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<title>Gopher.ICU - Self-sufficiency</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog</link>
<description></description>
<item>
<title>230322-Gardening-diary</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/230322-Gardening-diary.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Gardening diary
Today I prepared a bed and planted out the following items:
1 row Carrots
2/3 row beetroot
2/3 row parsnips
6x snap peas (direct in soil)
8x snap peas in tray (just incase)
4x webs wonderful lettuce
I also moved and shortened the brassica cage, which I built last year
to protect the broccoli. I figure we haven't had much luck with them
so far, so I will just try to grow a couple of cauliflowers and use
the space for stuff I know we have been successful with.
Last week I planted 3 rows of potatoes, two rows of Maris Piper and
one row of small potatoes. I will plant at least one more row of
Maris Piper.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:00:19 +0100</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Chickens</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Chickens.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Chickens
After COVID-19 panic buying caused shortages of some everyday items
such as eggs and bread, I decided that maybe it was time to revisit
the idea of keeping chickens. I had raised the idea previously, but
it was received without much enthusiasm. When the shortages began
however, it seemed to make sense...
Rather than purchasing point of lay pullets at around 20-25 GBP each,
I discovered that I could re-home ex commercial laying hens which,
at 18 months old, had reached their commercial end-of-life and would
otherwise have been slaughtered. For a donation of 5 GBP per hen,
this seemed like a win for everyone.
## The coop
I built the coop from a steel garage that we had laying around which
had never assembled. Basically a quarter of the garage was made into
a square box with the uprights shortened to one panel high. Half of
the roof was then assembled on top with the open front of the apex
roof blocked up with a piece of steel cut from what would have been
one of the doors. A guilotine style door was created using some of
the U shaped strengthening uprights and wood from an old pallet.
The floor and raised nesting area was also created from pallet wood.
It's far from perfect, but it keeps the worst of the weather and
predators out.
## The run
This was created using a commercial non-electrified chicken fence
produced by VOSS. A 25M fence was more than enough to section off a
corner of the garden. We added a drinker and waterer, purchased off
Ebay, a tyre filled with sand and a perch made from old branches.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2020 02:01:07 +0100</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Start-of-gardening-season-2023</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Start-of-gardening-season-2023.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Start of gardening season 2023
Last week I started planting some seeds indoors and digging over all
the vegetable beds from last year.
So far I've planted 16 gardeners delight cherry tomato seeds, two in
each pot, with the aim of getting 7 or 8 strong plants for ourselves.
If there are spares then I usually give them away. I've also planted
several cauliflowers and a tray of 16 onions.
## Plan for 2023
The plan for this year is much the same as last. 1/3 of our growing
area will be potatoes, usually Maris Piper as we find them to be a
pretty good all-rounder for mash and roast. A couple of rows of
carrots, one of parsnips, one of onions and maybe one of beetroot.
The beetroot we steam and then pickle so it keeps for quite a while.
We only just finished the last jar from last year and we gave two or
three away else we'd still be using them.
For salad we usually grow various salad leaves, webs wonderful
lettuce, spring onions and radishes.
I know we are never going to be self sufficient, but we had several
months last year where we didn't need to buy lettuce, tomatoes,
potatoes or carrots from the supermarket. It's worth the effort just
for the satisfaction of not having to buy them for a while and having
provided at least a little of your own food. Carrots also always
taste a lot better than ones you find in a supermarket. Our preferred
variety are Nantes.
## Fruit
We bought an apple tree on a whim from B&M for 6 GBP. It was dry root
and I have no idea if it will grow but I've soaked it in water and
done all that was instructed. I don't expect we will be eating apples
off it for a couple of years even if it does survive.
We have a couple of blueberry bushes which are now a couple of years
old. I hope to have a few blueberries this year. We also have a
raspberry and blackberry bush. Neither of these provided much fruit
last year but we had a few odd ones. Hopefully they will do better
this year. Thankfully not far away there are wild blackberry bushes
that help to provide my yearly stock of blackberries for my favourite
hot desert blackberry and apple crumbles.
