Backyard Project

Sometimes I need to remind myself that life is a marathon! We are constantly subjected to people showing us how amazing there lives are through there social media. Yes they might be doing more than us but we don't and will never know the real story like we know our own.

So right now my life is a juggling act between paying off my debt and using the spare cash I have to enrich my families life. Unfortunately often this means we focus on improveing our house or personal space which are not enviable events. This year we have focused on decorating our down stairs, building the aquaponics system and improving our outside space for the summer. I have really enjoyed being outside with both my boys they have absolutely loved spending the last week with me outside while laying our paving, now I love the feeling of giving my family a place to sit in the sun 

It is really rewarding doing stuff for yourself before I got on this path I would have always got someone to do everything for me. This is not how it should be we should live to the standard of our own skill. With the introduction of the internet there is nothing you can learn to do, sometimes its just about the effort required to do it. This patio took me two weeks on my own I shovel about 8 tons of solid and replaced it with 6 tons of sand and stone, it was back breaking work but it's done now so the hard work has all been forgotten.

I now have a mountain of soil I need to find a home for again it's my waste so I want to find a way to get rid of it.

 So my father in law decided to build some raised flower beds around his paving luckily for me he live around the corner and said I could fill them with the earth from my build. 15 wheelbarrows later it looks like I hardly touch the mound. The raised beds look really good so I decided to make my own. These should help get rid of some of the soil

Which finished of the paved area nicely and got rid of a few barrows of earth.

To use up the last of the solid and make sure of some old pallets I made this large corner raised bed. It will probably take me 5 years to fill this garden but I cant wait to start laying out the bed.

Again not exciting but its has been hours of constructive entertainment and when it comes to planting that will be an opportunity for the rest of the family to get stuck in. I started this blog post as I was bored but while writing about it I realised it's not boring it's just different, and if you stop and think about it even a seemingly mundane period can yield a interesting result.

Our food, where is it from

So I decided to track where our food comes for one month, as a first step into deciding our carbon footprint.

Below I have listed all the items we bought fresh over a 4 week period

European produce
Baby spinach,  bell peppers, strawberries, avocado, cucumbers, lettuce, asparagus
Bacon, gammon ham, fish and prawns

British produce
Onions, mushrooms, potatoes, cabbage,
Pork shoulder joint, pork chops, mince, chicken, eggs
Bread
Milk, cheese, yoghurt, cream

Other counties
Raspberries, Apples, Oranges,

It is clear as a country we don't produce enough of the greenhouse crops. This is probably because it is easier just to truck them in from Europe, this will hopefully change when the country leaves the EU as it will need to create a domestic industry that can compete.
Interestingly all the families stables meat, milk, bread and green vegetables are grown in the UK. It is only what I would class as our luxury vegetables, the vegetables that are not in the current season that come from Europe and further. This is a great sign as the more I look the more I find how much is actually made in the UK.

I'm surprised that we eat a lot of locally grown produce, we shop a lot with price in mind and it makes me happy to see that produce from the UK is competing with the European countries. Now I think this has a lot to do with eating with the seasons as when it comes to fruit and veg I always buy the cheapest Items and they naturally seem to the produce that is in season right now and predominantly locally sourced.
Maybe it is time to start a revolution of eating with the seasons as opposed to eating what we want when we want. It would be interesting if a health institution did a study on people eating habits over a period of 5 years to see if eating the majority of our food with the seasons, what type of affect that would have on health. I defiantly believe it would improve the health of the nation as in the summer months, when we are more active we will eat an array of high calorie fruits and vegetables. Then as we approach the winter months when our activity slows, we would be eating the brassicas and other longer term greens with the root based vegetables that keep. Again eating with the season and making our own food from raw materials inevitably will remove the additives and sugars and syrups used by commercial food producers to improve the shelf life and palatability of their products.

Supermarkets are money making machines and designed for making a profit, they place their product in carefully structured manners to attract their target audiences. High sugar cereals are always low to attract children and luxury and impulse purchases are always at the end of the isles. I'm looking to change the way I shop, by cutting out the middlemen in an attempt to buy my produce where possible from the producers themselves. It is our responsibility to create a balance in the world if we support our local producers they will produce more or even better we can encourage more people to start producing their own produce.

