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Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: book

Between the lines

10 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by sallynex in book review, kitchen garden, self sufficiency

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

book, garden books, Growing Self-Sufficiency, self-sufficiency

bookpicBy far the most exciting thing to happen to me in the middle of a rainy and slightly frustrating week was the publication of my new book.

This is all a novel experience for me (sorry, dreadful pun) and I am finding it a little disconcerting: I have to draw attention to myself, for one thing, blow my own trumpet and generally go on about what I do instead of hiding in a corner of my living room bashing away at my keyboard behind the comforting anonymity of a computer screen.

However, now I find myself with book launches, author signings, talks and podcasts to do: publicity a go-go, and nowhere for a slightly reclusive gardener to hide. I can’t even go down to the far end of the veg garden where nobody can find me, as it’s (still) raining.

The book began as a simple idea: what if everyone could be just a little bit self-sufficient? Even if they lived a normal 21st century life in an ordinary house, without a smallholding, or much time, just like me?

And – as these things do – it mushroomed into an examination of what exactly it means to be self-sufficient, and from there became a gallop through the last 20 years of my life distilled into all the stuff I’ve learned about growing things and providing for myself and my family, on a journey of my own to look after myself as much as I possibly could through my own efforts.

As I’ve learned to supply more and more of my own food from my back garden, plus various borrowed fields, allotments and strips of land, I have realised lots of things.

First: there’s no such thing as self-sufficiency. Even the most dedicated off-gridder has to hew their house from the surrounding woodland with an axe someone else has smelted and forged. So once you’ve taken that on board, it becomes a question of how self-sufficient you can be.

And then you realise that everyone can supply at least some of their food by their own efforts. Even if all you’ve got is a doorstep, you can plant a rosemary bush in a pot in the sun and never have to buy herbs wrapped in plastic from the supermarket again.

Add a middle-sized garden and you can become self-sufficient in half-a-dozen vegetables really easily, and another dozen or so with a little extra effort. Start to get really hooked (and you will) and you can knock more things off your weekly shopping list, including fruit, drinks, cough and cold remedies, tea, eggs, lamb…

There will always be some things I will have to rely on others for. Flour, for one thing, and bread, pasta and rice. Butter, milk and cheese (I could keep goats, but I value my sanity: I have chased far too many of my mum’s goats across various villages in the South of France to want to ever do that again. Long story). Clothes (I can’t wear wool. Besides – woolly knickers. ‘Nuff said); cars and transport, other than walking.

So actually, in the grand scheme of things, I’m probably not that self-sufficient at all. But the point is, it is hugely important to me that I produce as much as is within my power from my own efforts.

Why? Because that way, I can eat absolutely fresh, organic food that I know for sure has never been sprayed with any chemicals at all, or injected with antibiotics unless it needs to be – and there’s lots of it, and it tastes great.

Because there is something deeply satisfying about sitting down to a plate of food and knowing that you have provided everything on it, through your own efforts. It taps into some atavistic caveman instinct and there’s something profoundly reassuring in the knowledge that, come the apocalpyse, we’ll be all right. We certainly won’t go short of home-made chutney, that’s for sure.

And because when I’m providing for myself it means I’m not sitting like a baby bird, mouth open, waiting helplessly for someone else to feed me. It’s a matter of self-respect. Plus growing what I eat, even if it’s just a part of my overall consumption, makes me really think about where my food comes from, and appreciate the effort that goes into growing it: and that makes me waste less, and pollute less, and treat the animals that produce my food better. It makes me responsible, as far as I can be, for the weight of my foot upon the world. And besides, it’s a lot of fun. Care to join me?

Grab your own copy of Growing Self-Sufficiency at a hefty introductory discount from Wordery – here’s the link!

New beginnings

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by sallynex in chicken garden, France, my garden

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

apples, book, France, fruit, hf holidays, New Year, plastic, self-sufficiency, tomatoes

 

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Thank goodness 2016 is over.

I’m not sure things look a whole lot better for 2017, but like all gardeners I’m always up for a bit of optimism. And besides, within the safe confines of my garden it is easy to drift off into a world blessedly free of the likes of Herr Trump, Brexit and the wholesale slaughter of my popstar idols.

The world may seem a bit post-apocalyptic beyond the garden gates: but inside, there are sweet peas to pinch out, onions to sow, the last of the veg beds to clear and the compost to turn, just as there were last January and for every January before that. And – assuming Trump doesn’t, in another misguided attempt at ‘locker room banter’ decide to see what that big red button does – for every January to come, too.

I don’t really make New Year resolutions: much too vulnerable to my slightly distracted and forgetful state of mind these days. But January is always a time of promise: of plans made and not yet abandoned, events anticipated and surprises as yet unguessed-at.

So here is what this year promises: and I look forward to every minute.

  • A new life less plastic: I have for some time now been angsting about the quantities of plastic building up in my garden. So this is my year to cut it out, stop taking the lazy option and find some more environmentally-friendly alternatives. I will be blogging about it right here.
  • New fruit: You can never have too much fruit. This year’s trees are apples: James Grieve, Warner’s King and Egremont’s Russet, I think, all on MM106 rootstocks. I am also going to have a go at growing my strawbs up on shelving in a bid to save a few from the mice (who must, by now, be getting very fat indeed).
  • New tomatoes: I’m delving further into the intriguing world of heritage tomatoes, thanks to the packets of tomato seed sent to me from the collection from Knightshayes a year or two ago. Last year it was Sutton’s Everyday – great all-rounder which I’ll be growing again – and ‘White Beauty’, a white beefsteak which had good novelty value but not terribly productive and the flavour was a bit ‘meh’ too. I have half a dozen left to try and new favourites to discover.
  • La nouvelle vie en rose: I shall be spending a lot of time in France. First of all, beginning the long process of sprucing up a little house and garden the family have bought near Bordeaux; second, leading an HF Holidays garden tour around Provence in lavender season.
  • A new book: I have my first book out in September! Look out for it at all good bookshops near you: it’s all about fitting in self-sufficiency around everyday working and family life, from baby-leaf salads to meat and eggs. Basically what I’ve been doing myself for the last decade or two, really. Here’s the official blurb.
  • New days in the garden: Just try to keep me out. As well as my own garden, I’m looking after a beautiful rose garden, ably assisted by a bevy of feathery under-gardeners; building a kitchen garden complete with polytunnel; and tending two little gardens on hillsides where the view is breathtaking every time I raise my head. I anticipate much muddiness and quite a lot of happy days. Bring it on. 

