Hi everyone
Found this forum through following the link to the Family Save-All, the book featured this evening in The Victorian Farm.
We aren't smallholders but have half an allotment and plan to get real with the garden as well this year. We're interested in maximising our food production in the area we have got and improving our self-sufficiency, though it will never be complete of course. The garden is quite small (we live in a semi) but people used to grow things on their Anderson shelters after all so I'm going to stop letting it put me off and do raised beds to grow some more veg in, at least in the parts of the garden that get any sun . . .
We haven't enough land to keep animals, but we have three cats.
I'm getting more and more interested in learning how to cook economically. Last week I saw that Morrison's had put up their tins of Heinz soup to eighty-two pence . . . I didn't believe it, sixteen and fourpence (I'm giving my age away now!)
I'm not a brilliant cook but learned a lot from my mother who has a good set of basic skills which lend themselves to making the best of what you can get.
We also make jams, jellies and chutneys from what we can grow or get cheaply and try to enter into the spirit of the thing. We give some of it away as presents and if someone does us a favour, so apart from eating it ourselves it oils the wheels a bit (and people bring us their jars . . . )
Hoping to check back often and meet people and get some hints & tips.
All the best for now!