We also have quite a few strawberry plants but they don't appear very
productive and normally the slugs get to them before we do...]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Tue, 21 Feb 2023 22:19:37 +0100</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Grow Your Own Vegetables
There is nothing more satisfying than growing, and eating, your own
produce. The freshness and flavour seems far superior to that you
will find in your local supermarket.
We had been growing our own tomatoes and a few strawberries for maybe
4 years. In 2019 we expanded our operation to grow some radishes,
lettuce, carrots, potatoes, spring onions and parsnips. When COVID
came along we expanded again, digging up half of one of the lawns to
make way for more vegetables. We also got some chickens[1].
Seeds are cheap and you will get many vegetables from a single packet.
All you need is some space, moderate soil conditions and you will be
quite surprised what you can grow in a small plot. You can even grow
in pots, planters or any other container that will hold soil if you
are limited for space.
## What To Grow
This will depend on what your household likes to eat, uses most and
how adventurous you feel. This past year we decided on growing the
following as we like them home grown or use them a lot for meals:
* Carrots
* Potatoes
* Onions
* Leeks
* Parsnips
* Lettuce
* Tomatoes
* Radish
* Cucumber
* Runner Beans
* Beetroot
* Cauliflower
* Broccoli
* Courgettes
## Results
You will have successes and failures as you discover what will grow
in your soil and in which areas of your plot. Some plants like full
sun, others like a little shade, some prefer sandy soil. For some
reason if we plant runner beans at the back of the bed behind the
house something eats them. If we put nasturtiums or marigolds as
sacrificial plants they get eaten too. But if we put the runner beans
10 feet away in a bucket they have survived without incident.
Potatoes seem to grow well almost anywhere. Rather than buying
expensive seed potatoes we just buy a bag of potatoes from the
supermarket and let them sprout before putting them in. We've had no
issues doing this even though it's not recommended.
Tomatoes I have also grown from supermarket tomatoes that have gone
past their best. I just squeeze out the seeds into some soil, cover
them with a little more soil and within a week or so you will have
tiny tomatoes sprouting. It really is that easy.
Our first ever crop of carrots were grown in a bucket. We were simply
stunned by the flavour and crunchiness. How can you get so excited
over a carrot you might think? Well give it a go and find out for
yourself!
We made our own pickled beetroot. After peeling, boiling and slicing
them we put them in sterilized jars and added vinegar. This was a bit
of an experiment. The first batch were not cooked enough and very
vinegary. The second batch we cooked for longer and added some water
and sugar to the vinegar mix. These were far more palatable and an
acceptable alternative to store bought.
## Conclusion
I know we will never be anywhere near self sufficient, but we can
certainly produce enough vegetables that we can go weeks, or months
in some cases, without having to buy some of the more common items.
Producing even a few of your favourite vegetables gives a real
feeling of achievement and satisfaction.
1. [Chickens]( gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Chickens.md )]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Aug 2021 00:08:05 +0200</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Breadmaker</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Breadmaker.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Breadmaker
For years I have been against cupboard fulls of unused kitchen gadgets
and a breadmaker seemed to be one of those items the average household
wouldn't use more than a couple of times for novelty sake.
This outlook changed when we actually discovered a very pragmatic
reason to get one.
## Rationale
To reduce chances of contracting COVID we took to shopping weekly and
not having a mid week trip to the local supermarket for bread and milk.
This unfortunately meant that by mid week the bread was either going
stale or we didn't get enough and so had to go without.
## Enter the bread maker
We bought second hand as there are many readily available hardly used
at a fraction of the new price. This meant we could give it a try
without significant investment.
## Home made bread
We made our first loaf and have never looked back. The choice of flour
plain white, granary, wholemeal, seeded. The choice is yours and the
smell, and taste of fresh bread is something we now wouldn't be without.
The ingredients are all dried so will keep a long time and are there
to make a fresh loaf whenever you want.
## Conclusion
Gamechanger. We shop once a week and have fresh bread whenever we want.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Sat, 05 Dec 2020 01:59:33 +0100</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Banana-muffin-recipe</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Banana-muffin-recipe.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Banana muffin recipe
## Ingredients
* 100g Softened Butter
* 175g Castor Sugar
* 225g Self Raising Flour
* 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
* 1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
* 2 Eggs
* 3 tablespoons Milk
* 2 very ripe small, or one large, Banana (mashed with a fork)
## Method
Cream together Butter and Sugar.