A very happy New Year to you all, and may all your carrots grow straight in 2017!

Gardening words: A veritable cabaret

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by sallynex in book review, garden words

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

book, book reviews, Cabaret of Plants, garden books, gardening books, Richard Mabey

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It is a rare garden writer whose words make you look entirely differently at the plants you have known all your life.

But Richard Mabey has so far made me review my attitudes towards everything from bindweed and horsetail (in his very entertaining ‘Weeds‘ – you will never look at a patch of couch grass in quite the same way again) to fairy ring mushrooms (‘Food for Free’ – I retain a little of my natural scepticism on this one, as I’ve always thought foraging rather overrated and Richard hasn’t quite converted me, but he did provide me with a stonking good read).

So I was really pleased when my in-laws presented me with one of his books I hadn’t come across yet, ‘The Cabaret of Plants‘: and once again I was thrown headlong into a world where plants make you gasp anew in awe and astonishment.

The ‘cabaret’ is explained as the parts plants play in the ‘theatre’ of the world; but the play is one ‘full of mimicry and unexpected punchlines’ where anything goes and nobody is handing out stage directions.

It’s a good analogy: this book is setting out to rekindle our ability to marvel at plants, just for themselves: our ‘ancient sense of wonder’ at this most diverse and astonishing group of organisms.

The result is eclectic, to say the least. It’s a joy to read: Richard is a polymath who wears his learning lightly, but can’t quite help taking little darting excursions into the poetry of Wordsworth, Iberian bar snacks, the cult of the Green Man, South American shamans and their slightly dodgy drug habits, electron microscopy, the Great Western Railway and Amazon exploration in the 19th century, among other things. Many, many other things. It’s quite dizzying, and a little exhilarating.

And the plants…. Once more I found myself looking at my favourite organisms in the world through quite different eyes, opened for me by Richard’s swooping flight through rivers, oceans, forests and deserts, across the ages and scooping up characters and stories as he goes.

I loved the story of the moonflower, a cactus from Brazil which climbs trees with headily-scented flowers which open on just one night a year, when the moon is full. And the intriguing evidence that Mimosa pudica, the sensitive plant, is capable of learning. Then there’s the orchid which lives its entire life underground, and the poor lonely cycad, Encephalartos woodii, which found itself in an evolutionary cul-de-sac when the last individuals turned out to be male-only. One grows today at Kew, in the Temperate House if you want to visit. Nobody has ever seen a female, so the males in cultivation (and there are none left in the wild) are doomed to an eternal batchelor existence.

I could go on, but that’s to spoil this magpie’s nest of a book, full of jewels and shiny things to make you catch your breath in admiration. And all beautifully written, too, with a poet’s feel for language. I loved it. And best of all, I came away with one overriding thought: aren’t plants amazing?

End of month view: November

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in end of month view, sheep

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

book, chard, leeks, Nablopomo, November, sheep, winter

eomv1

The veg garden is looking exceptionally woolly and wind-blown at the moment as it subsides gradually into its winter hibernation: good sprouts under them nets though

It’s been November for a whole four weeks now. Season of dreary rain and hat-snatching wind: season of no gardening and damply sloshing wellington boots and mud and dead brown sadly broken stems.

But let’s not get depressed. There are still reasons to be cheerful (honest!):

    • I’ve done it! Against all the odds, I have posted every day this month and completed NaBloPoMo, along the way retrieving my blogging mojo and having a thoroughly interesting time
eomv2

…and the spring cabbages are coming along nicely

    • I have handed in the manuscript of my book! At last! Somewhat late but more or less intact. They tell me now comes the difficult bit – bashing it into shape before publication next Easter; but I don’t care. I’m just really, really happy I’ve finished writing it.
eomv3

The terrace garden… oh dear.

    • It’s nearly Christmas! (Don’t care what all you grumpy bumpies say: I love it)
    • And it’s nearly the winter solstice! Which means we only have a few more weeks to wait till the evenings get brighter
eomv5

…but the yellow-stemmed chard is a bit fabulous and still going strong…

    • My sprouts are HUGE! The hugest, in fact, I think I’ve ever grown
    • I own a piano for the first time in about 20 years. Now all I need is some sheet music.
eomv4

…and one of my best-ever leek crops is in this bit too

    • The sweet rocket is still flowering (even though I couldn’t get a picture of it: you’ll just have to take my word for that one)
    • The prickly pear cactus didn’t get frosted even though I left it outside in minus-one temperatures
eomv6

The back garden sagging slightly under the weight of all that rain…

    • I have planted a LOT of tulips
    • I am booked in for three slap-up Christmas dinners in the next few weeks. And that doesn’t even count the real one.
    eomv7

    …but even on the drabbest of days these two cheer me up. Ewok and Custard, enjoying their winter break eating the hedges and occasionally the lawn (the bit they’re meant to eat)

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