Books read: The Pinhoe Egg, Diana Wynne Jones | The Year of Less, Cait Flanders | Seasons of My Life, Hannah Hauxwell | Early Riser, Jasper Fforde
Items decluttered: 79
Produce harvested: 18.7kg (apples, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, sloes and haws, some green beans)
Most of the time it feels like the last thing the Internet needs is more ramblings, and the last thing I need is more time on a computer. I am working on cutting most of my online stuff, the shopping, the socials, etc, however I've chosen to hang on to this for now, in part to keep friends and family informed of my goings on as I move away from all social media (at the time of writing I have just Facebook left and am limiting usage of that). I also think it could be interesting to share a bit of what I'm trying to do.
We don't live in town but we don't live fully in the countryside: it's a housing estate next to a small village that is mostly for tourists. We have our own home, a privilege these days, although what we could afford sits between a caravan park and a firing range and needs a total renovation, something we are nowhere near done 6 years in. It does have a larger than average garden, though, and solar panels.
I've always been interested in some kind of alterative living but going all the way is just not achievable where we are, for our skills or budget, or for a lot of other people. So I'm trying to do something in between - alternative living in a normalish house, and all on a tiny budget. Because I think that's what we need to do more to try to lift the burden on this planet. It's simply not practical for everyone to go off grid, but there are a lot of things we can change.
I've talked about growing my own food since we got here, but I don't think I ever quite believed myself until now. There are a lot of folk out there growing their own very successfully. Either I'm very bad at it or it really is far harder than is made out as I have been struggling. I have grown some food every year, nowhere near as much as I planned to or would need to properly feed us. It is more than I thought, however, as I found after I began weighing it. This was an idea I had for next year but am very pleased I started this month as I would have sworn it was but a fraction of 18kg! The squashes and pumpkins from old seeds I threw in the ground in later summer definitely helped.
There is more I was going to write but I am trying to keep these shorter, especially as I restart something I have failed to maintain in over a decade.
Jen