Carbon Footprints, Zero Miles

I was interested to see what our carbon footprint was,

There was a problem, 

Every calculator I look at didn't cover our lifestyle,

They ask how do you heat your home, Electric, Gas, Oil, LPG there is no option for wood burners

 They ask were do you shop for food 

Again no option for raising your own

And on they went  after trying 6 different ones I gave up,

Is our lifestyle so unusual, I don't think so, I know many people locally as well as world wide who live like we do.

And many more who are striving to break away and live the lifestyle. 

Most of our meals have zero miles, here are a few from this week.

Last nights dinner home reared lamb chops, new potatoes from the poly tunnel garnished with mint from the garden, courgettes fried in butter made from our goats milk and garlic from the garden.

 Tonight it was sausages from our own home reared pork, onions from the garden, new potatoes again and peas from the garden

 Dinner the other evening, egg fried rice, the rice wasnt home produced who knows perhaps one day, but everything else was

served with pork tenderloin and pak choi, all home produced

  

I did get round to making up some chili flakes from chilis we grew last year and dried

we do tend to use a fair amount of chili flakes, I am not growing any this year as we had a great harvest last year, dried them, froze them, pickled them, made chili sauce and gave a lot away.

Todays lunch was 

 freshly baked baguettes with our own ham

followed by freshly made flap jacks.

We have also been having milkshakes a couple of times a day as we are still in milk glut zone. We make them using whatever fruit we have on hand, or sweet sauces.

Strawberries and raspberries are coming thick and fast.

In the poly tunnel today I spotted this 

My peanut plants are flowering I was so excited.

I must do a poly tunnel update.

The cut flower beds that are new this year have been producing well

 lots of lovely scented sweet peas

Lily's and Dahlias make nice big bouquets for the house.

I had a brain wave the other day, not something that happens often but happen it did.

I am experimenting with growing winter food for the goats in the paddock that the pigs cleared, I sowed 3 rows of sugar beet and they are growing along with the brassicas, I have been thinking a lot about this sugar beet, how was I going to feed it to the goats, they wont bite into it whole so it would mean chopping it up small, we buy in shredded sugar beet for them and the alpacas, I looked at equipment to do the shredding it would be a fair investment if we can succesfully grow sugar beet, but what to do in the mean time.

💡

we have a small garden shredder that has just been serviced we did plan on selling it as we dont use it anymore now we have the big shredder, I wondered if it could shred up vegetables, to give it a good try out I had some swede sitting there 

the garden shredder idea made short work of the swede, now I just have to wait for the sugar beet to be ready then I can shred it all up, perfect for feeding to the animals.

Speaking of animals we have some new additions arriving next Friday 😁