Possum living: an inspirational push towards self sufficiency

To some extent, you could say that life has rather got in the way of my dreams recently. Yes, self sufficiency has been on my mind; I’ve recently been researching alternative food sources such a dogfish (which is usually caught as bycatch and discarded) but I’ve kind of neglected the bigger picture. So when I read about Dolly Freed on Off-Grid.net it was the wake up call I’ve needed for a long time.



I bought my first book about self sufficiency back in 2003 when I found myself stuck in a rut, doing a job I hated. It prompted me to set myself a target, focus on my goals and make some progress towards what I really wanted and not get sidetracked by the trappings of the rat-race. So today, Dolly and her laid back lifestyle gave me a kick up the arse. Why had I forgotten what I’ve been striving for? I’m already a step closer to my goal – I’m no longer renting so I’m not bound by the constraints of what a landlord says I can or cannot do to the garden. But I’ve not made any progress from there. I suppose the 9-5 distracted me again so now’s the time to get back to business. Don’t get my wrong, I’m not about to downshift and attempt The Good Life in my 2 bed terrace; the garden is far too small and shady for that. But I have spent this evening planning how to restructure the garden to grow food and which trees I should growing from seed now, so they are ready to fruit in a few years time when I have a bit a land to plant them in. Yes, it’s a very long term goal but its baby steps and first I need to learn how to grow food before I become dependant on my growing skills! So here goes… where did I put my trowel?

In search of happiness; are we looking too hard?

I received an email today, telling me of the happy smiling faces of the people of Madagascar. It got my thinking, would anyone ever say the people of Britain are happy smiley people? Well, no, they wouldn’t. Why? Because we’re not. We’re a nation of apathetic, cynical grouches. Only yesterday I saw a London commuter snap at a hapless traveller who didn’t move his foot fast enough. And I thought the English were supposed to be polite. We’re not, we’re selfish, self-involved and so thoroughly wrapped up in the rat-race and profit chasing that we’ll tread on anyone who gets in our way. I speak generally of course. Not all of us are like that, just the majority it seems.

So the Malagasy are happy despite being subsidence farmers, living on the poverty line and the English are miserable despite being filthy rich in comparison. Hmm… what’s wrong with this picture? The obvious answer is money doesn’t buy you happiness. We thought it might, pursuing the ‘American dream’ of a house, car, white goods and all mod cons but instead we’ve found that consumerism has no limits. What ever we have is never enough, we just want more and more.

In the pursuit of happiness we’ve forgotten what happiness is all about. Deep down we all know that money doesn’t buy us happiness. What makes us happy is sitting in the sun on a summer’s day or spending time with friends and family, but instead we’re in front of a desk, damaging our eyes to make money for some faceless company. Again I’m speaking generally about those London commuters but most of us are selling off huge chunks of our lives in exchange for money to buy stuff to compensate for the lack of time we have to spend with friends or sit in the sun. I’ve been warned off the ‘poor but happy’ ideal but in this demoralised modern world is does seem like a very tempting alternative.