Our Road To Self-Sufficiency

Ever since I met my boyfriend, we have always had the wish to live for a large part self-sufficient. Unfortunately that is not easy to start that up and you really need a lot of space for many things. And when we met, we both did not have that space. He lived in an apartment in a large apartment building, and I lived in a single-family house with a garden of 86m2.

Now that garden was of course more than what my friend was used to with only a balcony, so we decided to live together in my house, and on December 1, 2013 we went to live together. The first thing that had to happen was a change in the garden. From a garden with a lawn it became a neat vegetable garden. A fence was set by us to separate the terrace from the garden so that the dogs could not run through our precious plants ... With four dogs you really have to think about that.

^{Myla doesn't agree on our decision to separate the terras from our vegetable garden}

And then the fun could begin. Figure out what we want and then sow, or plant. We then bought our seedless white and blue grapes as small plants.

^{Seedless Blue Grapes 2014}

My friend had always grown as many tomato plants, snow peas, beans and herbs as possible on his balcony so he knew something about it. But his dream was to have a greenhouse to finally be able to grow peppers himself. So in the first year we have put together a greenhouse ourselves in the simplest way that you can imagine yourself. Four wooden poles have been knocked into the ground, from a pair of poles with three hinges a door is made and everywhere agricultural plastic is stretched around it. That was our greenhouse! But believe it or not, it did its job and that year we were able to harvest madame jeanette peppers, chilli peppers and paprikas from our small improvised greenhouse.

In the garden itself we had cauliflower and sprouts, the harvest of which was completely unsuccessful because the entire plants were eaten by the rusps of the cabbagewhite butterfly. The sweetcorn that we sowed did well and the pods and beans too. Tomatoes seemed to like it, but in the end we had to throw away all the tomatoes because they had received too much rain at the end of their growing season, and were all rotting on the plants. We had sowed the tomatoes outside our little greenhouse and that was not such a success after all. But everything has to be learned.

The autumn and winter started and the garden had to be on a lower level. Time to make plans for the next season and to prepare everything so that the following year would improve. But that was different as we expected.

Mid December of that year I called my friend in his break to ask if he had any wishes for dinner. We were used to discussing this together because we worked at the same company, but I had been unemployed since 1 December 2014 because my contract was not renewed. He had no wishes for dinner, and just before we went to hang out he suddenly asked me in between ... "What would you think you would live in a farm afterwards?". To which I gave the answer that I would love it, and thought ... He makes a joke! He said; "That's nice ... I'll let you know that we'll be watching Saturday, December 20, 2014 at 1:00 PM". And there I was, the rest of the afternoon full of questions, and tension ... because what would it be? True? How does he get that? How high is the rent? All questions for me that could only be answered after my friend had returned home.

Long story short. On Saturday 20 December 2014 we went to watch. And on December 30, 2014 we received the key from our new house, and we moved up there officially on 1 January 2015. A very quick decision to move, and everyting around was also was arranged quickly. And suddenly we did not have a 86m2 garden anymore, but we had a yard of 210m2 ... with another side garden that is just as big as what we had in our last house in the backyard. Instead of a small parking in front of the house, we suddenly had a large driveway.

^{Our house in the snow januari 2015}

But also we had to change the plans we had. Because where we knew in our previous house how we would organize the vegetable garden we were dealing here with a jungle garden that had real deferred maintenance, and therefore we were not able to do anything with that side garden. And a paved yard of 210m2 where no plant could enter the ground.

Time for change of plans and a fast forward to now.

In the past few years we have spent time in refurbishing everything and figuring out how we can best work here now. We have opted for large black so-called cement trays. The side garden is systematically cleared of weeds and now after 3 years we notice improvement and we will finally start this year to transform that messed up garden into a beautiful garden. Because we have to spend so much money, money that we don't have, everything has to be built up slowly. Normally you hire a groundworker and have everything drained to fully rebuild it yourself. We do not have that option. Everything has to be done in the old-fashioned way, with the hands and a lot of patience. Systematic weed roots to get out of the ground, wait until it comes back and attack again. With a small hand rake, loosen the sand, pull roots out of the ground and so on. The weeds that grow in the yard and on the driveway must all be picked by hand. So we are mainly busy refurbishing the deferred maintenance. The house itself also needed the necessary attention, and still does ... because in-house is also deferred maintenance and related problems.

But do we regret this move? No not at all! We live in spite of everything that comes with it now that it is nice and quiet. Our dogs can enjoy a garden this time where they could not do that in the previous house. We try to expand our vegetable garden every year a bit. For example, we built a small greenhouse again in 2015, and we installed a second greenhouse 2 months ago.

^{The Greenhouses}

We are busy creating order in the side garden to get a fruit tree orchard there. And to our great joy, we discovered 2 large walnut trees in our first year of living here. There appear to be many plum trees, by us now supplemented with an apple tree, a pear tree and three cherry trees. And something more special, a Szechuan Pepper tree. And because we like it, also an Eucalyptus tree.

^{Red Berries}

In our side garden there is also a large red berry bush and a still young blueberry bush, a raspberry bush, and 3 gooseberry bushes. Our herbs now grow like maggi plants, chives and parsley. We grew leek there. And so every time, every season a little more order, and usable garden for us, we gratefully use to place some edible plants again.

In our yard the dogs have a lot of fun, but there are also our greenhouses, so we have bins with edible plants such as radishes, ramen, rhubarb, we have found beautiful places for our vines and both grapes have an arch from us received from scaffolding wood and concrete mesh. And furthermore, there are a lot of flowers in baking and on the table. Are we working on a "French Corner", We have made a garden set of scaffolding wood ourselves and we always have music in the garden as we want via a cabinet, (of course again made by ourselves), with a large solar panel mounted on it.

^{Yard where the dogs have fun, and we have solar energy}

In our greenhouse grow peppers, peppers, cucumbers, snack tomatoes, pineapple cherries and strawberries. Every year there is more, and every year we want something different. Unfortunately, it takes a bit longer because we can not invest, but with little you can still grow to more. The most important thing is that you do not give up, and do not stand still!

^{inside the new greenhouse}

And with every year what passes, where our yield is bigger ... we get a bit more space in the wallet to be able to do other things. And that's how we grow too, just like our grapes we bought back in 2014 before our move. We are not there yet, but every year it gets a bit better ... and we reap more fruits from our own work. Literally and figuratively!

^{Seedless Blue Grapes 2018 in our so-called "French Corner"}

Happy Gardening!