One word? When seven would do…

First of all a bit of a disclaimer. At this stage we are very much at the sharing hopes and dreams, putting it all ‘out there’ and not letting cold hard reality prevent us from talking about our vision. The next stage will be the rather tougher information gathering reality check level. We’ve sort of been here before with a previous exploration of small-holdings as a possibility and various reasons stopped us from going further. This time we are dreaming bigger and further and as yet I’m not at all sure whether that makes it a more or less possible dream.

Ultimate Goal – to live a more sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. To have all four of us working together towards providing for ourselves whilst having as many elements of our shared, and indivdual ambitions met. To be living our passions full time rather than indulging them in small ways around the rest of life. To be doing things for ourselves wherever possible and putting our own food on the table (bloody tables!) rather than going out to work to earn money to pay for food (or tables). To have our life be our work, our work be our life and everything rolled in together in providing for ourselves, realising our dreams and spending our days in tasks taking us towards where we want to be. No pointlessness.

So where does all that point us at then? A couple of years ago we were looking at small holdings and self sufficiency. We realised we couldn’t afford to buy outright which would mean we had a mortgage, which meant we would either have to be self-sufficient AND productive enough to sell stuff to pay the bills, or be self sufficient AND go out and earn money some other way aswell to pay the bills. It suggested all of the worst aspects of what we already have with work, plenty of slog, being tied to where we were with no freedom to head off camping / visiting friends and on a bit of a whim given we’d not done anything like it before so could just end up hating it. We decided to create as close to our yearned for lifestyle here at home and focus on the things we love about our life already. I was enjoying my library job so was happy to keep that up and try and grow the role, we took on the allotment, got serious about breeding bantams, have grown fruit and veg here at home. I went on the lookerers course and have done some volunteer shepherding for a taste of that, completed the Waste Prevention Advisors course and learnt about composting, recycling and loads of other ‘green’ things, many of which we have put into practise. Davies and Scarlett have continued with things like Wildlife Explorers, Forest School, hatching ducklings, Wildlife Action Awards and so on. But it’s clear we are all still hankering after more of that way of life and every time we visit Tom’s parents house, or Jan and Jonathan’s, or our friends who have been raising orphaned lambs, or indeed River Cottage we realise we are still just playing at this and feel sad that we don’t have all the elements of what we want and the compromise still isn’t enough. Ady and I had concluded that bringing in small bits of that lifestyle would be enough and if we still wanted to do it then we could think about it in our retirement when Davies and Scarlett are off doing their own thing. Turns out their own thing still seems pretty likely to be that anyway.

So the four of us have been talking, sharing all the things we’d love to have and then trying to fit them together into one coherant idea with which we can do lots of research into cost, feasibility and how it could all work, which elements are pipe dreams and which could become reality, which need to be actioned first and made a priority and which need to be put on the back burner for the future. Here are the lists:

Ady
learn more about butchering, possibly slaughtering.
Growing fruit & veg
Spending more time with Nic & children
Fishing
Cooking
Practical skills

Davies
Bushcraft / survival skills
Working with wood
Driving tractors and understanding how they work
lifestock – particularly sheep and chickens
fishing
a lake with a row boat
a treehouse

Scarlett
wants dogs and cats!
animal breeding – ducks, chickens, maybe small animals
keeping pigs and sheep

Nic (longer list ;))
Keeping livestock – pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, bees (for meat, eggs, honey)
Having a cow for milk & making other dairy – butter, cheese, yoghurt
Growing food for us and livestock
Bartering / skill exchange / education
cooking / baking / preserving / brewing
crafts – sewing, knitting, basket weaving, woodcraft – making clothes, tools, household objects.
composting
renewable and sustainable energy – a green way of life -= solar, wind, water power, biomass fuels, woodburning
building from sustainable sources – strawbale builds, compost loos, solar showers, rainwater harvesting

To me that translates as the following absolute ideal:

A model of self sufficient living for four people. That means working out how many animals needed to breed / rear for meat per year, working out the costs for keeping / feeding them (do we grow our own crops for feeding them, buy in crops and if so at what cost?), working out levels of fruit and veg needed for a year and how much space needed to grow them. Factoring in failed crops, cost of seeds etc.

The 100% self sufficient model probably doesn’t exist – I am fairly sure you could work out your own meat / dairy / eggs / fruit and veg and work out preserving, storing and freezing sufficient to keep you going but there will be some out of reach ideals such as rice, pasta, cereals, flour. A bulk ordering, packaging free option is a possibility and maybe by being the coordinator / storage or selling on would cover the cost of your own requirements. I like the idea of a bartering scheme for the costs you do have to find – could you pay for animal feed by swapping it for meat or livestock? Supplement your own fruit and veg growing by exchanging for things you have a glut of? A co-operative approach to meeting the needs you can’t provide yourself.

