Living, Not Existing...

 

I’ve been watching a lot of homesteading videos recently, mostly all from the US where they seem to have acres of land with trees that you can buy quite cheaply, erect your own log cabin and everyone is fine about it.

It looks so simple and enticing, and the main message is: escape the rat race and live off grid to your own set of rules and your own time table. They grow their own food, they keep livestock, they hunt and fish. The more I am drawn into these videos, the more I realise that I cannot do that here. Not in England, with the lack of space and planning regulations and such. Well, maybe some people could and perhaps did, but for everyone who managed to hide their mud hut under turf in Wales, there is another story of people evicted from their ‘illegal’ home-built cabin in the middle of their own land.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3688320/Family-hoping-live-Good-Life-face-evicted-smallholding-building-shed-live-without-permission.html

But we still have the ‘rat race’ here, and we may want to escape it – so I began to think how I could do that while still living in the suburbs within walking distance of the town centre. I have chickens [3 whole ones who are still alive, thank God] and a vegetable patch and 2 allotments. Yesterday I picked beetroot and purple sprouting broccoli from my allotment, and cooked them up today for lunch. I have just been out to my veggie patch in the garden and pulled up a leek and snapped off some chard leaves. They have just been popped into a pan of simmering lentils to make a nourishing soup for my tea. We live in a detached house with a nice lot of garden all around, including space for my cooking cauldron over an open fire;

 

But there’s more…

When I had emergency surgery about 17 years ago, the consultant gave me some lifestyle advice instead of a prescription for antidepressants, he said;

‘God didn’t make man to spend all day cooped up inside concrete buildings. Go out into nature. Feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face…’

Which was, looking back, an odd thing for an NHS professional to recommend, but I did go out into nature. I went out every day and looked at the green fields and trees, and breathed in fresh air. And I got better. Sometimes, when we are cooped up in our homes or offices or factories or schools, we forget about outdoors so much that it becomes a place we never think of being in, unless it is hot and sunny and there is a beach involved.

My husband and I have started to go on hikes, and to cook outdoors on our Trangia [honestly, go and buy one… http://trangia.se/en/ ], to walk through woods and throw stones in rivers. Life is too short to stay indoors.

If you live this way, I salute you, and may give you a wave if you pass us while we are setting up our cooker by the side of a stream. Perhaps we could share our soup. If you are not in the habit of getting out into the countryside and cooking over a camp fire – give it a go. Start watching YouTube videos and you will be drawn in. Trust me.

 We are both in our early 60’s, and my husband has Parkinson’s, but even though we live in a town, we are going to get out and do stuff before we get senile.

We are going to live, not just exist… 

43 years of walking the same road together