Gradually mix in beaten Eggs and Milk, adding Flour and Baking Powder.
Add Vanilla Essence and mashed Banana and mix well.
Spoon mixture into 12 muffin cases. Place in a pre-heated oven at
180 degrees C (gas mark 4) for 25 - 35 minutes.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Jun 2023 11:37:42 +0200</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>230809-Gardening-diary</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/230809-Gardening-diary.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Gardening diary
I had fully intended to make regular entries when I started this but
unfortunately I have been preoccupied with self inflicted computer
woes. Conscious of my neglect I am making this entry!
A lot has actually been happening in the past few weeks. We have been
eating our own potatoes, picked and pickled several jars of beetroot
and we are now starting to pick and eat from our bumper crop of
tomatoes.
There are still a number of beetroots in the ground, some of which
are about ready to come out and about another half a row which were
planted a little later that will need a while longer. The carrots
are coming along and will soon be ready too.
The rogue blackberry bushes, which self seeded after the neighbour
replaced his fence, have also provided for several apple and
blackberry crumbles during the recent cold snap!
Unfortunately although there were quite a lot of blueberries on the
bushes this year they didn't grow to any decent size and the ones
which appeared ripe were quite sour and earthy tasting.
The raspberries were also a bit of a failure as some kind of
caterpillar got on them and ate all the leaves to the point that they
were just skeletons...
On a brighter note the 6 GBP apple tree which we bought as a bare
root tree from the local supermarket has done well and now has plenty
of leaves. I have to admit I wasn't optimistic about this tree but
took a punt on it as it was so cheap. I'm pleasantly surprised at its
progress.
This is probably the best time of the year from a vegetable self
sufficiency perspective as we are not buying much but brassicas and
things we don't often use like aubergine, asparagus, parsnip and
leeks.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Aug 2023 01:17:36 +0200</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>230825-Gardening-diary</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/230825-Gardening-diary.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Gardening diary
Earlier in the week I had continued felling some trees, now that I
replaced the chainsaw I blew up two weeks ago. There were two trees
inside where I intend to keep the chickens and I want to remove them
before I go to collect the chickens on the 9th of September. One of
them I have felled already and cut up, the remainder of the second
one is unfortunately leaning towards the fence and road, so I will
need some help to finish that one.
Yesterday I spent some time weeding as I had neglected doing it for
quite a while. At this time of year, especially with all the rain
we've been having on and off, the weeds had really taken over.
I noticed that there were runners on a few of the strawberries so
I've dropped them into pots and weighted them down onto the soil so
that they'll root. Once they have, after a few weeks, then I cut the
runner so that it becomes an independent plant.
Today I emptied a lot of pots that had been filled with soil and had
various things put in them that either failed to germinate or had
been abandoned and not planted on (many of them courtesy of my mom).
We had planted some Lollo Rosso in a small trug a couple of weeks ago
and they had been coming on well, then one morning they had all
disappeared... I've no idea what had happened to them but there was
nothing left. So today I made two lines in the same trug, one of
Lollo Rosso and one of Webs Wonderful, as we are now short of lettuce
where earlier in the year we had an abundance of it from what had
continued growing over the winter.
I weeded out some of the herb pots and have seeded two with Sweet
Basil and one with Coriander. The Coriander pot already had a little
still growing in there but not enough to be of much use in the
kitchen.
The place looks a little tidier for removing all the random pots with
dead plants or nothing in them. ]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Fri, 25 Aug 2023 13:54:41 +0200</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>Chickens-again</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/Chickens-again.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Chickens Again
Back in 2020 when supply chains were disrupted by COVID and there
were often shortages of every day things, like eggs and toilet rolls,
we adopted 4 hens.
This solved the egg shortage issue and gave 4 chickens a retirement
home. Unfortunately one by one they died and after the sadness of
burying them all, as they had all become family pets, I didn't really
want to get any more for a while.
