Self-Sufficiency Made Simple

By: Jo Flintham
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  • Summary

  • Self-Sufficiency Made Simple podcast is here to share practical tips and hacks helping you overcome confusion about how to grow your own yummy food, keep healthy and happy chickens and even venture into the world of bees. And do it all in your own backyard. Your host Jo Flintham from SoH Farmlet is all about making things simple, fun and easy in the garden. With over 10 years of food growing experience and lessons, Jo shares how to start where you are with what you have to create your own self-sufficient source of food in any space and enjoy an endless source of homegrown goodness.
    SoH Farmlet 2020
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Episodes
  • Episode #23 Demystifying Permaculture Principles

    Episode #23 Demystifying Permaculture Principles
    May 4 2021

    When I first heard the word permaculture & heard that there were 12 principles it conjured up all sorts of complicated concepts that my new gardening brain just couldn’t fathom. 

    I was flat out working out how to keep a few pots of herb alive let alone applying 12 principles to my gardening. I mean, come on!! Who has time for that?

    What I came to understand is that we all do. Permaculture is something we can all use to help guide our food growing journey and so much more. 

    I want to demystify permaculture for the newbie gardener a little but. Take out some of the unfamiliar language that can some times cause us to think what the fuck does that even mean. 

    Let's start from the beginning.. Back in the 70’s when I was born 2 coworkers and friends Bill Mollinson and David Holgren from Tasmania Australia developed a sustainable agriculture system. It was a system that took it’s concepts and methods from the natural environment and the word Permaculture is a combination of the words Permanent Agriculture. 

    The system is designed to have closed energy cycles. What that means in simple terms is that the gardens or farms don't need a bunch of external energies like chemical fertilizers, irrigation and human work like plowing fields for it to produce a great harvest. 

    The waste from one would feed the other like cutting and dropping the unused portions of the plants so that it becomes mulch that helps retain moisture and breaks down adding nutrients back into the earth. Just like trees do with leaves and bark. 

    It means growing different types of plants together or in a sequence so they help each other out with nutrient needs and help to keep moisture held in the soil. 

    It also means carefully observing nature so that our gardens and farms mimic the local ecology. Designing also takes into account the ease of use. No point having something that is great in theory but is too hard to implement and use. 

    Full show notes at www.sohfarmlet.com.au/podcast
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    31 mins
  • Episode #22 Preserving End of Season Harvests

    Episode #22 Preserving End of Season Harvests
    Apr 20 2021
    Here in the Hunter Valley winter is definitely on it’s way. Our nights are getting down to under 10 deg c and even though the days are stunning, there is a definite chill. This means that many of our warmer loving plants have packed it up for the season.  The cucumber vine died back almost overnight even though we hadn’t had a frost. The cherry and cherry roma tomatoes plants are covered in green tomatoes but they are starting to get attacked by bugs and the basil is all but done.  On the plus side our eggplants and zucchinis are still going strong and of all things, the pumpkins have decided to give a last hoorah putting on some last minute growth and baby pumpkins too. I will let them do their thing until we have a frost due then I will pick them like a woman possessed the day before. This is totally reliant of course, on me getting my timing right. But that is part of the fun of gardening.  We had about 5 kgs of cucumbers and about 1 kilo of small green tomatoes that needed to be picked.  I love cucumbers but if I ate 7kg of fresh cucumbers I think I would end up looking like one so I needed to do something with them to make them last longer.  Hmm I wonder what I could do.  Pickles of course! And as much as I love cucumbers I love pickles even more. I found a recipe years ago for a quick easy cucumber pickle that you store in the fridge. This means no fancy canning equipment needed just some basic ingredients, a pot and some sterilized jars.  This is the best recipe I have used to make sweet pickle cucumber and it’s quite forgiving. My cucumbers this year were from last year's saved seeds that I let cross pollinate. The result was a super yummy cucumber but with lots of seeds. Not ideal for making pickles but they still turned out great.  I will put the full recipe and instructions below, but as an overview this is what I did. Boil jars and lids for about 15-20 mins to sterilize. Only use either pickling jars or thick glass jars. Thinner jars don’t handle being boiled and will crack.  The die hard preservers may argue that you can’t use old jars you’ve saved but using this method I haven’t lost one yet. Make sure you also put the jars and water in together at room temperature and bring to the boil together or you will definitely crack your jars. You also want to keep the jar off the bottom of the pot if you can. In a pinch you can put in some all stainless steel cutlery to act as a trivet.  I boil up all the ingredients which is white vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard seeds, celery seeds or whatever pickling seed I have… I have even used coriander seeds for a different flavour. Turmeric and fresh dill.  Fresh dill is a non-negotiable in my opinion. The upside is that when your cucumbers are coming to their end your dill will be exploding. I have plants popping up everywhere.  You can also add in chilli with your cucumber slices if you like.  I put all the ingredients except for the cucumbers and dill in a pot and bring to the boil.  I take out my boiling jars and put my sliced cucumbers and dill fronds in, layering as I go. I put them in pretty tight without squishing them too much and pour in the hot liquid. Your jars should still be quite hot so the hot liquid won’t shouldn’t crack them.  Fill all the way to the top to cover cucumbers and pop the lid on. Refrigerate as soon as it’s cool to the touch. They are ready within a few hours and will last a few weeks in your fridge.  This is the easy and fast way. If you want to preserve them for longer then you will have to go through a full canning process process like a water bath or pressure canning process.  This process isn’t that much harder but you do need some knowledge and equipment to do it right.  Water bath canning is what I did for my green tomato relish aka piccalilli. Relish or chutneys are a great way of using up just about anything sort of non leafy vegetable.  On a side note. What’s the difference between relish and chutney? A relish has a hero vegetable that is quite crisp and fresh and a chutney has a combination of vegetables and often fruit and is also saucier and thicker with deeper flavours.   Back to the green tomato relish. The recipe and instructions are below, but what I wanted to highlight the water bathing method I used.  By water bathing your relish, what you're doing is ‘cooking’ the bacteria out of the relish while also sealing the jar to stop bacteria from entering. This allows the relish to become shelf stable meaning you can store it in the cupboard for up to a year. This method is great if you have lots to make and store or if you don’t have much refrigeration room.  To do this you need to have a big stock pot that is big enough to cover your jars by at least 3 cm, you will also need a rack or trivet to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot and you don’t want your jars touching each other. You will need a way or removing the jars out of the water once processed ...
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    25 mins
  • Episode #21 Seed Saving Facts

    Episode #21 Seed Saving Facts
    Apr 6 2021

    Gardeners have been saving seeds for thousands of years. First for food security, then to preserve the best varieties and more recently to ensure biodiversity. 

    Seed saving is something that was a given for our great grandparents but is a practice that has petered out over the last few generations. Why? 

    Because of the advent of commercialisation of the gardening industry. We can pop down to the shops and buy seeds for almost anything a home gardener may want to grow. You can even buy seeds in a well-known discount and seconds store here in Australia so the need for saving your own seeds has nearly disappeared. 

    I say nearly because last year for the first time in my and my parents' lifetime a pandemic that saw all seedlings and seeds fly off the shelves in a flurry of panic buying along with the much-coveted loo paper.

     

    Full show notes at www.sohfarmlet.com.au/podcast
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    28 mins

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