The veg garden as it was being covered with horse manure. Yes, the eagle eyed amongst you will notice we've enlarged the beds. Overly ambitious? I hope not!
We have about an acre of garden and we’ve decided to create The Good Life in our little corner of Essex. Well, almost. Minus the goat. Or pig. Or whatever it was and we still have our car–husband hasn’t traded it in for any farm machinery yet, although he really loved using the digger to restore the old pond. And he has decided to stay in his job, thankfully.
If you haven’t seen The Good Life, a fantastic British sitcom from the 70′s you won’t be up to speed. Here’s part of an episode of The Good Life to give you a taste.
Barbara and Tom decide to turn their suburban garden into a small holding and live off the land in order to be free of the corporate rat race, while their neighbours, Margot and Jerry who believe wholeheartedly in the corporate rat race, look on with varying degrees of disdain and disbelief (and yet, remain good friends). Everyone always loves Barbara (Felicity Kendal), especially men, because she’s pretty and chipper and clearly loves Tom very much and because she never complains about his decision to just go for it, supporting him completely even when he has deep reservations about the plan. A perfect wife, really. But I have to say my favourite character has always been the snobby but endearing Margot (Penelope Keith). Perhaps Barbara just creates too many high expectations to live up to. No, not perhaps. She does.
From the BBC website about The Good Life: ‘The Good Life attacked the middle class and the ‘alternative’ lifestyle at once, showing Margot’s snobbishness as blindness, and Tom’s fanatical self-sufficiency as going too far…In a good-natured, light-hearted way, they showed how hard it was, and is, to be different to those around you, and the kind of courage it takes to be so.’
The idea of walking away from the rat race appeals to a lot of people. Although not rebellious, I have never been fond of too many rules (social or corporate) and hate having people watching over my shoulder to see if I’m doing it right so yes, the idea of self-sufficiency does appeal. But I doubt if I could cope with quite such an intense level of self-sufficiency as enjoyed by Barbara and Tom. After all, I don’t think there’s a recipe yet for homemade apple mac.
So in our case we’re meeting The Good Life halfway. Or perhaps one-eighth way as we’re making slow but steady progress with the vegetable beds and we now have the chickens (and lots of eggs). Two of our daughters want a pig, but they want a pot bellied pig, a pet, which wouldn’t be very good for butchering and anyway if they wanted a pig for eating I wouldn’t be able to raise it to eat it. There has been talk about goats but we need a proper fence for that. We have a pear tree that has produced a million pears this year. And crabapple trees (and I made my first crabapple jelly –okay so it wasn’t with my crabapples this year, but Ill know for next year to get onto it sooner). We also have four types of plums including greengages and damsons which always make me think of studying Rosetti’s Goblin Market and wondering what greengages and damsons are like, not knowing of course that I would one day move to England and raise them myself—sans goblins.
I managed to get old horse manure (from our very lovely farmer neighbour) dug into the veg beds this year and I’ve planted mustard and purslane for the ‘green manure’ with a view to really get going on the veg garden in the new year.
We have plans for doing pretty things to the garden as well over the next couple of years, not just Living Off The Land things. Anyway, it’s all just good excuses to get outside and enjoy the frsh air and the green space.
So, not quite living The Good Life, and I’m not quite Barbara (although, I’d like to think I’m closer to Barbara than Margot) but it’s still a good life.
Have a good weekend! You know where I’ll be… in the garden. The project this weekend: clearing brambles from a hedge. Many, many brambles. Ugh.
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