## Inflation
The UK has been suffering from inflation of prices on all kinds of
every day things. Energy prices for gas, electricity and
petrol/diesel have all increased significantly as has everything
else.
The increases have been blamed on all kinds of things, Brexit, the
war in Ukraine, etc. but the big oil companies and supermarkets are
all still making record profits... Ordinary people are suffering.
## Chickens
A combination of my niece's persistence, "Uncle, when are you going
to get some more chickens?" every time she saw me, supermarket price
increases and desire to be more self sufficient, has resulted me
adopting another 3 chickens.
I fetched them from the BHWT[1] adoption point on Saturday after
being on their waiting list for a couple of months.
Two of them are brown, one of them is practically featherless, one
has almost all of its feathers. The other is white and has a
completely different temperament and can fly far too well for my
liking. It's not docile like the brown ones I've had before and has
so far proven too fast and nimble for me to catch hold of it to clip
its wings. It escaped twice on Sunday and again on Saturday resulting
in a 20 minute episode of catch the chicken, which ended in defeat,
for me, as I had to give up on the idea of catching it and instead
take down a section of the fence to herd it back in with the others.
It seems we have arrived at a truce. It hasn't tried to escape again
and I have not had to chase it around the garden. Maybe it didn't
like me chasing it and got tired as once it was back in the coop it
went into the chicken house and stayed there for a couple of hours of
quiet time...
[1](http://www.bhwt.org.uk)]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Tue, 12 Sep 2023 11:25:40 +0200</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>240124-Gardening-diary</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/240124-Gardening-diary.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Gardening diary
Preparation for the growing season started today. I did a little
weeding, planted 40 globe onions, 8 ailsa craig tomatoes and 4
gardeners delight tomatoes. Tomorrow I'll plant some leeks.
There are still a few carrots, parsnips and beetroot in the ground
from last year. In the raised bed there is still rocket, some lollo
rosso lettuce seedlings and a few spring onions. The spring onions
are usually from bundles we get from the supermarket which I regrow
the roots[1] and then plant outside to grow on.
At this time of year all the trays and pots will be kept indoors as
there is still plenty of opportunity for freezing temperatures.
[1](gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Money-saving-and-minimalism/Spring-Onions.md)]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Jan 2024 17:37:35 +0100</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
<title>240425-Gardening-diary</title>
<link>gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Self-sufficiency/240425-Gardening-diary.md</link>
<description></description>
<media:description type="plain"><![CDATA[# Gardening diary
The weather has not been friendly toward getting out and gardening
until now. Many jobs have been waiting to be done, on hold until
the rain stopped for a while and the ground started to dry.
The vegetable beds at the front of the house had become completely
overgrown with grass and weeds. I ended up hand digging the whole lot
with a garden fork. It took me several days, doing it between showers
and giving my back a rest.
With the two beds at the front dug and the pathways compacted between
them. Yesterday I planted 16 potatoes, these had been left to sprout
for a couple of weeks and then the larger ones cut in half and left
for the cuts to dry out. The raised bed was tidied and some Lollo
Rosso lettuce which had been growing through the winter moved to make
room at the back for the 6 Ailsa Craig tomatoes. We had enjoyed the
Ailsa Craig tomatoes much more than the Gardeners Delight last year
and so this year decided to plant more of them. 4 Gardeners Delight
were also planted out into large pots.
This morning I finished digging the first of the two vegetable beds
at the back of the house. On completion I planted 80 onion sets, this
turned out to be around one and a half rows. The rest of the row I
sowed with leek seeds. The ones I planted in the tray in Feb have all
but withered and died, maybe two survived. Two rows of Nantes carrot
seed and a row of Boltardy Beetroot seed were also sown.
After a conversation with one of the Radio club members on Monday
nights club net, I discovered that most likely the onion sets that
were pulled out last year were caused by a blackbird looking for bugs
underneath. To try and avoid that this year I have temporarily
covered the sets as best I can and also put some bean canes with
shiny metallic flags on to try and scare away any birds.
Tomorrow I will plant another 16 potatoes in the remaining free
vegetable bed at the front of the house. That only leaves me to dig
the second bed behind the house and decide what I will grow there.]]></media:description>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:33:58 +0200</pubDate>
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