I agree with you though. I tried self sufficiency when I was young and had a very young family. We bought an old farmhouse with a bit of land and a huge veg plot. I grew veg, kept chickens and ducks and a Jersey cow which I milked by hand. Very hard work and I developed arthritis is my fingers! I think it would have been cheaper and easier to go to the supermarket, which I did anyway as there are things you can't grow in the garden. My late first husband was a dentist so we weren't poor.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
Hope you stick with us @TheGreenMan. I've always enjoyed your posts and the pictures of your lovely garden. From what you have said I can't see how anything there would have offended anyone enough for the Mods to have removed the post. It seems the mischief makers are at it again. Breathe, ignore and post on....!🙂👍
I expressed my frustration at us constantly being made to feel guilty about food miles and provenance.
I said that the only way you could be self sufficient when it comes to food is if you have the land and money to do it which most people can’t afford to do.
We can discuss it here if you like, let's turn the thread into something useful. I think as gardeners we often question why we bother. I'm going down the same route of trying to provide so I know it's hard. To be more precise about your reason of having money, I think it's more down to time (which admittedly is linked to money). If you're retired then you have more time and are beyond having to earn a wage so it works.
If you have to work for a living then an hour at work will buy more (tasteless) food than you can produce in that hour.
There is however more to it than that. There is the pleasure, but moreover the quality of the end product. We are by and large a nation of salad dodgers and i've come to the conclusion that the reason we don't eat enough fruit n veg is because what we are offered is crap.
I only eat decent F&V when it comes from the garden, they rest of the time I eat tasteless junk from the Supermarkets (SM). Our whole perception and outlook on food is wrong. Who decided to let the SM sell this cheap junk? They won't pay for decent produce so the punters don't either. It's a race to the bottom.
I sell our excess F&V. It costs more than SM junk yet I work at a loss. But it tastes better. It tastes like real food. You don't have to load it up with loads of flavouring, the basic ingredient tastes fantastic. Things like new potatoes, green beans and Mange Tout etc need nothing more than a quick boil or steam, a bit of butter, pinch of salt and that's it. They're delicious as is. It's very high quality food at a price. I don't do anything special, I just grow organically.
A lady came up last week for a weekly treat of decent F&V, I said i've got loads of mange tout to go, she said she wasn't sure. I said why not, they're lovely? She said previously all she bought elsewhere were watery and stringy. I plucked one off and gave her it to taste. She smiled and nodded, she'd been eating SM rubbish. She bought a portion, went home, made up her dinner and posted a pic of it all tagging my shop in it.
Sadly she's part of the 1% of who understand what it's all about.
Posts
I agree with you though. I tried self sufficiency when I was young and had a very young family. We bought an old farmhouse with a bit of land and a huge veg plot. I grew veg, kept chickens and ducks and a Jersey cow which I milked by hand. Very hard work and I developed arthritis is my fingers! I think it would have been cheaper and easier to go to the supermarket, which I did anyway as there are things you can't grow in the garden. My late first husband was a dentist so we weren't poor.
People are indeed ridickilis!
pictures of your lovely garden. From what you have said I can't see how anything there would have offended anyone enough for the Mods to have removed the post. It seems the mischief makers are at it again. Breathe, ignore and post on....!🙂👍
I think as gardeners we often question why we bother.
I'm going down the same route of trying to provide so I know it's hard. To be more precise about your reason of having money, I think it's more down to time (which admittedly is linked to money). If you're retired then you have more time and are beyond having to earn a wage so it works.
If you have to work for a living then an hour at work will buy more (tasteless) food than you can produce in that hour.
There is however more to it than that. There is the pleasure, but moreover the quality of the end product.
We are by and large a nation of salad dodgers and i've come to the conclusion that the reason we don't eat enough fruit n veg is because what we are offered is crap.
I only eat decent F&V when it comes from the garden, they rest of the time I eat tasteless junk from the Supermarkets (SM).
Our whole perception and outlook on food is wrong. Who decided to let the SM sell this cheap junk? They won't pay for decent produce so the punters don't either.
It's a race to the bottom.
I sell our excess F&V. It costs more than SM junk yet I work at a loss. But it tastes better. It tastes like real food. You don't have to load it up with loads of flavouring, the basic ingredient tastes fantastic. Things like new potatoes, green beans and Mange Tout etc need nothing more than a quick boil or steam, a bit of butter, pinch of salt and that's it. They're delicious as is. It's very high quality food at a price.
I don't do anything special, I just grow organically.
A lady came up last week for a weekly treat of decent F&V, I said i've got loads of mange tout to go, she said she wasn't sure. I said why not, they're lovely? She said previously all she bought elsewhere were watery and stringy.
I plucked one off and gave her it to taste. She smiled and nodded, she'd been eating SM rubbish.
She bought a portion, went home, made up her dinner and posted a pic of it all tagging my shop in it.
Sadly she's part of the 1% of who understand what it's all about.