Chris 
We thought that this year we would make the effort and attend the Mother Earth News Fair of 2015, on the 8th & 9th of August in West Bend, Wisconsin. (we currently subscribe to the magazine Mother Earth News http://www.motherearthnews.com) One of the people that I wanted to see was Jean-Martin Fortier. He is a chap … Read more
This jam contains only three ingredients: strawberries, cane sugar and lemon juice. Done. Safety Warning: Don’t let the mixture boil over ! It creates one hell of a mess, not to mention on an open gas flame it may catch fire … and sugar has an awful lot of energy in it. ( my Mom … Read more
So where on earth are we going to live? if we bail out the rat race. For most people if we have been slaving away in the rat race we are looking for more, for bigger, or larger, for more space, more everything. We are most definitely not thinking about smaller, cheaper, or less. It … Read more
What does bailing out the rat race actually mean? It means different things to different people: I think that there is a continuum, with the polar opposites at each end being the crazy “I-have-no-time-to-live-my-life” at one end, and far at the other end, “I-have-all-the-time-in-the-world- life”. Our “more is better” rather than “better is better” commercial advertising … Read more
Less time, no time – The “earn more” or “spend less” dilemma Any small business owner knows that keeping costs low is critical to success. The same applies to bailing out of the rat race. It can’t be done unless costs are low, or income is high, of course both would be nice. However, there … Read more
This was our attempt at building a bird box, it might be our only one, but I hope not 🙂 “Freestyle” … no dimension plans, in other words just making it up as we go along. The idea was to try to think of something useful, and then try to make it out of “nothing”. … Read more
Escaping the Rat Race … are you in or out ? How to decide where to begin. So if one bails out of the rat race, then one is no longer living the normal “city type” life style. Obvious really. But whilst you’re in the rat race, it’s not something one thinks about. There seems to be … Read more
So about four years ago we bailed out of the rat race. There were a couple of reasons. We both worked in the big smoke (in London,UK), both commuted across the city We didn’t see much of our only child, he went to breakfast-club before school, then to school itself, and then to after-school-care. We … Read more
Lots of flowers for just a few dollars. So we tell ourselves that growing flowers from seed must be awfully difficult, and only for serious gardeners with lots of practical experience, and definitely not grown by me. Well, no, actually, it’s the exact opposite!!! It’s counter intuitive. If you know nothing about growing flowers, then … Read more
At the request of my lovely wife Lydia, I got round to making my first planter box and as usual I got my design inspiration on Pinterest and found some boxes I liked, http://pinterest.com/draynum. I modified the design to suit the materials I had available. I ought to give credit to my friends Chris and Marge who live … Read more