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

  This Season's Woe and Wonder By Sindy Wakeham In the UK, just looking out of the window or standing outside, autumn has arrived and it doesn’t care about the human calendar. Nature decides what season comes when. The main season for almost two years has been autumn with days of normal seasons interspersed. Proper autumn is wonderful! I love all seasons in their place, but I’m not ready for autumn yet! My garden is nowhere near as fruitful as it used to be with lower light levels, cooler and wetter weather and fewer hot sunny days than normal. The garden’s far behind and only beginning to set fruit that should be ripening already. Urgency and Worry The main harvest season is upon us for all our fruit and annual veg which we normally put up for the winter and early spring. Even so, I have only been harvesting carrots, parsnips and garlic along with herbs. Summer harvests are done but there are still tomatoes to ripen. This time of year I’m normally already jamming (frui...

By Sindy Wakeham   You get it. You know WHY you may want to homestead or a cottage garden and live the ‘good life’. But WHERE is the best place to do that? Here’s the thing; A homestead (garden and home working toward providing SOMETHING for you and yours), can be whatever you want it to be! Where depends on a few options and possibilities. If you’re in the UK like me and my family, your first consideration is cost. Let’s face it; land of any size in the UK is priced at a premium. No point thinking about it until you know what space you have. Location wise, all southern parts of England and Wales are famous for being the best places, but I have seen fantastic edible gardens as far north as north-east Scotland and even some in Northern Ireland. In my Observations blog , I cover how you can observe your location and situation to inform the type of garden you grow. There are different ways of living a homesteading life in the UK and I’m going to suggest a few options. SMALL...

Part of Provident living By Sindy Wakeham How can any preparations done in and around the house be complete without the use of a garden? Have you ever lived on store cupboard food, on its own, for any amount of time, short or long? My family have, for a very short time! Not going to lie, to make basic store cupboard food thing that our pampered tastebuds can endure out of those kinds of basics, takes a lot of creativity and a VERY diverse collection of added ingredients! What are those basics and ‘added’ ingredients? I’ll be going into that in other articles and videos between both   blogs and YouTube channels; Blue Garden Cottage and Escaping the Dole with Sindy .  For now I’m concentrating on the importance of the garden as part of emergency and production and preservation of home grown produce. The Store Cupboard This week I've been focusing on the UK Government’s re-release or rather update of their Prepare website.  It encourages citizens to store 3 mont...

Drudgery or Joy? By Sindy Wakeham You want a garden paradise that meets all your desires for beauty, food production, connection with  nature and enjoyment. You have a garden space but not acreage. You want your own Eden, a version of homesteading or small holding in the suburbs. You DON'T want Tom and Barbara's version of The Good Life. The lack and drudgery can be a turn off. You don't want back breaking slog in all weathers. You don't want muddy boots on carpets. You don't want the cost and responsibility of animal husbandry and besides, your local council won't allow anything more than a couple of chickens and NO cockerels. Maybe you do want a couple of chickens. You don’t have a fortune in the bank and only have a tiny budget if any. I love The Good Life TV series. I love the humour and the idea of self-sufficiency, as in living off the land and escaping the ‘system’. It was what started my husband and my journey toward growing our own and yearning for ou...

A light hearted Guide by Sindy from Blue Garden Cottage . Hey there, fabulous folks of the internet!   This quirky council house homesteader is here to sprinkle some cheer and hopefully micro-homesteading wisdom of sorts into your day. Today, we're diving into the delightful world of romance and fairy tale cottage gardening. Picture this: you're in your cozy little cottage garden (council house or other), surrounded by chirping birds and the sweet scent of freshly picked herbs. You've got your gardening gloves on the table next to your cup of fresh herb tea, a twinkle in your eye, and a determination to conquer the world one radish at a time. That, my friends, is the essence of micro-homesteading; and that’s exactly what a suburban homestead in the UK is...micro. Micro-homesteading makes it possible for most of us who dream of a country life but are in the suburbs with a home/work/family life and budget that to a degree prohibits the reality of living in the country a...

  Homesteading in Social Housing  Is It Possible? Council housing and why they had gardens... For a long while now, I’ve been interested in the culture of social housing as far as gardening is concerned. What the general guidelines were for garden space and why, for building local council housing where the local council provided housing for those who were homeless or their finances couldn’t afford them private rental and other situations of need. Social housing and housing associations date way back to at least the year 1235 according to the National Housing Federation website where it gives a history of housing associations and council housing. The only relevant snippet I could find on another site was as follows: ‘ On most estates, houses were provided with a generous size garden to encourage the tenants to grow their own vegetables, a privet hedge at the front and an apple tree at the back.’ ( https://fet.uwe.ac.uk/conweb/house_ages/council_housing/section3.ht...