A garden has a curious innocent way of consuming cash while all the time you are under the illusion that you are spending nothing. ~ Esther Meynell   I have a friend who suggested it might be good idea for me to keep track of how much I spend on the simple self sufficient life [...]

Everyone knows the proper way to cook a roast is to shave at least seven centimetres off one end.  Or at least that’s what Louise had always thought.  Her Grandmother had cooked it that way, her mother had cooked it that way and so when her turn came to cook the roast, she did the [...]

The 11 chicks I hatched out in my incubator in April are growing like crazy.  Their soft down is being replaced by feathers and the birds that they will be are slowly emerging.  It’s sort of like those game shows where one piece of a picture is filled in at a time until you shout [...]

This is complete and utter madness. Madness I say! I am talking, of course, about Cadbury Mini Eggs. It’s not that they’re 160 calories for a tiny little package. It’s not that the package contains a miniscule 0.1 grams of Trans fat. It’s not even the 5 mg of cholesterol or conversely the fact that [...]

Living in a land where snow blankets the ground seven months of the year means the white stuff is seldom far from my mind.  I can’t tell you how many hot summer days I have leaned on my hoe, wiped sweat from my brow and thought how wonderful it would be to have a pile [...]