at a time , growing , and preserving and learning how to be better for our bodies and better for our world !

Love From Sophie -x-