A bit about us

We moved here in 2007, and began with a 9 ft x 6 ft vegetable patch next to the house.

Back in 2009 we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy a square acre of land behind our cottage. An acre of bare soil with no boundary to the east or south.

This website began as a way for us to record everything we’ve done since; an aid to memory for what we do, when we’ve done it, and why, so hopefully we can learn from our successes, and our mistakes.

As life continues, it has a tendency to become richer, and busier. The small vegetable patch grew into an allotment. Two fruit trees grew in to over eighty. Four rescue chickens grew into a few breeds of chickens, geese, ducks and rabbits (plus the odd waif or stray that finds us).

Today we live as much as we can from the food grown here. Any spare we give away to friends and family, swap with fellow growers, or sell over the garden gate.

Whilst the lifestyle can be quite solitary, the advent of the internet has meant we each can learn so much more, and so much quicker, from others carrying on in a similar fashion, throughout the world. The amount of knowledge people are happy to share is quite staggering, and humbling. Here at Merrybower, alongside the ubiquitous Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour, and other specialist books, sits the computer. This opens up literally millions of live books people are writing every day, from which we can all cherry pick the nuggets of information that may help us in our own particular situation. Hopefully someone somewhere might find a nugget or two in our own scribblings, to help smooth their journey just a tad.

Cheers!