The Good Life – a non-starter or the future?

Gardening guru Monty Don’s criticism of self-sufficiency countered by Country Week columnist

IT WAS a vision of 70s suburbia that had viewers wishing they could give up the rat race, surround themselves with chickens and live off the land.

But according to television gardener Monty Don, the selfsufficient lifestyle promoted by Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers in The Good Life is a “nonstarter” and likely to lead those who pursue it into “13th-century malnutrition”.

Whilst acknowledging the benefits of growing some fruit, vegetables and herbs – which he says is one of the most lifeenhancing things a person can do – he slammed Kendall and Briers’ Barbara and Tom as “creepily pathetic”.

Writing in Gardeners’ World magazine, he said: “No one seriously wanted to know how to separate curds from whey or render fat to make candles, but millions wanted the idea of selfsufficiency.

“Self-sufficiency, I have to tell you, is a non-starter. At best it consigns you to a life of dreary repetition and terrible food, at worst your teeth fall out, your breath stinks, you erupt in boils and you sink into 13th-century malnutrition – The Good Life indeed.”

But Shaun McKenna, who in 2014 moved with his wife Wendy and family from the York suburbs to an eight-acre smallholding in Everingham, on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, disagrees.

While complete selfsufficiency has taken a back seat in recent months as they opened a tea shop at their farm, they produce everything from potatoes, peas and beans to chilli peppers, raspberries, figs and butternut squash in around a quarter of an acre of raised beds and greenhouses.

A local butcher and meat curer help them to produce pork, bacon and sausages from their

pigs, and anything the family doesn’t need themselves is sold in the teashop.

Mr McKenna, who documents his journey in a column in The Yorkshire Post’s Country Week

supplement, said: “There’s nothing like pulling a pea pod and tasting it straight away to make you see what a difference there is in home-grown food.

“I’m not saying it’s easy. We’re the first to admit we’ve made mistakes – last year we emptied our compost heap into the raised beds and had poppies and nettles springing up amongst the beetroot.

“But to knock people who want to become more selfsufficient is a little harsh. You can be malnourished by feeding yourself off the supermarket shelf – the convenience world doesn’t provide you with everything you need.”

Di Hammill runs selfsufficiency courses on topics such as permaculture, hen keeping and wild food foraging at her farm in East Cottingwith, near Pocklington. She also disagrees with Mr Don and says reducing reliance on bought-in goods and services empowers people and strengthens communities. She prefers the term “self-reliance”.

“This can be done in an urban setting and can be as simple as using permaculture principles to grow half your food supply in your garden, attending some craft workshops so that you can knit some jumpers, learning to bake and cook from scratch and use herbs for medicine instead of rushing to the doctors,” said Miss Hammill. “The term self-sufficiency immediately conjures up images of needing a smallholding and land so stops people before they start.”

There’s nothing like pulling a pea pod and tasting it straight away

The Yorkshire Post’s Country Week columnist Shaun McKenna