Backyard farm

I started preparing for this blog in January 2019, as part of my continued walk towards a simple and environmentally conscious life.
Our eating habits before we started this journey in July 2018 was one of convenience. Now we plan our meals, prep our food and try where possible to cook with fresh ingredients. Even though we are eating more natural food, the damage we cause to people and the environment are higher than we ever thought!
My goal is to construct a back yard aquaponics system/chicken coop and grow food, both vegetable and animal in a small area of my garden taking up eight square meters of my garden as the productions area.

With this project, I have 3 main goals

1. Improve the quality of the food my family eats
2. Reduce the cost of our food on the environment
3. Be sustainable and efficient

1. Improve the quality of the food we eat.

Price often dictates the quality of the food we eat, I often make choices on price which should never be a consideration when trying to feed your family with good quality and healthy food. Food is a natural resource and we should know everything we can know about the food we eat. Our ancestors fed their families with the seasons, we chose an easier way of life chained to our desks and eating process food. I want my children to eat the best healthiest food, I know I cant produce everything in my backyard but its a start. 

2. Reduce the cost of food.

This goal has nothing to do with the actual cost of the food we eat, and everything to do with the cost of getting our food from the farm to the table. Its about the effect all our food has on the environment, from pesticides and other chemicals to greenhouse gas and land degradation.
My aim is to remove the use of pesticides and other chemical fertilisers from the food we eat and ensure the water used to create our food is not damaged or wasted in any way.
Remove the CO2 footprint from our food, no transportation and no packaging.
By achieving this to any degree will make a difference, by writing about it and sharing it with people in my eyes is a small step to making the world better. Even is one person tries it I feel its a step in the right direction, if my children grow up being thoughtful about the environment and the effect they have on it I have created a catalyst for change.

3. Be sustainable and efficient. 

Everything about this setup needs to promote sustainability and efficiency. The fish will need to breed and repopulate as we consume the larger fish, the plants need to be let go to seed and the seeds need to be kept for future years. Water needs to be reused and new water must only come from rainwater collection. Power used must be created from solar power and battery, the control system needs to be 100% automatic
Fish will be fed using a maggot farm constructed as part of the build, duckweed and insects larve grown in additional tanks in the future.

Design.


 CHOP System (constant height one pump), there are two 850l usable IBC's where the fish are kept the water from the 6 grow beds drains into these fish tanks bringing the cleaned water back to the tanks. The tanks overflow to a line and channels the dirty water (contaminated ammonia and nitrate enriched water) to a holding tank. All 3 IBC tanks are fed air continuously this helps the fish and the plants. For 15 minutes every hour the pump operated and sends the dirty water to the grow beds for the plants and the bacteria to clean. The pump delivers the water up a central line with six branches going to each grow-bed, the flow is controlled by ball valves to ensure that the water flow is sufficient to full the grow bed and activate the syphons but not too much to cause the grow bed to flood.
There are two types of grow-bed in this system media filled and deep water culture. I don't know the benefits of either however I plan to use the grow-bed with media to grow the plants that are not regularly replaced like strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb and herbs, while the DWC beds will grow the fast-growing and seasonal plants like all the salad items and chillies.

Media filled grow-beds before planting.

Media filled grow-beds after first plant

DWC bed before planting

DWC bed after planting

Pump and flow reducing line to control flow to grow-beds without increasing pressure on the pump. Pump has a built-in level switch a necessity to ensure your pump is safe



First fish, common carp which I chose because they are indigenous to our country and they can be good eating according to articles I have read, they can taste muddy but being as this system has no mud there is not much chance of that. According to my research back in the Victorian era carp was a stable food source.



 Looking to the future

This system is full of possibility as the fish get bigger and I get all the grow beds full of food, I believe I can definitely feed my family all their vegetable requirements during the peak seasons. Due to the fact, the plants are not competing for water they can be planted closer together allowing more plants per square meter than conventional gardening. Additionally, our yearly fish intake can be grown in these tanks, convincing my family to eat the fish is a different challenge for a different blog post.
As for the system, this is the first prototype and providing it is successful I aim to build bigger and better systems in the future to maximise my use of my little space. There are already a few learning already made that will definitely be used when constructing the next one. 

Uniseals, these should be used for each penetration to ensure a water tight seal. It's a pity I only discovered these after the build these would have definitely  improved to build.

Grow bed depth, I built the beds 330mm deep but these are too deep they hold too much water and media resulting in high loads 200mm bed depth would have been better.

However, the next operation is to build the greenhouse around it and install heating and grow lights. Power usage will always fall within the power constraints of the solar panels for power.

A year since it all began.

