Selfsufficientish.com

I wish I had your problem with the tonnes of cherries! Used to live in a cherry growing area, and made delicious wine. I remember the first time I made it, it never seemed to be fermenting, i.e. it simply wasn't bubbling. But it didn't smell off, so my friend and I decided to try it. One glass later...

Hi Lee It's been a while since you wrote that last message, but if you are still with us, maybe you could give me a tip. I have a couple of cashmere goats, have combed the fibre, but don't quite know how to process it myself. I know some producers of cashmere, but I don't just want to throw my lot i...

Lucky you - no slugs! That's really what I want to keep them for, as slugcontrol, with the side effect of duck eggs. But I'll probably have to choose a colourful exotic breed, or give them little reflective jackets, so they don't get hit when the pheasant shoot is on...

Ina

Hi It seems to be really difficult to get ducklings through to adulthood - I worked on a farm once where we had one callduck with youngsters, and they all died of some mysterious disease... No murders involved here. By the way, we used to collect slugs in a jar throughout the day, and come evening, ...

Hi Nev You are perfectly correct - you could survive in Scotland... Neeps are Swedes, i.e. Swedish turnips. Most haggisses (if that's the plural of haggis!) aren't cooked in a sheep's stomach anymore, but come in a plastic skin (which is not eaten) or a tin. They contain a lot of grain (barley or oa...

Yeah, but I've never tried neeps on the barbie... Neither haggis, which is what traditionally goes with tatties and neeps. But there is some good veggie haggis around nowadays! By the way, in case any selfsufficient Scots are reading this, does anybody have a recipe for that? The vegetarian variety,...

Ehrrr, what are Snags? Sounds a bit like slugs and therefore not very appetising! I'm a veggie myself, but I do keep sausages (organic, of course!) in the freezer, just in case we should spontaneously decide on a barbie one night. For me it's usually just tatties on the charcoal, don't go for that f...

Need to add my bit on yoghurt, too... I don't use any fancy gear, I just use an empty icecream tub (the flat type), and stick it on the radiator. Bit of a problem in summer, of course, but summers tend to be rather short here, and since I also dry my clothes over the radiator (on one of those pull-u...

I got my leeks out really late last year - by Christmas they were the size of spring onions, and they are still in the ground now! They seem to be growing again. I had been warned they would bolt if left over to the next year, but they haven't done that yet. Let's wait and see... My spinach also sur...

What happend to that last message - is it just me or is it cryptic for everybody? Am I guessing right that you have mulched them with pine needles? Actually, I would use straw... That's where they got their name from, after all! Keeps the weeds down to a certain extent, keeps them reasonably dry, mo...

Never thought I'd see that poem here of all places! I've still got the book somewhere, I hope. Anybody seen the film? I even was in that area where they made it, and in the pub, where just about all the locals had been involved in it, and they all still remembered, and the photos were up all over th...

I remember the fuss about the pyramids, but I never bothered to read those books - sounds like I didn't miss a lot! I was hooked on Lord of the Rings... Anyway, I know that some people had their greenhouses built like pyramids - has anybody heard of their success or otherwise? I haven't see any like...

Hi green-girl If you are starting off with containers, I found that courgette, peppers and climbing beans are great to grow like that, too. I even tried pumpkin, but only had one the size of a tennis ball... (Mind you, that was in a slightly colder climate than yours!) Nowadays I grow them on a comp...

Talk about getting older - my back's been killing me all week. Sitting at that conference all day yesterday plus travelling in the car didn't help, and work seems to be a lot of heavy lifting at the moment, too... And I used to grin when folk told me, wait till you get to my age! Well, I have. And n...

Yep, Nev, Perth UK - or rather, Perth Scotland! Have been to Perth Australia, too, and rather liked it. That was just a short trip; I spent 8 months on a dairy farm in Victoria. But I can't imagine how I managed to live in that heat back then. I did crazy stuff like cycle to my "local" pub (only 80k...