The Cottage Smallholder

Hi,  mutley  told me about this forum so I had a look and thought I would join.   I don't own a smallholding but would love to someday - bit of a dream since I was a child.

I'm from the US, but have lived here for 21 years.  I have 5 children whom we home educate (d).   Ages 20 - 9.   My oldest is currently hoping to join the Army.    My husband is a scientist. 

I've long been interested in self-sufficiency in all sorts of ways.  Not acheived much, but am learning and doing as I can. 

We have a small back garden (long and narrow) and it in we have 9 chickens (in a run during gardening months), several raised beds, a  couple of planting patches, 2 apple trees and the general paraphanalia that families have in back gardens.  It's all pretty condensed! 

I've taken a beekeeping course a couple of years ago and learned that I really couldn't keep bees at the moment.   I hope the information will come back to me though when and if I can manage having some though.

Dh and I took a radio course last year, still waiting on a radio (!) but that was another bit of our self-sufficient-y plan.   I'm M6RTK and we're hoping to borrow a radio from our club, if you are on the air please let me know - I need a friendly voice to practice on!!  

I think dh  is really hankering after solar panels but we can't do that as of now.  

I am pretty heavily into food preservation - dehydrating, canning (jarring/bottling etc) with both water bath canning and pressure canning methods.   We buy wheat from a local farmer and use it both for bread but also for things like wheat pudding (much like rice pudding) and I want to sprout it but so far haven't gotten around to it.

I am interested in all sorts of things - basketmaking (just learning), all sorts of fiber arts, gardening (still with L plates) and some day I would like to have a house cow or two.   I want to learn cheesemaking - have a few supplies already but aside from Labneh made from yogurt have not done anything.

I hope that is enough to get to know me a little bit - I'm not always this wordy!! 🙂