As I approach my 37th birthday I'm reminded that it is a year since this all began. It has been an exciting yet stressful year with loads of discoveries both about myself and life in general. I'm glad the worst is behind me now and the future is looking brighter every month I stay on course.

I have gone from focused on money to focused on what I actually want from my life to be. I have realised that the less I need things, the more I crave independence from the system. I have spent a lot of time formulating a plan to get away from it, although by it's designed parameters I will never be entirely free. My main focuses are to pay off all debt and reduce my dependencies on outside sources for my utilities and food.

I have loved spending more time with my children and enjoy giving them more attention than I did before, well within the confines of enjoying kids games, tv and conversation. No matter what minimalism has done for me it doesn't change Peppa pig is still boring. My oldest son is now 8 and I look forward to starting to enjoy the outdoors with him, even though it is not what he wants my best memories of my childhood are the little adventures my dad took me on.

I have enjoyed learning about the effects of over-consumption and what is actually wrong with the world. I am focused on making as many changes as I can to reduce my families impact. This is not always easy when your partner is not ready to give up her mainstream life, but we get there in the end! The more I step back and watch the more I get frustrated with myself as for years I did not see what I was doing to the world.

In summary from the last year

1: The day my life changed;  this was the beginning after the failure of my business and almost going bankrupt. Whilst contemplating the cowards way out "suicide" I found Minimalism and this journey began. I have a lot to be grateful for after the failure of my business as I have changed for the better and my life has a new purpose that I'm just beginning to understand.
2: First steps towards a minimalist life; Living on less the road to minimalism; Cutting out the clutter; Minimalism is my guide to life; Minimalism a simpler better life; it has been a crazy journey going from hoarding stuff and buying the latest and greatest to say look at me, to getting rid of everything I did not need. There were times, in the beginning, I wanted to get the best possible price and I placed a value on these items. However, after persevering I started to enjoy the space I gained over the financial gain and made the decision to load it all into the car and took everything to the charity shop which felt great. My wardrobe is still on 33 items and now I have not bought a single item of clothing since I began, although I will probably need new socks soon, hey fathers day is coming up.
3: Things parents should teach their children; Teaching our children the joy of owning less; I gained a new perspective to how I plan to raise my children before I was going to push them into careers that earnt the most money. So they could be classed as conventionally successful, but now I will teach them to live to buy only what they need, do what they want and never get caught up in trying to keep up with the Joneses. Additionally, if they stay at home they can have a better life and not have to work as hard. Which before I would have classed as lazy but now I understand you only live once, and if you live for what you believe in and work at your passions then life will be far more rewarding.
4: How I control my spending; Money stop wasting it; Financial planning for minimalists; I have taken a long hard look at money and where it goes and on what. I have created a system that allows us to verify every month where our money goes, this allows us to reduce spending in areas of gluttony and stop spending on unnecessary things. Planning is now a major part of my financial management, as I plan to be debt free by 42. Debt is a form of control ever though where our money goes our pensions and houses our assets they all disappear when we die because we are the workers in a system designed to keep everyone down.
5: Planning food for a minimalist family; Keto / Paleo environmentally friendly diet; Nutrition and food sourcing are new to me and an area I plan to grow further in the second year of this journey. I feel at the beginning of this journey, I was more focused on saving money but now as I complete the first year it is all about where my food comes from how far it has travelled what is its CO2 footprints has it been genetically modified and controlled by a major corporation etc.

Looking to the next year I will continue to streamline my finances and payoff debt. Focus on health and nutrition as there are aspects my family is dealing with. Like weight management, digestive issues, autism and dyslexia. These are things that have gone on with out the right care and attention so this year they are the priorities. Environment is another issue that will continue to get more focus, our families carbon foot print and waste will be reduced further. Lastly our ambitions for the future how we plan to navigate life, incorporating work and leisure and get the elusive work-life-balance.

I'm looking forward to the second year and hope the journey continues to reward us further.

Financial Planning for Minimalists

Everyone thinks that minimalists are people with no money and have failed in life. Now admittedly some people discover minimalism through circumstance, as I did but it does not remove the profound change it has on your psyche. Regardless of how you become one of the chosen, everyone needs a good financial plan. Financial security reduces stress and gives us the freedom to pursue our dreams over living a life chained to a desk.

A good plan early on in life makes life easier in later life, with the right amount of discipline I believe anyone can be financially secure by the age of 40.

