I was recommended to come on here by a certain Scottish member - don't let that put you off...
DH and I used to live a fairly yuppy life in London before realising it was all a waste of time and moving dahn sarf to raise the kiddies. We bought a house on the cliffs and quickly realised that it was the ideal place for solar panels - and thus began our first steps towards self-sufficiency. Reading about peak oil, and simply looking around and seeing the general numptiness of the vast majority confirmed us in our belief that we needed to be more prepared.
I have visited lots of American sites, but they are either of the "this would be a good place to keep your reserve arsenal" variety or they are LDS - nothing intrinsically wrong with either necessarily, but I don't think England is really big enough to disappear into the hills completely, and I really don't want to live on hard red wheat and beans for a year. Or even a day.
We have now moved to a smaller house in the Official Centre of Nowhere - not because we felt a need to bug out, but simply because land by the sea is very much at a premium, whereas five miles inland we are suddenly out of town and have more openness at our disposal.
We keep chickens and bees; we have solar panels but not solar PV because we live in a thatched cottage so there ain't much place to put it, apart from right across the garden; we grow our own fruit and veg and nuts; our land borders a river; DH runs his car on waste vegetable oil which we get for free from my work. Oh, and DD has a horse if we're desperate
(for riding or pulling a cart I mean, not for steak tartare!)We have just installed two air source heat pumps in the house after successfully installing one in the garage, and we have woodburning stoves. I am also thinking about converting our cooking arrangements to calor as I hate cooking on electric, so would appreciate anyone's experience with it.
I have a pressure canner and have just bought a steam extractor, so am hoping to get "canning" this Autumn.
From just glancing at the topics on here, there seems to be a wealth of experience from which I hope to learn a lot - and possibly contribute a bit.
Looking foward to getting to know you all.
