About TAS
We're located on the banks of the River Forth, in beautiful Clackmannanshire, in the centre of Scotland. Alloa Inch is to the south of us and is winter home to around 3000 water fowl. It is a Special Protection Area and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Dan works from home and I (Rosemary) work full-time but locally, so we can check stock, water plants and such like during the day, if we need to.
Our hero is, I suppose, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall whose attitude to food and the environment we share wholeheartedly. We're big fans of the River Cottage TV series and the subsequent books. We also read some of John Seymour's writing on self-sufficiency, which goes a lot further than we ever hope to achieve. Dan's a big fan of Eliot Coleman, an American farmer and writer on organic production.
We appreciate that we're in a very fortunate position - we don't depend on what we produce either for income or to live, so we're under no real pressure if a crop fails (apart from injured pride). At the end of the day, Tesco is just up the road. However, we do get a lot of pleasure out of producing even some of our own food. We're not looking to be self-sufficient - there will always be food and drink that we'd rather buy than produce ourselves. Wine, for example - we tried making that but the peapod put us off for life. But it is good to sit down to a meal knowing that your roast pork comes from pigs raised slowly and naturally, the vegetables have been produced by your efforts and without chemicals and that your Yorkshire pudding is made with eggs that come from happy hens that are free to roam and that are not fed GM food or dead animals.
It takes a lot of beating but it's not rocket science. If we can do it, so can you!
Follow the yearly links for a brief ever growing summary of how we got to where we are, and where we might be going. You can keep up to date with our latest shenanigans in the diary.