Turning a new leaf on our thriftyness

thriftwizard

I grew up in the early 60s on the edge of Dartmoor in a similar way to fatpiggy - big garden, huge veg patch, small orchard, 30+ hens, Dad working out there or tinkering in the garage mending stuff for the local farmers whenever he wasn't out vicaring. Bartering was a way of life, and all our cockerels went to the butcher in exchange for half a lamb or quarter of a steer; we did have a freezer. And we did use newspaper, and in fact the pages of last year's Whitaker's Almanac, in the two-holer next to the best rhubarb patch in the land - it was like a small jungle! Loo roll was for indoors, where parishioners might "go"...

For us kids, that house & garden was heaven, even though we spent a lot of time shucking peas, top n'tailing blackcurrants & gooseberries, peeling & chopping apples, etc. We also spent a lot of time watching blackbirds raising their young, making spindles to try to spin the wool caught on the hedges, making nettle beer, talking to the hens - we had a TV but hardly ever sat down to watch it. Not that there was much on!

But my poor mother, something of an orchid in the mud, hated it! Not a goodlifer in any way shape or form, she found the back lanes of Devon a cultural desert & even the Plymouth department stores very limited, though we had to catch the bus down there every Saturday & spend the day trailing round them in her wake - which I hated! She still looks back to those days with a shudder, but what stands out in my mind is the fact that when the Big Snow came in '62, the whole village survived with very little fuss despite being virtually cut off for nearly 6 weeks - everyone had larders full of HM preserves, and looked after their neighbours, and most people were related to each other anyway! We were lucky enough to have the District Nurse and quite a high-profile paediatrician living there & stuck with us, so medical emergencies were not a huge issue.

So living with hardly any cash can be done, given enough land & the health & fitness to work it. It's not necessarily deprivation, if it's freely chosen, but a bit like the discipline that monks & nuns willingly embrace which frees them up to concentrate on spiritual matters whilst performing their allotted tasks. Have to say, I wouldn't mind having a go, and live in a kind of halfway house already, keeping 7 people on one-and-a-little-bit income, with chickens & lots of home-grown & preserved stuff - but most of the rest of my family, being their grandmother's grandchildren, probably would!