"If I'm not at my desk editing this lovely website, you'll find me with a Rosa attached walking the south Devon countryside."
TB: As a self-professed city boy, you're new to homesteading then. What drew you to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle?
"When we moved to our new home in Devon, it came with a fairly large garden. The previous owners were keen growers, and there were lots of established berry bushes and canes."
"We moved in in mid-summer and couldn't believe how many raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants there were. Heading out into the garden on summer mornings to grab a selection of berries to go on top of yogurt (or on Daisy's specialty pancakes if it's a Saturday!) can't be
beaten."
"Now that we live in Devon, the hedgerows are like a pick-your-own feast. Each season we get to try something new, whether it be harvesting sloe berries in autumn to make sloe gin or elderflowers in spring to make elderflower champagne. Sometimes we even make things that don't contain
alcohol!"
TB: Ah, I see you're foraging too, that's great.
I feel like there's a desire to return to homesteading and being more self-sufficient these days, whether it's going all-in and living off the grid or just making a choice to do and grow more and buy less right where you are.
What made you want to start a homesteading blog in the first place?
"Many of the popular homesteading and self-reliance websites were intimidating to someone just starting out and leaned on the hard-core prepping aspects of self-reliance."
"I didn't enjoy the doomsday-heavy websites that exist purely to stoke fear in the reader. I was looking for a website covering all aspects of homesteading and self-reliance, whether you were a beginner or a seasoned expert, without the "end of the world" overtones. I couldn't find what I
was looking for. That's when I decided to start one myself."
"Come to Rural Sprout, and we'll teach you about growing tomato plants for the joy of eating a still-warm-from-the-sun tomato from the vine, not because your tomato plant is your last source of food in an end of the world scenario. We want to give you good information, not try to convince
you that one way of homesteading is better than the other."
TB: That's a great point. I enjoy the sense of community and the broad topics we cover here, all while offering up information that's fun and interesting to read.
I feel like our collection of writers, who are all living vastly different lifestyles, allows us to present homesteading from so many angles. It makes the whole subject more approachable.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking into a more self-sufficient approach to life?
"Don't wait, don't make excuses, just get started."
"Daisy and I lived in London before moving to Devon and had a tiny garden. We always dreamed of our future life with a bigger garden and more room to grow our own food, but we could have started back then with a container garden or a raised bed or two."
TB: I couldn't agree more; I feel like the whole getting started thing is always the hardest part. Then once you start one project, it blossoms into other areas of your life.
Alright, James, we've got time for one more question. Do you have any current projects on the homestead you'd like to share with the Rural Sprout readers?
"Our backyard has an approximately 6m x 6m veg patch that the previous owners left. Over the last couple of years, I've grown some veggies in it, but the weeds were beating me. I hate weeding and so have decided to turn the patch into raised beds."