There are a number of ratios that I believe if followed, any person on any income can achieve financial freedom regardless of earning capabilities.

The only things you should go into debt for is a house and if required a vehicle.

• House max 6 times YNE, 25% deposit before purchasing (repay in 15years)
• Car max 1/2 times YNE earnings, 50% deposit before purchasing (repay max 3 years)

 YNE: Yearly Nett Earnings.

Housing is one of our basic necessities of life, the ratio for the nett wage to property value is 6. Buying a house no more than 6 times your net yearly wage will allow you to pay it off by the age of 40. Additionally, if you are 18 and you save the mortgage payment for 5 years. By staying home with your parents, then buy your house using the saved money as a deposit you will shave 5 years and have your house paid by 35, and save a huge amount in interest.

Think about where you live if house prices are too high then look elsewhere, there are many places where the house prices are favourable and work is available, don't let emotions cloud your good decision making.

Car, A vehicle is never a necessity even if you work a distance from home or live too far from a shop or your children's schools. Planning comes into this when buying your house, you need to decide the best location to reduce your need for transport. If you spend most of your time commuting to work then you are losing quality time with your family. A vehicle is a true expense and although it is more convenient to own then use taxis and public transport it is very rarely cheaper. Finance is the main expense when owning a car, save to pay cash for your vehicles. Keep it and look after it until it becomes uneconomical to keep on the road. Remember even if it cost a £1000 a year in maintenance is still less than financing a new car.

Example
My family runs two cars, my wife works 13miles away around 20min by car, our oldest child attends a local school 2.6miles away but and our youngest is still at home.

                                              Our yearly car costs taken from our budget

Unfortunately, we are not able to run our household with just the one car as my wife works long hours. I do the school runs and shopping duties before work. If we had planned better we could have bought a house closer to my wife's work and had a similar commute to our children's school we would have saved potentially £419.3 PCM, but we would not have a granny to look after our youngest and we would spend 12k PA on childcare. So currently we live with the additional costs of transport as it saves us because of child care.

Household and Living expenditure, This is an area where it is easy to spend television subscriptions, mobile phone contracts, magazine subscriptions and excessive electronics to name the top expenses. We take stock of what's important every month by creating charts to see where we are spending the most money and then decide if we want to change it or leave as a justified expense.
Below is one of my monthly spending charts general living expenses. I use this table to assess where my money goes, it allows me to focus on areas of improvement.

Every month we review where our money has gone and we adjust our spending habits to suit our targets. This was December so our alcohol, luxuries and fuel are higher than normal.

By controlling what you spend your money on you can save for the future, investing is not an area I want to tackle at this stage as I don't have sufficient spare cash, due to bad decisions I am currently 2 years behind my target of being free from debt at 40. Currently projected to be debt free and own all my assets at the end of March 2024. I will be 42!

The road to financial freedom is a difficult path filled with temptation and external pressure to conform to the norm, but we are going to achieve it one month at a time. Over the last 6 months, we have streamlined our finances and created a full proof system that constantly gets audited and adjusted as we progress with our own personal stages of the transition from our old way to the more sustainable way of life 

Other financially motivated blog posts in my history are 

• Living on less the road to minimalism
• Things parents should teach their children
• How I control my spending
• Money stop wasting it

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog

The cloths we wear

Ever thought about the clothes you wear, where they come from, who made them and what was the complete environmental impact of them?

12 months ago I made a conscious decision to reduce the number of clothes in my wardrobe. This process started out my need to reduce the material item that had become my driving force. I started out planning to replace my cloths with cloths made in Britain. I decided that and I would only buy clothes that have been manufactured in a manner that does not damage the environment or take advantage of the worlds poorest people.
This blog post was inspired by a documentary called "the true cost" this is worth a watch if you care about those people in third world countries who destroy their lives and environments to produce the clothes on our backs! A true eye-opener!
So right now I'm wearing a pair of Nike air trainers, Levi jeans, a next tee shirt and a peak performance jacket. I aim to find out where this clothing item was made and how to have this item impacted the world.

I started with doing a simple WIKI search on each company and from that search, I was very surprised what I found

Levi's

After reading the search I was not shocked to see the company had been involved in a scandal relating to the use of China sweatshop labour to produce their products. They don't use the Tan group anymore from what I can see but their manufacturing operations are still primarily outside of the US.
Judging from my limited experience this company appears to operate as all the major fashion houses do with little regard to the environment and the people they indirectly employ thus keeping themselves free from facing the true cost of fashion.
The company traded $4.5billion dollars in 2016 that is a lot of jeans.

