Learning patience from wild food (and veg growing)

Posted by louisa on Friday 5 November 2010 in growing, meta, wild food | 0 comments

As I said in my post about our fungi forage last weekend, that walk taught me to confidently identify about half a dozen wild mushroom species, and the wild food walk we did in the early summer taught me how to identify another half dozen things, mostly green leaves. These built on things I’d learnt how to identify myself and the obvious things that we all know (nettles, dandelions, blackberries etc). So after a couple of years of being interested in wild food, I can identify maybe 25 things with enough confidence to eat them. That’s not exactly that many when you consider the variety of stuff out there.

When I want to learn a new craft or a new way to cook or bake something, I tend to grind it – a video game term for doing some repetitive task/quest over and over again in order to “level up” as quickly as possible so you can go onto more exciting things. When I was figuring out my (lazy) way to make slow rise no knead bread, I made it every other day for a fortnight. By the end of it, I was knocking out perfect, uniform loaves without much effort at all. By grinding it, I can quickly learn from my mistakes and don’t ever get stuck in a “it didn’t work last time, I don’t want to try again” slump.

But I can’t grind wild food. Nature won’t let me grind. It won’t let me focus on finding just one type of thing at any given time. I have to learn by its schedule and its randomness, an enforced slow learning curve.

Growing things in our garden is possible even worse. I’ve usually got a couple of months to collect and experiment with different wild plants before they go out of season, but I have, by and large, got one shot at growing things each year. If I miss the narrow sowing window or my seedlings die a few days after transplanting, that’s pretty much it – I have to wait a year to try again.

I always feel a bit sad when each wild food window closes – but I suspect it’s good for me to have these limitations in part of my life. It’ll teach me patience and there is nearly always something new to move onto finding or planting. I can continue reading about boletes & russulas and tomato seed varieties & manual pollination techniques over the winter – grinding the theory – but I have to wait until next year to continue the practical work.

After three decades of flitting from one thing to another fractionally more exciting thing, I think developing the skills of patience and sustained year-on-year learning is as important for me and my sustainable living as being able to tell the difference between a death cap and field mushroom. I just wish I’d started earlier ;)

Week off continues – baking and making, oh my

Posted by louisa on Thursday 28 October 2010 in cooking, making, meta | 2 comments

My week off is racing by and I’m trying to stay off my computer as much as possible because it’s like a black hole for my doing stuff energy…

Yesterday was less productive than Monday & Tuesday – a long-long-long-awaited trip to the hairdressers (which made me feel more detached from mainstream society than ever!) and then into Bradford city centre to go to the wonderful Texere Yarns & around the charity shops at Ivegate. I bought some band-less but otherwise perfect balls of tweedy yarn from their £1 bin – and started to turn it into a pair of slippers last night. I’m about three-quarters of my way through my first one at the moment – can’t wait until they’re finished as they already feel snuggy and warm!

Today I’ve mostly been playing with water and flour – I started making a papier mache chicken shaped moneybox this morning (hopefully will be dry enough for a second layer this evening) and this afternoon, I’ve been baking, including making Atomic Shrimp’s Honey-glazed Fennel Seed crackers. They’re currently resting before baking – another “can’t wait until they’re done”, they smell ace! I’ve had a lot of fun making them too – will definitely make them again and post my own recipe variations here soon.

Downshifting again

Posted by louisa on Thursday 21 October 2010 in frugal, meta | 2 comments

Last week, I called it a day on a contracting gig – my main external work – which made up over half of my not-exactly-massive monthly income.

In many ways, it was a great job (and I’m not just saying that because I know three people from the company are probably reading this… ;) ) – I could do it from home, I like the team, it wasn’t exactly mentally taxing – but my heart wasn’t in it, it felt like a just-a-job-job, it was taking up more mental space than I would like from a part time job and I felt it was holding me back from making the best of my own projects.

I feel like I did when I first downshifted, when I left full time employment in 2006 – a little anxious about money and the future, but largely hopeful. Back then, my job was leaving me in tears of frustration and anger every night: I left to preserve my sanity and have a couple of months off to think about what I wanted to do next. We had lower-than-now living costs and the plan was to give myself a tight stipend from my savings each month to live on. As it happened, coincidentally, a couple of hobby projects took off the next month and they paid my way – and continued paying (and evolving to include other projects) for another 3+ years. It was when the main earning project started to tail off last summer (damn recession) that I took on the position with the company I’m now leaving.

I’ll still have a little money coming in but not much. I’ll have to rely on John a little more than I would like. I will though have some more time on my hands – to hopefully drum up some new exciting projects but also to downshift again – more time for baking, for growing, for making, for doing in general. Having the time to, hopefully, save us money and improve our Really Good Life.

(Photo by GiniMiniGi – does it remind anyone else of the Judd Nelson freeze at the end of The Breakfast Club? The Bearfast Club. The Breakfast Cub. … I’m sorry, I’ll get my coat.)

Frugal, growing and cooking link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 October 2010 in frugal, growing, meta | 1 comment

I thought I’d share a little link love this afternoon – stuff I’ve seen on other frugal living, growing & cooking sites that I think you might enjoy too.

• First up, Kate from Living the Frugal Live has revisited two seasonal posts from last year: her quick & easy leaf compost trick and collecting & storing acorns for chickens, to make her birds more sustainable.
• Speaking of foraging for food, Robin Eat Weeds has posted a Rosehip syrup recipe – I’m going to give this a go soon!
• Notes from the Frugal Trenches has some advice on stocking up on toiletries & household goods when they’re on sale – and where she finds the money to do that on a tight budget.
• Fiona on The Cottage Smallholder posted about a very odd but interesting veg, achocha – it tastes like cucumber when eaten raw, like green peppers when fried, and grows outside in the UK. I’ll definitely be trying that next year!
• And finally, speaking of other fun things to try, The Frugal Queen has been making soap – and has written a how-to for beginners, using common, easy to find ingredients.

Upcoming

Posted by louisa on Friday 15 October 2010 in frugal, meta | 5 comments

In a couple of weeks, I’m planning to take a week’s holiday from work to mark of some projects that are coming to an end. It’ll be the first week I’ve had off work in over four and a half years. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to it.

I sometimes forget how much value there is in looking forward to something. As Notes from the Frugal Trenches says in one of her 100 Ways to Save Money blog posts, having something specific to look forward to (she specifies a holiday-away) “help[s] me concentrate on my financial goals for the rest of the year” – a fun focus for frugality and making me less likely to splurge on a mini pick-me-up in the meantime.

We won’t be going away aside from, hopefully, a day at the seaside but I have some things I’d like to do at home — and I’m going to make the most of looking forward to them. This is on the noticeboard in our office to remind me of the fun stuff I’ve got planned:

Can’t wait ;)

(Anyone got suggestions for anything else I should do?)

How to make a piggy bank/money box

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in green, making, meta | 1 comment

Over on Recycle This today, I’ve asked:

What can I reuse or recycle to make a moneybox/piggy bank?

As I say in the post over there, my first project needing a moneybox is to retrospectively pay for the automatic chicken pophole door we bought last week. But I’d also like other piggybanks to set aside money for/from other projects – I find seeing money building up physically in a pot has considerably more motivation impact than when it’s building up symbolically in numbers on a bank statement.

So any suggestions on what I can do?