(Image: Tumisu/Pixabay)
Welcome to my personal blog covering my adventures in and opinions on homesteading/smallholding, self-sufficiency, climate change and related issues.
Trevor Larkum, January 2020
Adding another Pylontech battery to a home battery system with a Victron inverter.
[I found this article really interesting. Naturally I expected it to highlight the importance of growing your own food, plus pantries and freezers, but I thought the other ideas were also well considered. Trevor] Lockdown lessons shaping the future of housing As we find ourselves locked down amid coronavirus, there’s more demand on our
The best bit about growing vegetables, of course, is the harvesting and eating. Having set up our raised bed, planter and mini greenhouse by May, we didn't have long to wait for the first results. In June we picked our first cucumbers from the mini greenhouse. Our first cucumbers (Image: T. Larkum) In
[This article is a good summary of why I'm getting into the Good Life. Trevor] Make no mistake, a survival garden is not just any kind of beautiful backyard garden. A survival garden is one that is carefully designed to yield enough crops for you and your family to live off of in times
[This article caught my eye as it has parallels with my own views, see here. Trevor] It was always going to come to this. Whether it was a pandemic triggering a shutdown, a climate emergency bursting the carbon bubble, a populist backlash against inequality, wars over water or countless other possible triggers, this moment
[Some very encouraging developments! And about time...] In the days leading up to the restrictions (and ever since), there has been a sheer frenzy of interest in fruit and vegetable growing as people seek to turn over their back gardens, patios, windowsills (and indeed any available space) to home food production. The seed companies
A few weeks after constructing the raised bed and planter, in April, I prepared them for planting. For the planter it was a case of lining it, to help protect the wood a little from moisture, and then adding a layer of old cardboard to provide some water retention. Raised planter with cardboard (Image:
Our Uncertain Future Blog - All Posts While my first attempts at growing food were not hugely impressive they were encouraging enough that the following year (2016) I made a more determined effort to produce food for the family. Since we had just a small suburban garden, with very little space, I started by
Our Uncertain Future Blog - All Posts We live in interesting times, with news items from around the world, and around our own country, of frequent 'natural' disasters, particularly flooding and wildfires. Then when it seems like we're getting respite along comes the Coronavirus pandemic. For many people this is the first time they've had
As it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the many issues that we face today it can be difficult to understand what's happening and to know how to react to yet another problem coming down the line. This applies to outbreaks like the Coronavirus just as much as it does to climate change, economic turmoil,