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CALLING ALL NEW PEOPLE!!! (PART TWO)


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On 3/18/2022 at 10:57 AM, Mother said:

SusanAnn,  I am enjoying learning about the UK from you.  Sharing ideas about lifestyles helps us evaluate our own.  Be sure to ask us any questions you have about our lifestyles as well.  
 

I was thinking about your 15’ X 40’ garden area.  When you say stepped up words do you mean literally like steps or just sloped?  Does the area get sunshine?  If my calculations are correct isn’t that 600 square feet?  I believe if it did get enough sunshine and the soil was enriched enough that you would be surprised at just how much food you could grow on that space.  If you think about growing things vertically you could get even more from it.  When you find your way around the site come down to the Country/Urban Homesteading  forum and we’ll talk gardens 😁

 

Mother I am not that good at describing things accurately in print ~ but I'll give this a go :blush: I'm probably going to use lots of words and if it gets boring just stop reading, unless of course you can't sleep,  in this case read on :D

 

Sadly this garden isn't easily cultivatable.  It's a crazy garden with four different levels with lots of concrete/brick steps between each level.  This is because our house is in a row built in front of the terminal morraine of an old glacier, it creates a natural city boundary , which is nice in some ways, no one will build behind us because the land is unstable and poor, ,so it's urban wasteland/woodland...but it also means I have drainage pipes underneath a thin layer of  soil in most of the garden diverting a stream coming off the gravel morraine . I do have a sunny area at the top of the garden it's a gravel area on top of concrete foundations from an old outbuilding....here I have a vegetable trough, and containers and I think that container gardening is my way forward, so yes I should really hang out in Urban Homesteading :)

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Not to wordy at all, SusanAnn.  I love to hear about you ways and means.  What better way to get to know each other than sharing.  
 

We live on fifteen acres with only a small portion of that flat land the rest of it is steep wooded hillside sloping up away from the back of our home.  We have a drainage ditch behind our house to keep from being surrounded by water in heavy rains.  I know your situation first hand.  We do have a large garden area, all containers on the side of the house and a nice sized your to the front.  My problem is I am now in a wheelchair or an electric scooter most of the time and neither is very useful in those yards.  We also have huge trees that block the sun all but along the edges of those areas, mostly along our gravel drive.  We are putting on a new deck and handicap ramp, part of which has full sun.  I plant to use deck boxes as the railing around that area and will continue gardening from there. Where there is a will there is always a way :lois:.   I was a country homesteader for much of my married life ( almost 60 years ).  I now still help mod that forum but for the last two years, despite still living country, I have been using urban homesteading.

 

It is amazing what you can do to be self reliant.   This whole site is chock full of pages and pages of help to do that.  Be sure to ask for help finding something if you need it. :D
 

 

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Wow Mother!!! Sixty years of country homesteading experience :bow: I think that will stand you in good stead with your new adventures in more accessible self sufficiency :)

 

Deck boxes sound like a really good idea, I've just tried an experiment with a small window box type planter hanging from my back gate...last year I put petunias in it, which are pretty but inedible!  This year I successfully overwintered a large oregano plant in my veg trug, we're digging all the soil out of the trug  after a bad tomato blight year last year, but the oregano plant is huge and healthy so  I've split it up and put all the new off shoot plants  in the window box, it's still a pretty plant I think, but has the plus point of being edible :D

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Now you are talking.  I am going down to the Urban Homesteading forum and will post a thread for us to talk about what we’ve done and our plans for this year.  Look under the Urban Homesteading section, the Urban Farming SUB forum there.  Please come join me in. 

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SusanAnn thanks for sharing about your garden. Lots of experienced gardeners here. I just moved onto a 3/4 acre plot of land in town, so starting my garden from scratch this year. I also have some drainage issues to address and don't even know what is already in my flower beds since we moved in mid winter. One way or another I'm sure you will manage to grow some great things in your space please share as you go along :cheer:

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On 3/16/2022 at 4:57 PM, SusanAnn said:

Hello, I'm new and from the UK ~ don't know if there are any other Brits here?  Anyway I live with my husband and two of our three sons on the edge of a biggish city ~ my husband has had to take early retirement due to ill health ( we're both in our early sixties, but had planned to work for much longer) and our youngest son has autism and some other health challenges. So we have fairly limited resources, but I'm still hoping to grow a few vegetables and herbs in our little garden and work on having a reasonable store cupboard....Covid has proved to me just how important these things are!!!

