Sindy's Blue Garden Cottage - suburban homesteading and self-reliance content

    This year in particular in the UK (I’m not sure about other places), the evidence of way too much rain over a long time is obvious to the eyes with one glance around the garden. Even if you normally have fertile wonderful soil, this last almost two years have taken their toll. Even farmers have warned for two seasons of shortages and price hikes due to the availability or quality of food due to the weather even without all the other national and global contributing factors. Evidence in the yellowing leaves, some spotted, others yellow between the veins, some are reddish purple and its nowhere near autumn (the so called summer has been mostly autumnal and we are only a month or two away from what we normally call autumn). Some leaves are curled, dry and brown and it’s not been dry weather and there’re no signs of pest or disease. Along with the prolonged rainy season lasting for months, comes the lack of sunshine and warmth. At least there is light even if a grey hue.   I don’

  What Does Closed Loop Mean and is it Possible in Suburbia? By Sindy Wakeham What is a closed loop? I’m not talking about going ‘around the bend’ in a never ending circle. Though, we could go around the bend in a never ending cycle of guilt feelings and beating ourselves up for not being more ‘eco’ in our lives. The purpose of this article is to let you relax about your situation and be ok with making choices that best suit your own needs without punishing yourself for not having a perfectly ‘closed loop’ as far as resources go. As far as a home and garden are concerned, a closed loop is where nothing is brought in from outside and nothing leaves when we are talking about resources but it also applies to other things. It’s one of many principles in self-sufficiency. For example, I can now make all the compost for my garden from my garden without having to buy any in so I’m not letting any waste leave my property into landfill, either garden ‘waste’ or the bags compost comes

To keep or not to keep animals on a suburban homestead ...I’m pondering a few questions about keeping animals in a small suburban homestead in the UK. There’s too much information on the subject to mention here so this is meant to be an overview to point you in the right direction and give you an opportunity to check that it’s right for your homestead. This article is going deeper into the choice as to whether you want animals as a part of your homestead or not which is particularly important if you are a suburban or an urban homesteader.     Is homesteading without animals even homesteading? I have already explained what HOMESTEAD actually means and where the word comes from in my blog no.2.   Homesteading isn’t determined by whether there are animals on or in it anyway. There are many homesteads that DON’T include stock animals because it’s not suitable for them and I have seen a few vegan homesteads that do keep animals just because they love them and it has nothing