Kingfisher Cottage part two - Becoming more self-sufficient

 

Finally living at Kingfisher cottage on four acres of land, we can develop our long term dream, part of which is self-sufficiency. In the next decade, we aspire to cutting or controlling as many living costs as we can. Keeping costs under control will help us to spend on things that can earn us income in the future, and give us that warm feeling of independence. We also get to eat and drink more healthily as a side product of this too! So far we have made easy changes:

·         Reducing waste and re-purposing

Year ago we cut costs where we could in order to save enough money for this home. We have continued just about all of these – there seems no good reason to go back to old habits. We wash out all our snap lock plastic bags and re-use them…they are often pegged on the line to dry! We don’t have a dryer – all washing is hung on the line or dries on a rack inside. We keep our old cars – while they are reliable and do the job…they are both Toyotas. We only buy new clothes and shoes when the old ones wear out and can no longer be mended. We sell anything we don’t need (old phones etc.) on Trade me. We build most things ourselves (paths, chicken coop, plant trees, dig beds).

·         Keeping hens for eggs

It’s possible that hens cost as much as they save…but they are fun, the eggs are fantastic and there is nothing like the thrill of collecting eggs from the nests! We have 6 and get about 3 eggs a day.

 

Rocky, Ozzie, Red and Brownie

 

·         Growing produce and swapping

Our fruit and vegetable growing has started slowly! We had an existing peach and Walnut tree on the land which we pruned and looked after for 3 years. They are now producing plenty of fruit and nuts. We have planted many lime and fig trees which have started fruiting this year but will produce more and more as they mature. Other fruit trees we have planted include Persimmon, Hazelnuts, Feijoas, Chestnut, Plums, Lemon, Cape Gooseberries, Loquats, Guavas, Pomegranates and Peppinos. In spring we will plant 6 Avocados near the chickens.

 

Young Walnuts this year

What will we do with all that fruit apart from eating it you ask? Give some to friends, sell some and swap some at the weekly Matakana Green swap we belong to. In this informal community group we get produce we aren’t growing ourselves and connect with others who are keen growers and know more than us!

Matakana Greenswap

Vegetables are a shorter term challenge. We have yet to decide on the placing of our permanent vegetable beds. We are using temporary areas to grow a mix of salad, herbs and vegetables. The permanent bed is a project for next spring.

 

Rock Melons one of our first crops

·         Composting

Compost comes with all that growing – and add to it our household scraps that don’t go to the chickens – and we have a lot of compost for future use in the garden! The chicken poos in turn become great fertiliser and are added to the compost to mature. Nothing should go to waste. At the moment, we have an unruly pile by the chicken shed – in future it will be a three bay affair (made from free pallets).

·         Supplying our own water

Water is gold. It is especially important when we need to start young plants and trees growing. Last summer, we were watering for up to 3 hours per day to cover the new plantings. We collect rain water from the roof. It has state of the art filtering – particle and UV for absolute purity. It tastes totally unlike the adulterated town water we used to get in Orewa! Even coffee made with it tastes different. We also have our own on-site waste water treatment – using Tiger worms! We don’t pay water rates, but we can’t put anything harmful into the waste water - disinfectants would kill the worms – so all our products are ‘Eco’.

In spring, we will add a pump to our water bore. We had this drilled last year and it produces potable water from over 200 metres below the ground. In future, this will top up the water tank during dry summers and enable us to irrigate our produce properly.

 

This is a ten year plan. In future we plan to expand our self-sufficiency by:

·         Getting off the grid altogether with solar and wind generation

The cost of both installations has been too much so far. We have designed our property to be oriented to all day sun and we are in a high wind zone – so both solar and wind will generate far more electricity than we need. In addition to the expense, battery technology is on the cusp of changing – and when we build our garage, we will have a room in which to store the batteries supplying our power. Everything is powered by electricity (except for our kitchen hob which is powered by a gas BBQ bottle which costs us $35 a quarter). Making these additions will be simple in future.

·         Grow much more food

Increasing amounts of produce made possible by bigger and better vegetable structures. These will include a raised pottage garden between the house and garage in future.

·         Cut our waste down to one bag per month

Today we produce a bag a week – we should be able to reduce this with effort to one per month. This is our challenge!

·         Generate income from growing specific high value produce

Some produce will be for us – but there will be specific high value products which we will sell: Limes, red figs, Lotus, foliage for florists. We will also start a small nursery for specific plants and trees that we grow from cuttings and seeds. So far about 50% of our land has been planted using trees we have grown from seed, we are pretty good at it!

The land will allow us to cut costs by being more self-sufficient – but it should also pay for itself – by becoming part of our portfolio of incomes for the future.