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about A Little Piece of England

A Little Piece of England

A Tale of Self Sufficiency

A Little Piece of England, tells the tale of how the author’s family, living in a sliver of countryside in London’s commuter belt, came, over some ten years, to make itself, in its ‘spare time’, self-sufficient in its requirements of milk, meat, eggs, vegetables and some fruit. 


The book can be read in two ways.  One way is for those, particularly urban folk, who are interested in growing their own food or contemplating a life style founded on their own smallholding.  In this way, it is a book for those who wonder about the practicalities of living in a self contained, permacultural way and for those who dream of making their own bread or even, perhaps, of eating their own mutton stewed with their own onions and carrots.


The other way is for those, perhaps particularly anglophiles in other lands, who are in harmony with the stubborn, Saxon streak which runs strongly in the character and culture of the English. The streak which showed itself when London was fire-bombed night after night in the early 1940s and also when John’s self-taught grandfather told his children "You don’t know what you can do until you try to do it".

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Customer Reviews

This is an entertaining, witty, and acutely honest account of what happens when a family decides to devote its spare time to becoming self-sufficient in London's commuter belt. John Jackson tells a story of the struggles and successes experienced when he, along with his wife and three children, take on a life few of us know anything about in a patch of England he calls The Ridge.

From letting Chinese geese replace their lawn mower to learning how to keep a lustful ram from the neighbour's ewes, this is a fun and frolicsome story of how Nature, like life itself, is never very easy or straightforward--but is always the very best teacher. The individual personalities of the animals on The Ridge become fixtures in the story. It's only when a beloved chicken becomes dinner that you're reminded that a life of self-sufficiency isn't always a nice picture of everything being faceless and pre-packaged. But to eat an animal that you've raised yourself gives a much higher appreciation of what it is on your dinner plate. And that is how it should be.

See the review on Amazon.com