Ten unexpected benefits of being self sufficientish

Yes, that’s the good humoured, tolerant brand of self sufficiency promoted by Andy and Dave Hamilton on their website and now in their book.
I spent an afternoon with the twins at their home in Bristol last week and learnt about the most brutal slug-slaying method known to man and why everyone can make a few lifestyle tweaks to become more self sufficientish. The interview will be in Body&Soul this Saturday. In the meantime, here are the boys with their top tips on becoming self-sufficientish (clicking here should take you to a video), and below are some benefits of their lifestyle you might not have thought about.

1/ Being self-sufficientish is generous spirited. There isn’t enough land in Britain for everyone to become properly, pig-in-the-yard self-sufficient, a la John Seymour, the father of self sufficiency. So, adopting a few measures, such as growing your greens or making your own dandelion cough syrup, is a more sustainable way of letting a greater number of people have a go.

2/ You’ll save a lot of money, at a time when rising fuel and food prices are causes for concern. Andy reveals that his total earnings a few years ago were £5,000. On this, he lived and ate very well. Thanks in part to his commitment to Freecycle, skip-diving (never passing a skip without having a poke around), growing his own food, mending things rather than chucking them, cycling and walking rather than driving and buying clothes in charity shops.

3/ Your brain works better away from a desk. Andy and Dave’s idea of a work meeting is to head to the woods and pick some wild garlic. “It helps you to think, much better than speaking over the phone,” they say. I quite agree, sometimes I have to move to think. I’ll sit at my desk and stagnate for hours, then trot off to make a cup of tea, and bingo, I’ve got it.

4/ It’s an affordable way of eating delicious, organic vegetables. That is, if you’re not keen on coughing up a fiver for a bag of carrots and a cabbage at a farmers market. This is was why Dave started growing vegetables as a student. He persuaded his landlord to let him cultivate the garden. (And yes, they are delicious: Dave gave me a bagful of purple sprouting broccoli from his allotment. For the past few evenings, I’ve been steaming it – both florets and stalks – and eating it with a wedge of butter and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. It is truly a gourmet vegetable and I'm planning to plant some myself this weekend.)

5/ You don’t have to move to the countryside. Dave and Andy say the self sufficientish lifestyle is well suited to towns. There’s great urban foraging potential (here’s a thread about foraging in parks); more desirable stuff in skips; good public transport and you can still go to the cinema and find pubs full of different kinds of people.

6/ You end up absurdly healthy. Just take a look at Dave’s budget food section. Yes, it’s cheap. Yes, the recipes are simple to make. Ok, so it is a bit studenty. But just imagine how healthy you’d be on a diet of dahl, broth and cous cous.

7/ It promotes a happy lifestyle. “Just spending ten minutes in the garden or making your own soup for supper will make you feel better than half an hour in front of an X-box,” says Andy, and I believe him.

8/ You’ll be at the forefront of a trend. You might think that your moth eaten cardigans and second hand clothes are an embarrassment to your children/husband/friends but actually – and you can tell them this – they are part of a new fashion trend called chic-eco (pronounced chico). Or so says Dave and Andy (but it could be a Bristol thing).

9/ It doesn’t matter if you’re not perfect. Don’t think that there’s no point trying to be green because you’ve blown it by owning a car or flying on holiday. Everyone has weak points. Andy feels bad about taking taxis and he confesses to eating meat, which has a heavy carbon footprint. Dave still smokes, even after writing this handy guide to quitting, and he feels especially bad about it because tobacco is a heavily sprayed crop with a bad record for exploiting workers.

10/ You can wow your friends with nettle haggis dinner parties. It tastes nicer than it sounds, apparently.

Comments

[a]

Hey thanks for the great blog, love this stuff. I don’t usually do much for Earth Day but with everyone going green these days I thought I try to do my part.

I am trying to find easy, simple things I can do to help stop global warming (I stress easy, I don’t plan on going out and buying a hybrid). I took the Earth Day Challenge that EarthLab.com is promoting ( http://www.earthlab.com/ ) and I am planning on lowering my score. They have some pretty good tips (they call them pledges).

I am looking for more easy fun stuff to do. If you know of any other sites worth my time let me know.

[Fee]

As a member of Ish, i'm really proud of Andy and Dave and the work they're doing.

Its not that difficult being Selfsufficientish, and its all the little things that count, as well as the big ones!

[C Williams]

Help one person make a difference in the environment

It's time to let the Oil companies know that we won't deal with higher and higher prices of gas. We watch money leave our pockets and emissions ruin our environment

Do not drive a vehicle on May 18th and let them know that a grass roots effort can bring their profits down and save the environment. The entire environmental impact could be monumental.

Check out this page and send it on to everyone you know and tell them to send it on......Let's make a difference

http://nodrivingday.blogspot.com/

[James Russell]

The beauty of this approach lies in its simplicity. There's no dogma here, no need for grand eco-designs or expertise. No number-crunching. These guys have an interesting, home-made sort of life, the sort of mildly eccentric existence we're good at in this country. Not everyone can be self-sufficient. Not everyone can be Green. But we can all be Greenish

[Gregg]

I help save the planet each and everyday. First I run the dryer with at least one sock in it, so as to not waste valuable resources that our guvment steals from the downtrodden. Next I make sure that I use only the safest environmentally concious lighting available, a few 300 watt incandescent bulbs light the closet up just nifty, Lastly, I make sure to heat the house with the oven on broil. Only works well at peak demand for the rest of the neighborhood about 5:00 P.M. Pacific time. Yes, I leave my car running for 25 minutes to warm up in the winter. I have to though, cuz it takes that long to heat the interior space being that it's a huge SUV. How can I help anymore than I do?

[Andy (not him, another Andy)]

So Andy 'confesses to eating meat, which has a heavy carbon footprint' does he? Disgraceful. How dare he choose avoiding a Vitamin B12 deficiency over lowering his carbon footprint? Rogue....

[H Horse]

I have done the only thing that matters - no children. All the rest is just papering over the cracks.

[Stonehead]

I'm with Andy and Dave on number seven—having spent the last 11 hours frantically digging, sowing and planting out as I try to beat the imminent change in the weather I am definitely smiling!

And yes, I'm also an Isher!