2021 My Journey to Sustainable Living
Hi everyone, I thought I would do a bit of an intro and fill you in on my journey to sustainable living so far and where I am heading. This will be a great way to capture where I am and look back on it someday! I hope this inspires you to dream big and continue working towards your goals.
So grab yourself a tea or coffee as I have a lot of things to talk about, so let’s start from the beginning!
Dreams, Goals, Visions
My name is Holly and I was born and raised on a farm in New Zealand. I have been growing my own food in some capacity my entire life. I have also been working towards the same vision and goal for as long as I can remember. That is to own a chunk of land and build a sustainable eco-home that is more garden than it is house. This vision has become more elaborate over time with small eco-cabins, waterfalls, dams and food forests. But in essence, it has always been the same, a piece of land that I can rewild and transform into an edible self-sufficient haven. The land will help provide both food and income and I can feed my ducks, eat straight from the organic gardens, create art and talk to the bees all day.
Slow intentional living
Nowβ¦. that is not exactly where I am right now. But I want to touch on where I’m heading and how I intend to get there. Small achievable steps to create a life by design and not default.
Start where you are and use what you have
5 years ago my partner and I along with our dog Tama bought and moved into a suburban house in Perth, Australia. Since that day I have been converting the gardens into edible wonderlands using permaculture principles. I try to use as much recycled or second-hand things as I can with very little waste.
BEFORE 
NOW
After living in our house for a year I realised that the best light and space for growing was down the side of the house which was actually a paved driveway. Not great for growing veggiesβ¦.but this house is a stepping stone and not the end goal. It will potentially be an investment property or we will sell it to launch towards the next step. So ripping up concrete and pavers to plant veggies was not really on the cards. But, I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I came up with an idea to grow a whole lot of food with space and resources I had available.
Start small but start now
The pallet planters on wheels were born! These worked out so much better than I could have imagined because they not only gave me control over the soil I was growing in but also allowed me to control the growing conditions by wheeling them in and out of the sun/rain. Perth climate can be so harsh it goes from one extreme to the other with summer and winter so these have been so good!
Investing in knowledge is investing in your future
I dove deep into experimenting with recipes and trying to build and expand my knowledge in growing, cooking and preserving my harvests. Buying vegetables I intended to grow in the future. Learning new ways to use and preserve them means I will be ready to hit the ground running when I do grow an oversupply.
Sustainable Income
The next part of my journey is sustainable income. Because how can I spend my days talking to the bees when I am bound to a corporate office job. This has been my career since leaving uni and it has never sat well with me. I have always been one to question and dislike the rat race.
Last year I was made redundant from my job and I took that as a sign and ran with it.
Since then I have built my website, Instagram, taken on ambassadorships, written paid blog posts and sponsored content. I have also written ebooks and gardening worksheets (CLICK HERE) if you want to learn how to grow your own thriving edible gardens. I have also been busy working away on my membership site and I will be launching that very soon! So make sure you hit sign up to my website to get notified when it opens. I will be opening it at a discount rate for founding members. The membership site will be all about how to grow, cook, preserve and start living more sustainably no matter whether you have a garden or not!
My goal is to build a community of like-minded people to share knowledge, learning to grow real food, save seeds, propagate & swap and trade those for other plants. I hope you join me on this adventure. I’m so excited for what is to come!
Sustainable Living Goals
So to finish off this post my goals for 2021 are to continue forging my own path and inspiring others along the way.
- Learning to cook outside over the fire or harnessing the sun’s energy.
- Preserving more jams and chutneys.
- Experiment and learn from other cultures and cuisines to expand my knowledge of flavours and techniques.
- Dive deeper into growing from cuttings, grafting as this will be a valuable skill for building my future food forest.
- Make more time to do art and stay creatively inspired
- Learn more handcrafting techniques such as weaving or woodwork.
Slow intentional living. We have become so used to instant gratification, being in a rush and always needing more. To start with it can be overwhelming but each time you learn a new skill or recipe it will become easier. Adapting to doing things and seeing things differently. Find the joy in growing and preparing wholesome food, learn how to make milk from nuts, buy second hand, fix and reuse broken items and stop spending all your money on things you don’t really need.
Holly π±
MY GARDENING ESSENTIALS //
Fertiliser spray gun: https://bit.ly/366nL1t
Retractable Hose: https://bit.ly/2TSC0Bo
More gardening tools: https://bit.ly/32IQmbD
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