The 2011 Ideal Home Show is very much about sustainability and eco-living
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The 2011 Ideal Home Show is very much about sustainability and eco-living with everything from solar and energy saving to gardening for food.
Many of the seminars in the How To Theater in the Ideal Home Improvements section in this year's show have been geared to food growing and even homesteading in town and country. We mustn't called it urban homesteading anymore because some fools in America claim that they have trademarked these two words as a brand name and are sending out lawyer's letters all over the place to people who use that term.
On Monday, March 14, 2011 in this very theater, Liz Wright of the Smallholding Magazine in the United Kingdom gave a lecture entitled “Smallholding for town and country” in which she explained – sorry, I was unable to attend even though I had hoped to – about the possibilities of “living the good life” in town as much as in the country.
Other green seminars in this same theater were “Green your home” by Bill Snyed of Homesun, also on the same Monday, and gardening and other environmental “how to” seminars are being held during the entire length of the show in this theater.
Smallholding, or homesteading, or whatever you may wish to call it, is not something just for the countryside and the boonies but you can bring it also to suburbia.
Growing your own veg in containers is possible everywhere; well almost, and raised bed square-foot gardening in the smallest of backyards.
If you have the space then keeping a few hens for eggs is also possible and no, you do not have to have a cockerel, a rooster. Hens are happy enough without one and will lay eggs rooster or no rooster. You only need a rooster if you want to breed chickens, only then.
You can, as I have so often said, and, as I understand, Liz Wright said and says, live the “good life” in town also and it is something that we all will have to do.
If you do not think that you have enough land of your own and really want to do more than grow just a few vegetables then an allotment is the answer and, while there are long waiting lists in many places, the theory has it that local authorities have to provide allotment spaces by law for all that want one.
But a bit like understanding the statutory requirements on them as regards to parks and open spaces they also seem to often fail to understand the statutory requirements placed upon them as to the provision of allotment garden spaces.
But first try without going for an allotment. Only take that step, but that is just my personal advice, when you are confident as to the growing of food crops. Start small and take it from there.
A good book that I would like to suggest here is “Down to Earth” by Madeleine Cardozo and published by Haxnicks. It is written in an easy manner and featuring some of the most common vegetables that people might like to grow, including a recipe for each.
Sure there are many other books around and you can take you pick from many hundreds of them, I should think, but, I would suggest, start with a small volume, such as the one I have just mentioned, and advance if you feel to need and wish to. Also, get seed catalogs and devour those. Much information can be found in some of the good ones.
There is nothing stopping you from living the “good life” whether in town or countryside bar, maybe, time and will. But it will be something, as I have said, that we will all have to participate in in one way or the other in the not so very distant future if we want to have food security.
© 2011
