Hello from Canberra

Gaillygirl

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Apr 30, 2016
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Canberra
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Cold, Cool, Mountains, or Artic
Hi everyone,
I'm a mature Mum of 3 girls (18, 12 & 11) and retired about 8 months ago. I've been looking into keeping chooks in our suburban block and found you today through Marks, Self Sufficient Me Youtube channel.
Would love to have a bigger block, but we have to make do with what we have. I'm very new at this as I haven't had the time whilst working full time and chasing 3 girls (as well as hubby). My gardening experience is "water, weed and watch it die" LOL. Now that I have more time to concentrate on the gardens (front & back) hopefully this will change. So I might become a bit of a pest with constant questions.

I'll post some photos over the next few days of the MESS the gardens are in due to lack of maintenance and my plans to upgrade/change things around. We just recently pulled down the girls cubby house after 14yrs of use, due to it becoming unstable and the girls no longer using it.

Looking forward to chatting with you all.

Cheers
Gail
 

Ash

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Preston, QLD
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asmedical.webege.com
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Welcome Gail. Good to have you here. A lot of us here are in a similar position to you particularly with the water, weed and wither process. But Mark and a few others have vast self-sufficiency experience and can help out on the journey from brown to green thumb. Enjoy the forum
 

Mark

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Bellmere, QLD
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So I might become a bit of a pest with constant questions.
Please become a pest @Gaillygirl :)

Welcome to SSC Gail!

Would love to have a bigger block, but we have to make do with what we have.
Yes, most of us have to make the best use of what we have and I would personally love to be on 30 (or so) acres to keep pigs and other larger domestic livestock; however, it's just not practical for us financially, physically, or even socially. And, all things need to be considered if you are going to be happy living as self-sufficient as possible.

Our actual vegetable garden space isn't that big considering the size of our property and even if we lived on a big farm we'd still probably have a similar sized vegetable garden situated within a short distance from the house. The fact is, a standard sized suburban block is capable of growing much of what a normal family requires (with some caveats of course like sunlight availability being a major one) but in general there's nothing stopping most people from producing the majority of their vegetables in their own backyard.

When I retired from the workforce to become a homedad, whilst my wife pursued her career goals, we were very happy to stop the madness of kids at childcare from 6am to 6pm etc... However, the drop in salary soon started biting into our savings and a large part of the cost of living was feeding our family. It took us a few years to get our food garden to a point where it was producing enough food to save us considerable money but we got there.

My role as a homedad is not just to look after the kids and have dinner on the table for when Nina gets home from work, it's also to "work" in the garden (on the property) and produce food - essentially, I'm working for myself by employing the rawest "work from home scheme" you can get :D

It has only really been the last 4 years whereby I have started earning an income online as a writer/blogger/YouTuber producing media about lifestyle; otherwise, my initial motivation for growing our own food was quite one dimensional - to take monetary pressure off our household by saving on the grocery bill.

Of course, there are many other BIG benefits to growing your own food such as health, exercise, choice, taste, education of children, chemical free, and so on... but, if I'm to be honest I have to say my main motivation in the beginning was to save money!

Thanks for becoming a member of our online community forum and I hope we can motivate you further to meet your self-sufficiency goals.
 

joon

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Apr 16, 2020
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1
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Yeah! Another person from Canberra. I have 6 chooks. 3 are not laying yet but of the older 3, I only get 1 egg a day. Sometimes I get two but that is rare. How does one become a gold member?
 

Vicky

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Hi everyone,

Would love to have a bigger block, but we have to make do with what we have. I'm very new at this as I haven't had the time whilst working full time and chasing 3 girls (as well as hubby). My gardening experience is "water, weed and watch it die" LOL. Now that I have more time to concentrate on the gardens (front & back) hopefully this will change. So I might become a bit of a pest with constant questions.


Cheers
Gail

Best to start with what you have, the learning process is fun and you will change your mind about so many things and have so many new ideas along the way that starting on a smaller place is the BEST way to learn. Once you can look at your place and find there is no where left to 'transform' then you should have been able to 1. save a small fortune on feeding yourself and your family and 2. have a pretty solid idea of what exactly you want to do next :) try to set a budget and stick to it, find ways of doing things cheap or for free and have fun on the way.
 

V8srfun

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Pennsylvania
Welcome. Now that you have the time you will be successful. Don’t worry about not having acreage to use what you have can produce more than you think.
 

Vicky

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Yeah! Another person from Canberra. I have 6 chooks. 3 are not laying yet but of the older 3, I only get 1 egg a day. Sometimes I get two but that is rare. How does one become a gold member?
I don't know about gold member, but I think it all depends on your level of activity on the site?
 

GKW

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