Lately BF and I have been watching the Real Good Life. About Britains taking their little bit of back yard, taking a year off from their high paid jobs and learning to live with the land.
BF and I love that idea. But tonight we have had to concede that we have children and no matter how much silver beet we grow and sell we would still not have enough money to fund C1 or C2 school camps .. or pay for their school shoes .. or even give them their pocket money. Let alone finding enough to give treats/presents/necessities to C3, C4, C5, C6 or even C7 (we have 7 children btwn us ... only 1 is biologically mine).
However we do want to become self sufficient with what we eat. In June we moved to a small farm .. we now have 5 cattle, 2 pigs (you met them last time) and two huge vegetable gardens. BF is really really keen to eat our own animals ... personally I think that I really love Daisy, Zulu, Asterix, Articuno, Archibull (cattle), and Priscilla Queen of the Paddock and Petunia (my baby pigs) enough without starting to serve them on the dinner table BUT I am starting to see BF's point. Meat costs so much ... we need to start doing this. As a vegetarian for 17 years I am going to find this really tough .. but it needs to be done.
On the vegetable side tonight we ate our own brocolli, baby carrots and baby peas. Even though I was a vegetarian for so many years (the first 16 of my life) I am not particularly fond of vegetables (go figure). Tonight I ate them. They are home grown, organic and absolutely beautiful. I ate them first before touching anything else (with no cheese sauce!). We still have our own cauliflower, cabbage, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet corn, onions and parnsips in the garden growing.
It may not be 100% self sufficient but it is fucking fantastic!
Another thing that farm life brings is uncountable exercise. If I talk about weight loss exercise I mean purposely walking or doing weights. I am now living on a farm. I do not count moving fences, movin gates, weeding gardens, digging out gorse, chasing cattle, moving pigs, driving the tractor, doing firewood, helping BF in the shed as exercise. But it must be!
I love farm life. I love the weekends. Spending time in my gumboots, grotty old jeans and tshirts. Not worrying about putting on make up, doing my hair. Not worrying about what other people think.
BF and I are living our dream!
:-)
