advice sought on buying a plot to farm self-sufficiently & live on

[John Rumm]

For the half dozen times in a year that I have it, I doubt it matters!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Goats easier for amateurs, and don't need grass: will browse all sorts of crap and turn it into 'interesting' lactates.

Just don't feed them newspaper or silage..

[Frank Erskine]

Seconded. It tastes much nicer than Marmite.

The sodium content is 0.4g per 100g.

The ingredients are: Reduced salt yeast extract, vegetable extract, niacin, riboflavin and vitamin B12.

[Bruce]

Not available in my local Tesco, but thanks.

I don't know what it is about cauliflower that I don't like. Likewise, I am not sure why I like broccoli quite so much.

There may be no logic to it, other than that I had an awful lot of cauliflower as a child both at home and at school, and I may prematurely have exceeded my "life total". ;-)

[<vicky]

Ok, for a moment then I thought we were getting the most odd (and not vegetarian) cauliflower cheese recipe ever!

[<vicky]

Given you're cross-posting to uk.rec.gardening, drop me an email with your address and I'll send you some seeds!

Also, at certain times of year (probably late summer), Tesco /do/ stock romanesco cauliflower, I've seen them. I highly recommend them.

I love both, but having eaten both in my works canteen, I can see how people can learn to hate them. :-(

[geoff]

My wife decided that penstrowed hall was too remote for her

The one I missed out on was staffs grange -

also has cellars the size of the whole house underneath It needs a fair amount of work, as will anything you are looking at in that price range

The fact that its too big means you just forget about the bits you don't need until you want them

but ...

there are two properties which meet your £300,000 price target, so yes, they exist, but I don't think you can say its too big wrong colour, whatever, you need to adapt to what is out there, not expect your dream bolt hole to appear without a fair amount of compromise

[Mike Lyle]

Goats are, I can assure you, charming creatures, but a total pain in the arse. They've got 24 hours a day in which to work out how to plague you next, and you haven't got 24 hours a day in which to work out how to stop them. And you don't get a hell of a lot of milk from browsing goats: they need concentrates, like any dairy animal. You can't realistically make keeping cheese from the milk of a single cow: you just don't get enough. In either case you have to kill or send away the annual offspring, of course.

[Zhang Dawei]

Or swede, or swede tops. I never realised just how repulsive milk could be made to taste until I tasted goats milk after they had dined on swede and swede tops (rutabaga). Turnips may have the same effect, but I have no wish to even think about testing it out for myself, given the tangy swede-ridden taste of the goats milk I tasted on one occasion. It was undrinkable!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "OG" saying something like:

The most annoying thing is, the fox doesn't bother it's arse eating its kills, it just keeps killing. My neighbour lost 40 chinkens one night a couple of months ago.

[Bill]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

Because the foxes way of hunting and providing food relies on storage. He/she will kill as much as possible while the opportunity is there and then take it away. If your neighbour had waited a few days the fox would have been back and removed most of its kills. Trouble is people intervene with the process and think it was just killing for the sake of it and not eating what it had killed. OK 40 is a shade excessive, maybe it had a big family to support?

Many years ago we decided that the foxes and badgers were in league with one another. The fox would break into a henhouse, kill all the hens, we would then bury the carcasses and a fortnight latter the badgers would come and dig them up for the grubs that were now feeding on them! Often used to imagine them plotting this :-)

Interesting visions. Enjoy your breakfast..........

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

By the time you carried out the autopsy, it wouldn't be worth it.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] saying something like:

Having done it in the past, I can recommend keeping a goat or two for milk, meat, and keeping the grass trimmed. They're not too hard to keep and are fairly tough creatures for the most part. Just don't let them near any rhododendrons though - they love them, but the leaves are fatal.

[The Medway Handyman]

Evem worse - brussel sprouts.

[Jill Bell]

On 04/06/2010 20:04, The Natural Philosopher wrote: However my wife may be able to persuade me at some

But everything they produce tastes of goat!!!!

[Bruce]

I'm sorry to disappoint you.

(I have said that to *so many* women!)

;-)

[Bruce]

Didn't they cross Brussels sprouts with cauliflower to get broccoli?

I think I remember reading that somewhere. I just hope it wasn't in the Daily Mail. ;-)

,

[Bruce]

From experience, I would recommend two goats over one.

Especially if you want any sleep, because one lonely goat will make your life hell ... 24/7.

In our case, the problem was completely solved with a second goat, and no more grass cutting!

[<vicky]

I think I can honestly say that I'm more relieved than disappointed!

[Bruce]

I did eat sheep's eyes once, in Jordan. They are supposed to be a delicacy, but I was very sick afterwards.

A also tried sheep's brain, first boiled and then deep fried. The boiled was hideous, but deep fried wasn't bad at all.

All this was thanks to a Jordanian friend who took me to a restaurant in Amman that serves traditional Arab cuisine. Never again! ;-)