January 2022. Welcome!

 

Here goes is my first blog entry on My Urban Good Life blog. 

In may last year I moved into my flat and for the first time ever I have my own garden. Its not like I've gone through life wishing I had a garden because I haven't. Its safe to say I've never had an interest in gardening. 

However. 2020 then 2021 happened, combine that with a possible midlife crisis happening I've taken time to evaluate my life and have a look at what matters to me most.

I can't say I enjoy the modern way we live. Part of me is looking forward to retirement, only 29 years to go! Another part of me is hoping a 4 day work week becomes a thing in the UK. The reality is I'm lucky I can get by on a 37 hour week. I can pay my rent, bills and keep a car running on what work I do. I have done my years of long work weeks. I used to regularly work 70+ hour weeks and even clocked 96 hours per week for a whole summer 10 years or so ago. I'm no better off for it. Maybe a little wiser. 

When I moved into the flat the garden was a concrete and gravel waste land. The only life was the worms under the gravel in the layer of new mud forming from the organic matter falling from the large ash tree over hanging the garden. 

Moving has made me very aware of where my money is spent. We're currently experiencing massive inflation. Increasing cost of food, fuel including gas and electric. 

After what I've seen the past couple of years I strongly believe as a country we should be more self sufficient. We should be able to provide for ourselves and not have to rely on the rest of the world for our essentials. We got caught in a pandemic and had to rely on China for our PPE and testing kits. We rely on Russia for much of our Gas and therefore our electricity. Our petrol and diesel mostly comes from the middle east. When the world goes to shit we're stuck. 

Now I have zero impact on what the government do. As much as I'd like I cant go knocking on No.10 Downing street telling them what needs to be done. 

I can however take control on my life. I can change how I live. I can change how I do things. I can learn new ideas and expand on what I already know. 

So last May I decided I was going to start gardening and try grow as much of my own food as I can. I am doing other things to be more self sufficient and live more sustainably. But my main project is the garden. 

I only have a small space to work with and I really need to learn how to make the use of the space I have. 

Hopefully by the summer I'll only need to buy my starchy staples including rice, flour and potatoes. These are all relatively cheap to buy and take a lot of space to grow enough to live off. However I hope to be self sufficient in my green veg, beans, peas, carrots, onions and a bunch of stuff I'd never consider buying in the supermarket or can't even buy from a supermarket. I will also be self sufficient in eggs. I keep my own quail. Currently get just over a dozen eggs per week however I'm hoping for a dozen a day in a couple of months. I will also be producing some of my own meat and probably eating less meat in general anyway. You have a different take on meat production once you do it yourself.