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Self-Sufficiency in Style 

Pastures New

So, just what is going on in the Gardiner household ?

The question is:

Are we selling up or not?

We have been here before, twice, once five years ago, then two years ago, now this late winter and spring - the spring of 2010.

Mr Pat has started saying "Over my dead body!"

Mrs Pat is replying, "It probably will be!"

Whenever, the writer is well enough to move, he does not want to leave: and when he is not well, he is simply too ill to move.

He realises that it is inconvenient and disconcerting for the tidy minded, but has no intention of apologising for beating the odds.

A remote smallholding, that can and does get cut off by flood or snowdrift, can be quite dangerous for someone who needs ambulances to hospital and daily visits from nurses and doctors.

Dressing wounds in a unlit cold house following high winds and, on one recent occasion, no water following a burst main, is not easy, especially in winter.

Getting to the hospital for the visitors on icy rural lanes on dark days is difficult and dangerous, despite the help and goodwill of kindly neighbours.

Long dark  days and lack of water can be more of a problem than heat.

Seed planting time wakes up the mind as well as the body.

The feet have started to follow the head and the long days bed bound, watching Judge Judy with one eye, are in the past.

Isn't day time TV terrible? Mind you, drug-droused brains are not up to anything complicated.

Meals become a pleasure instead of a challenge, and home cooked garden fare a delight. Home cooking is a virtual necessity for anyone without a pancreas, but with care a near normal diet is perfectly possible. The weight is coming back.

The trip to the greenhouse to water is within range and a trip out encourages neglected muscles into action. Spidery limbs start to thicken and become useful again.

Soon it will be time for morning coffee on the terrace and watching the walled fruit trees spring back into life.

Everyone knows why the writer does not want to move and he is equally well aware why everyone else thinks he should move to somewhere more "sensible."

The task of shifting wood to heat the house bears heavily on the back of a tired Mrs Pat - the resident nurse.

 Coffee on the terrace awaits.

So what is it that holds him at a remote cottage equipped for hard work and inconvenience.

It it is probably the peace and quiet.

But there seems to be something else...

Years of living self-sufficiently gives something else: a feeling of security.

During a period plagued by uncertainty personal, national and international, self sufficiently came into its own.

Whether to have the vaccine or not, paled into insignificance alongside the necessity of staying out of infected hospitals and away from crowds.

Remote living has its advantages, when trying to keep away from illness.

In the end, vaccination was thought worthwhile, but isolation may have been more effective.

Isolated from any panic.

Without getting into the quagmire of global warming, this winter has been early and severe here.

At one stage the supermarkets were getting some panic buying.

We always anticipate bad weather, power cuts and all the other traumas of vanishing services.

We already had the reserves of food, the batteries and all the other items likely to be needed.

We might not be able to go anywhere, but we could not make the mistake of complacency, that was the lot of town dwellers.

We were concerned to see that our local authorities had deposited money, collected from us to provide services, with defaulting Icelandic banks.

But beyond the infuriating prospect of even higher local taxes for non-existent services, we are still not really part of the money economy.

Few of the problems really worried us.

We are self-sufficient over our own money, nobody gets the chance to manage what we have, let alone risk it for their personal enrichment or plaudits from the boss.

Any government short of money is one that will have to reduce its interference in our lives, so that's OK too.

The world tends to stop at the red gate especially when it snows.

A move to the sea might be a prospect

Mrs Pat is holding out beguiling attractions of moving to the coast and the sea. She knows the writer misses the camaraderie of the long-shore and the milieu that was the lifestyle of pretty well all his forbears.

Even if the long beery lunches at a shore-side tavern are a thing of the past, the company is still great.

But this is a quietly beautiful, peaceful place and if "feet first" has to be the way, that's alright too.

Watch this space, we will keep you abreast of the domestic negotiations.

12th February, 2010

...fighting to stay

- at Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.