Do you grow?

Self sufficiency is on the tip of my tongue most of the time. It is constantly in my thoughts. I am aiming to live as self sufficiently as I possibly can. This is quite a job when most of my time is spent at work paying for my mortgage!

I don’t want to be one of those people who have spent my life acquiring wealth and then spending my retirement and the money I have made trying to get back my health. It is a very difficult thing though to follow my dream when I need time to dig and tend to my vegetables and organise other ways of making my life not so dependent upon a large income.

I have decided that I need more of a balance so that I spend more time mentally and physically with my family and am working hard on switching off from “paid work” when I am not doing it. In this society so much is at stake financially if one does not make money. I am going to aim to cut my green grocery bill this year by half. My goal is to grow as much salad leaves as I can under glass right now (without a green house I intend to make a makeshift glass protectors on my raised beds) and then plant out seeds when the time is right.

We use a huge amount of shop bought, bagged leaves such as rocket, spinach and salad type leaves all of which we could grow given a little more time. I am going to make the time and hopefully we will reap the rewards of having green salad leaves on tap. How we are going to grow them throughout next winter will be another puzzle to figure out later on in the year.