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

How Planning and Doing Can Solve The Global Crisis... At Least, in your own life. By Sindy Wakeham  It's easy to be carried away in the fear, speculation, uncertainty and obvious consequences of corruption, greed and wars on a globally connected world. What happens in one place can affect a country on the opposite side of the planet.  People in 'The West' generally aren't personally involved in the current wars (yet) and we only see updates via news and other media which nobody really trusts anymore. So it can feel like it's a world away and not affecting us directly.  The first place we begin to notice it is in the fuel prices as we've already seen. This quickly translates to food prices followed by every other product and service we use even if it has nothing to do with 'the war', or so it seems. We know all this and it's beginning to bite closer to home and feel more real. We can't avoid it but WHAT CAN  WE DO to prepare for and minimise the e...

  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...

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...