A Footpath to Simplicity

Daily convincing myself to just stick with it

Off the (Instagram) Grid

I was talking to Amy at

The Slow Living Collective

the other day (actually we were recording an episode for her podcast, which is exciting) and we had both been thinking about how instagram (not that we don’t love it) had inclined people to hold certain views about smallholding and slow living that were less than helpful.

In order to be a smallholder, it would appear, you must live in a picturesque cottage (ideally thatched), with an ever open stable door revealing burnished red clay tiles. In the background, there must be an Aga, and a windowsill in a permanent state of photo-readiness - crammed to the edges with bric-a-brac, therefore ensuring the window can’t be opened (or closed) and even more importantly, the cat can’t get in (or out.) 

Your animals should be all around said haven - byres and barns in shades of Farrow and Ball, leaning coyly around your ten foot deep herbaceous borders. Better yet, your ducks, chickens, and even a charming donkey (quite possibly an oxymoron. I love a donkey as much as the next woman but they tend towards belligerence rather than charm) will drift in and out of said kitchen, chattering merrily.

Even if you are without livestock, any attempt at slow and simple living should, if the grid were to be believed, somehow involve a small stack of terracotta pots appearing like ‘Where’s Wally’ in every single photo, an unfathomable amount of brightly coloured tea towels, festooned around the rafters, (Emma Bridgewater and Sophie Allport presumably having conducted a secret affair or established a small sweatshop within the safety of your walls) and candles, alight at the most unnerving times and in the most unsavoury places. Oh and scones. Piles and piles of scones.

Of course, it’s not like that.

I beg you, Bloom

In fact it’s a heart matter, living simply or embracing self sufficiency.

The very most important thing you can do is start. This may be something I’ve forgotten a bit, over the years, and with our most recent move to the faceless estate, I needed a reminder.  It’s so easy to shut yourself down, and decide you’ll do it when you can afford land, or a thatched cottage, or that damn donkey.

The people you are watching online are, by and large, set dressers. I’m not saying they don’t do anything simple, slow, or self-sufficient.  I am saying it’s blooming hard work to make anything look that pretty. If that’s what they want to do, I’m not fussed, as long as it doesn’t put off real life people and make them feel not up to the task. We can all bloom where we are planted to some extent. The great thing is, when you start, the whole process kind of grows itself. Like ginger beer or apple cider vinegar, if you see what I mean.

Take stock of where you are, don’t apologise for it, or wait until it changes. Decide what it is you can do, and, without demur, dear reader, DO IT. Do something, pat yourself on the back, and crack right on with doing something else.

Stepping Out

I’m saying all this as much to myself as to anyone else. I have wandered off my way a bit. Steps must be taken though.  So, for the record, a short list of my footprints, on my path back to the slow and simple self sufficient way.

Soap - I made cold pressed soap - a pure, unscented goats milk variety to start with which is my base recipe. I will be putting it through the safety data certification process, because even if I give it as a gift, I’d like to know it’s safe, and be able to reassure the recipients likewise.  I’m planning to make another variety, this time scented.

Dishcloths - I am back at my dishcloth knitting. I do think that having cloths of your own making brings a happy reminder to hand -  even in the midst of the dullest of chores - that you are barking mad and have no intention of changing. The sheer joy of hanging these little flags of eccentricity on a suburban whirligig line in your fifteen foot square back garden while all around you ever more powerful tumble dryer fumes asphyxiate the blackbirds is well worth the knitting of them.

Bread - I’m back in the rhythm of baking our own bread, though I confess, mostly not sourdough.  My original recipe for what we lovingly call ‘bog standard bread’ serves us well. Since being diagnosed as Type 2 Diabetic, I’m supposed to eat much less of it, which is a slight issue as it’s so delicious I’m rather inclined to eat more.  The economics of baking your own bread is a subject I wrote about long ago, and I will hopefully do so once again soon.

Spinning - On a blustery, late September day, we took a trip down to Dorset to deliver some of our Oxford Down fleece to Rampisham Mill, where  it was duly converted to carded sliver. While I was there I felt compelled to pick up a few bags of sliver from other breeds to try. I have now spun some very lovely Jacob, and the vast box of soft beauty that is our own fleece has returned to me.  What I need to learn now is consistency, and for that, I simply need to spin, and spin, and spin. Happily, it is winter, and dark for at least three quarters of the day, it seems.

Carded Jacob sliver from Rampisham mill. Just gorgeous.

I’m not saying I’ll never sell anything. Eventually soap or spinning in some form may find its way to Etsy. There are two of us. How much soap and fibre can we need? But it’s not part of a business plan. The point is to make all we need, and sell what’s left, not to get sidetracked into doing it all for the market.

Reel Life

Of course, I still try to make everything look its best for my own Instagram efforts, and one of the things I really ought to do better is take nice photographs of all the precious things we do, inside and out, to maintain and enhance this self-sufficient life.

Our smallholding is particularly inelegant at this time of year. It’s a vast sea of mud, with some mud coloured livestock, against a mud coloured sky a lot of the time. I’ll still be the one quickly trying to snap Delilah the prize winning ewe looking as cute as a button in the ten minutes sunshine each month.

There’s no need to go out of your way to make things unpretty.  If you live in an ordinary house, though, with no donkey, no Emma Bridgewater, a fully functioning window and not a terracotta pot in sight, all I ask is you don’t let it stop you. Be bonkers.  Do stuff for yourself. Think about the slow and simple, the self sufficient, and don’t worry too much about the reel. It will make itself.

How are you living your best slow life this winter?