Nike

While Google searching it did not take long to find out how workers in factories in Cambodia and Indonesia were passing out due to terrible working conditions. These poor people are working 50hours a week in terrible conditions for £190 pcm

Next 

has a list avalible stating who they use and they have a statement on their website that the ensure the companies treat their workforce better. It is easy to say you are doing more but all the cloths are still manufactured in the countries that don't have the correct workers rights in place.

Peak Performance, this company has no negative publicity I can see they also gave a comprehensive code of conduct and values towards sustainability, climate change and the environment. 

After a few minutes of research, I learnt that my actions have allowed these poor people to be taken advantage of. They need work a fair wage and don't have the luxury of refusing to work until conditions improve. We in the UK like to moan when our working conditions are not at the highest standards but we seem to care nothing for the poor people that make the cloths we buy, even when we are paying top price for designer / branded cloths are the worst even less of the money is actually going to the workers the farmers, fabric manufacturers and garment manufacturers but plenty is going to the corporate fat cats and investment elite.

I would gladly pay top price for cloths made in Britain, made of good quality material and made to last. I wish people would open their eyes to the way the world is operating, don't take my word for it do your own investigation and draw your own conclusions.

Wear cloths that last,  that made to last from sustainable fabrics and local people.

Think before you buy needlessly and think where your excess end up, we all have a responsibility to improve our current environmental situation.

Teaching our children the joy of owning less

It is difficult to teach our children the joys of owning less when they are surrounded by a world of people wanting more.

In an increasingly materialistic world, our children search for acceptance within their peer groups which inevitably comes at a cost. Marketing routinely and intentionally targets these young adult demographics, knowing that once they get the minds and buying power of the youth, they will continue to have it for many years to come.

When our children begin to mature and start making their own choices, they use their peer network to aid their decisions making rather than looking to their parents for the answers. This creates a formidable challenge for parents, getting the minimalistic message through to our children and their friends. The message of sustainable consumerism as opposed to the excessive norm.

 Many of our children’s significant decisions are still ahead of them. The message of simplicity and frugality helps equip them to make wise decisions when the time domes. By teaching them that debt is not the solution and that financial freedom comes firstly living with in their means, will put them in a great position for the future.

 Reaching our children before the turn to their peer groups for the answers is so critical as educating them before their spending habits are formed will aid in counteracting the peer affects.

 As parents that have gained the knowledge that a fulfilled life is not gained from consumerism. Consumerism gives you small hits of what feels like fulfilment but ultimately all it brings is decades of financial burden and empty promises of fulfilment. We as parents need to recognize an important opportunity to inspire our children to pursue lives of greater value over financially focused success.

 As parents we need to mentor our children not with lectures about what they need to do. We need to demonstrate it with our own action by living our values every day.

Consider embracing these important tips for raising consumer conscious children in an age of excess:

 1. Simplicity. Our children are more likely to follow a simplicity model if they see it from their parents. The first (and most important) step in raising minimalist children is to let them experience the joys and benefits of intentionally living with less.

 

2. Idealism. Many teenagers embrace idealism and desire to find a cause that can change the world. Teach them its ok to be different and to pursue their own life.

3. Watch less television. It’s not as hard as you think—and has immediate, positive results for you and your child. Reading together as a family is good for adults and children and it will install some old world charm to family life

4. Make teenagers pay for expensive items themselves. Every parent ought to provide food, clothing, shelter, and necessities. And every parent should give good gifts to their kids. But by teaching them to save for those big ticket items with money raised from working or gifts will create real value explain to them how many hours they worked for that money and even better tell them how many hours you work for that money

5. Teach our children to recognize the underlying message in advertising. Advertisements are not going away and can never be completely avoided. Teach them to think what they are really selling and teach them how to consider purchasing and how it improves their lives as opposed to buying just because it is the norm.

6. Teach our children that life is not easy. Often, as parents we work hard to ensure a significant advantage for our children by providing for them at all costs. But we need to teach them that life is hard work and the more you have the more you work to pay for it. We need to teach them the truths of responsibility, it is hard work maintaining the possessions of life (lawns must be mowed, cars cleaned & maintained, laundry sorted, rooms tidied). Expose our children to this truth as early (and as often) as possible.

 

We only have a finite amount of time to sell, discover the joys of life with less and have more time to enjoy life.