Thanks to Kay

We received a Christmas card the other day from Kay, one of the readers of this blog and a visitor to Selfsufficientish.

She’d read about our dilemmas in finding books that we could afford, and had included £25 worth of book vouchers for us to spend on smallholding books.

It was a lovely surprise, so when we went in to Aberdeen today (not an experience I like to repeat very often), we nipped over to Waterstones to see what we could find.

Still some way to go!

Hedgewizard down in Dorset has some pretensions to being a hardy crofting sort and has even adopted suitable headgear.

He rather modestly asserts, “Can I just point out that I’m not mutating into a clone of a certain crofter from the Antipodes?”

Well, of course not, as well as fetching headgear, you need good looks, a beard, and be able to speak Strine…

Self-sufficient, self-reliant or survivalist?

I’m one of those people who likes to carry a full toolkit, first aid kit, spare parts, blankets, shovel, drinking water and food in their car.

I practise a fire evacuation plan with my family, keep good stocks of water, food and fuel around the croft, check the first aid kit monthly and have a wide range of tools for tackling all manner of jobs.

When the power fails, we can have alternative lights on and cooking resumed on the wood fire within minutes, and barely notice the return of the electricity more than 20 hours later.