The Freerange Hooligan, Unleashed!
Thoughts on Creative Self-Sufficiency
I found a stone house online this past week. It’s in a small village somewhere in central Portugal, and since the advertisement was posted recently enough, I have a suspicion that the photographs truly reflect reality. The house is built from granite stone (unlike the picture that I have picked for illustrating this post!) with…
It’s been a moment since my last post. I am very sorry for my silence. It was not intentional, but – to my defense – a lot has happened, not just in my life, but between my ears as well. If you have read any of my posts before, you would know that I am…
When the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out at the end of February 2022, I realized with a shock that my childhood obsession with all things Russian was totally misplaced. After all, the people, the music, and even the exotic place names were actually Ukrainian, not Russian! And on top of that, the…
Sustainability is a word bandied about a lot by corporations who wish to “greenwash” their operations. Unfortunately, any operation using a finite resource can – by definition – not be considered sustainable, no matter how pretty it’s dressed up.To be truly sustainable, the components of a system must produce more energy than they consume and…
I am busy preparing to take a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course, offered by Tom and Zaia Kendall of PermEco in Australia. It’s an online course, and even though their courses and other activities are donation-based, I have still paid what I would have paid to take the same course here in South Africa. To…
This picture was posted on Facebook, and is considered to clearly endorse the anti-vaccine agenda, judging by how it is received by people and the comments that were made. I agree with the sentiments of the original writer, but I am also going to differ radically. Let’s start… What if having a vaccine passport meant…
After feeling extremely sorry for myself for all of 20 minutes, I started weighing my options: pros and cons of staying versus leaving and the different countries that make sense to me. I wrote earlier about the rudeness of some government employees. That specific country (which I won’t mention here or ever again!) has been…
Time for an update, methinks. I have come to the realization that all of the house restoration and backyard farming videos and blogs that I have been following were made by people coming from G8 countries. Maybe they weren’t rich themselves, but their backgrounds gave them access that I – coming from a country in…
EDIT: I was wrong – buying a property would make the application process easier, but it has to be a habitable property, and I suspect to a certain value, as well. So buying a €6500 fixer-upper won’t pass muster. Back to the drawing board…
With the “Botswana Idea” now well and truly in the circular file, I have decided to revisit my original plan to take my dream to Italy. It’s still a massive elephant, in many respects. Imagine discovering that your dream house has half its back wall and a big chunk of its roof missing! To…