 

Good morning SusanAnn!  another Brit here. I'm in the West Midlands. I'm a recent returnee to Mrs Survival. Hope you hang around and join in. The ladies here are a lovely bunch and I'd forgotten how good it is to be here.

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Hi SusanAnn, you'll guess where I'm from by my handle. Close to Leeds. Started here at Mrs S around 2005 after lurking as a guest for a few years prior to that. My youngest also has autism and when he was young we were advised to put him in an institution. However, we persevered and got ourselves some training in autism spectrum disorder. We were very lucky. Our son is now 24 and has a first class honours degree in games design and followed that with a masters. He arranged most of this himself. He now works at a local college teaching the IT teachers in games design and doing a teaching qualification as well. I say this not to brag but to give hope. The asd spectrum is wide, but you are not alone.

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On 3/23/2022 at 9:24 AM, Wychwood said:

 

Good morning SusanAnn!  another Brit here. I'm in the West Midlands. I'm a recent returnee to Mrs Survival. Hope you hang around and join in. The ladies here are a lovely bunch and I'd forgotten how good it is to be here.

 

Hi Wychwood, yes I'm planning to hang around, this is a nice little corner of the internet and there's lots to learn and be encouraged by.  I really like your signature quote thinngy :)

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On 3/30/2022 at 12:53 AM, UKGuy said:

Hi SusanAnn, you'll guess where I'm from by my handle. Close to Leeds. Started here at Mrs S around 2005 after lurking as a guest for a few years prior to that. My youngest also has autism and when he was young we were advised to put him in an institution. However, we persevered and got ourselves some training in autism spectrum disorder. We were very lucky. Our son is now 24 and has a first class honours degree in games design and followed that with a masters. He arranged most of this himself. He now works at a local college teaching the IT teachers in games design and doing a teaching qualification as well. I say this not to brag but to give hope. The asd spectrum is wide, but you are not alone.

Welcome back UK Guy :)  Your right the asd spectrum is indeed wide and you must be so proud of your son :) It's nice to see that there some other Brits on here, although you're both rather a long way away from me!!!

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On 3/29/2022 at 6:53 PM, UKGuy said:

Hi SusanAnn, you'll guess where I'm from by my handle. Close to Leeds.

 

I used to attend a radio training school in Leeds.  :hapydancsmil:  I traveled down from Scotland and spent several weeks there each time. It was a great place. I remember the locals talking about Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood. Your cities are older than our entire country.   :hug3:

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  • 1 month later...

Hello! Pioneer Woman here. I've been reading MrsSurvival on and off for 20 years, I think, but haven't posted often.

 

I was influenced by my dad's stories of growing up in the Great Depression in a small house hand-built by his dad from explosives boxes left over from his coal mining job. Their family always had a big garden, a root cellar, and chickens. Another big influence were the Little House books which I read as a teen and then over and over through the years, and, later, read aloud to my children. I also resonated to Thoreau's ideas of living simply. And then there were The Mother Earth News magazines. I got into reading them with the very first issue.

 

I took a lot of those influences to heart, and, as a result, my first husband and our two kids lived in an off-grid 400 square foot partially underground log cabin in the woods of Mississippi for eight years and did homeschooling. That was after we had lived for six months in a small van out west.

 

Later, I lived for a short while in a converted school bus. And, more recently, I lived in a minivan-turned-camper for two years, camping on public lands in the west.

 

MrsSurvival has been a big influence on me as well, and I feel like I know a lot of you very well from reading your posts and, in some cases, the novels or short stories you wrote, so many of which are engrossing and enjoyable.

 

Thank you for still being here and for providing so much helpful information and kind support.

 

 

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:welcome: I am so pleased you are here with us.  I’m looking forward to hearing more from you.  With experiences like you have had I’m positive we can all learn from you.  :happy0203:

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Mississippi born and raised!  salute!   It makes an impression.  I may have moved, but most of my bio family still live in  MS.  Also, I'm related to about half about Albama on my mother's side. 

Edited by euphrasyne
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I FINALLY found my password! I’ve been been lurking frequently, but could not remember my password to sign in. I feel like I’m home again. So glad you’ve kept the light on.

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Welcome back MomM.  If it happens again, just email mrssurvival@yahoo.com.  Someone will get you in! 

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