Dysfunctional Planner

When I was growing up my favourites shows were The Good Life, Darling Buds of May and All Creatures Great and Small. We spent a fair few years of my childhood growing up in Yorkshire, walking the moors, horse riding and playing outside as much as we could. I love the country but realistically I live in London, yes the suburbs but still London. Can I achieve an suburban homestead?

I don’t think I can, not fully anyway. Maybe I can achieve some parts of it? Parts of having a homestead is growing your own food, living off the land, maybe look into solar panels because producing the my own electricity just makes sense in the current climate. I wouldn’t want to have animals for meat because although I eat meat I don’t want to kill my own animals ( I don’t think it’s hypocritical as I know where my meat comes from) . I do love pigs and two little pigs would be amazing but I don’t see Gavin agreeing to that but you never know.

I have wanted to rescue some chickens for a while now, I would love to give two birds a new lease of life, eggs or no eggs, they would be pets with a happy end of life. I am obsessed with @thegoodlifeainteasy and all her information in rescuing chickens. She also doesn’t see them as egg layers. They will need about two-three meters so the size of the garden is an issue. I would let them roam and eat from the flower beds so I will have to look out for what I plant. This will be a dream that hopefully I achieve next year. Gavin is not keen at all but we will see. This year I stopped buying large eggs due to the pain the chickens go through to lay them.

I will have to do a lot more research on them, like finding an avian vet, ( also saving the money to look after them) what type of coup to buy or build and making sure the run can’t be accessed by the beautiful London foxes.

It won’t surprise you to know that I have started planning already. The trick with all of this is to start small. So the easiest way of starting my homestead is to start with growing my own vegetables. Start small. So I wrote a list of what I want to grow and what we will actually eat. I will continue growing my flowers but keeping them in pots means I can move them and change them around but if need to focus on the veggies.

This looks like quite a lot for me saying I am starting small but I have been reading my gardening books late at night and this all seems achievable. Ideally I need a green house to start these all but I will have to make do with the bathroom again.

It’s Autumn, so the perfect time to plan your garden. Everything will be grown from seed or cuttings. I need to plan a lot more and be prepared for failures. I will start small with the vegetable garden and then move on hopefully to chickens and a bit more self sufficiency.

I will keep you updated.