In terms of housing I like the idea of sustainable, eco-friendly building, with renewable energy resources. Solar panels, wind turbines, renewable wood burning, maybe harnessing water energy. If we could live off-grid and be self-sufficient in energy then we reduce bills and expenses and live closer to our eco-ideals. If we were able to build from scratch then I am interested in strawbale building, composting and reed bed toilets, rainwater harvesting and so on. If we can’t then how can we get close to those ideals with existing buildings.

Once this self-sufficient model is in place and working phase two of the dream is to share it. I’d love to operate a residential education centre. Camping, camping barns, yurts. People could come and learn about how it all works, exhange labour and payment for education. Building a strawbale solar powered shower block should be possible by buying in the materials and expertise and paying for it by offering hands on training courses leaving everyone paid, taught and us with the structure.

Aswell as a recreational and learning destination it could be a part of the community, local schools could visit to learn, community groups could use the space. There is a huge trend towards interest in this way of life, the way of the world financially and environmentally means the need for harnessing these skills and knowledge will only increase with time.

For us as a family it will enable us to live the way we want to live, for us to have time together, to indulge all of our individual passions, interests and learning goals. For Davies and Scarlett it would offer every possible opportunity for them to learn, to explore all the different ideas they have about their future, to find potential careers and revenue streams aswell as having their own visions of their perfect childhoods. It would make full use of all the skills we already have as a team and personally – managerial, customer service, training, presenting, crafts, being with people, gardening, growing, livestock etc.

So how feasible is it? Well if we were looking to buy the land and finance it then it is a complete non-starter. But we do have about £100K equity in the house if we paid off the mortgage and the debts. We wouldn’t be in a position to borrow money (nor would we want to – the idea is to live as bill-free as possible) but it might get us started with renting land and property to start up. Long term it could potentially be a profit-turning enterprise which would then pay for rental once our funds have run out. The other ideas are all financially costly initially but I suspect there are grants and funds available for the sort of alternative energy / eco-friendly ideas we have particularly if there is an intention to be educational / keep agriculture and farming going etc. We would think about sponsorship / selling our story / writing about it or even approaching TV companies if it brought us close to what we want.

So the hitches – well, the obvious risking everything financially is the first one. I can’t really see a way of protecting our assets – the house could be rented out and pay the mortgage but with debts to clear we would still be left with a monthly sum of money to find and I suspect certainly initially the plan would quickly fold if we had to do more than feed ourselves. The idea of having to work outside of the plan doesn’t appeal (although something like writing or being prepared to tell our story to cover those costs would be okay). There is the chance it simply wouldn’t work and we’ll find ourselves in a few years tired, broke and with nothing to show for it other than a sob story and broken dreams. I’m more than prepared to jump and take that risk but I have three other people to consider, one of which isn’t great at sleeping anyway so doesn’t need crazy stress levels about whether there will be enough food to last the month.

We might just do it and decide it isn’t for us after all. It might be too much hard work, we might miss our freedom (long term I could see time ‘off’ being perfectly possible with other people stepping in to oversee it / share the workload) but certainly short term we’d be tied to it. I suspect we’d be a popular place for friends to come visit so hopefully wouldn’t miss out too out much on seeing people but depending on where geographically we are we may find ourselves struggling with a change in location. I think we have had as good a taste of this lifestyle as you can get in suburbia and we’re still with it after a good couple of years of progressively increasing our committments to crops and animals.

Next steps then. This is a fairly huge idea and has many elements to it which need investigating before we come up with a proper plan. It could be we need to start small renting a farm and getting as many elements of the lifestyle as possible before branching into the other aspects, it could be we try and find out about funding first, or look at campsites or existing businesses. I need to find out if there are already people doing this and whether we can learn from them or even work with them. I need to find out just what numbers of animals we’d be looking at to be self-sufficient and how much land to grow which crops, we need to look at where we’d ideally geographically and how feasible that is and all of the other implications. Above all we are spending lots of time talking about this, between ourselves and to other people and feeling out what the idea sounds like when we speak it out loud. So far I get more excited with every retelling and from it being a pipe dream I am now starting to see potential ways it could become a reality – maybe.

So there you are. I’m guessing it’s not a shocking plan, indeed I’ve shared elements of it with several of you in some form anyway. Comments very welcome, from super critical picking holes to ideas to whatever else comes into your head when you read it. It’s all still very half formed and I’m hoping that in getting it written down and read by others I will start to get some clarity on where to go with it all next.