Build up
Well, i’ve been talking to our friends, neighbors and audience about my intentions for years now and some of you will already know what i’m about to tell you. I can’t say it’s been easy, in fact the transition has been the most difficult time of my life, especially in the last few months handling a double workload in my job, the business requiring full time attention and the homestead bursting at the seams with potential. Massive personal sacrifices have been made. (–text continued below video)
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Seed, Plant & Homesteading Swap 2024 COMING UP
Many cold, dark nights have been spent working in the greenhouse until well past midnight. We’ve spent years banking hours working hard building a business and a homestead whilst documenting a lot of it. In the last weeks we had almost reached the braking point. I’ve had a family and a homestead full of animals quite literally counting the days until i was finally able to go ahead.
Release / Relieve
I have left my IT carrier behind and i have now gone full time on the garden and homestead. I will tell you all about the transition itself in great detail on our new Youtube (Odysee & Rumble) channel – Birdland Homestead. Please click the link for our new homesteading channel below and join us on our journey to a producer life style. I will broaden the scope of content hugely, but don’t worry not only will i keep making gardening videos, i will be putting out several per week. There’s just so much to talk about that i simply didn’t have the time for before. So far i’ve managed to release almost 1 video per week for 6 and a half years totalling around 264 videos now.
Thank You
Before i go on, i’d like to thank all of you, our audience and our customers for helping us make it happen and for your loyalty over the years. A big thanks to my family, ex colleagues and bosses for having provided me with the opportunity to downsize my IT carrier 11 years ago enabling me to no longer having to live in or commute to the city. Over many years Gardens for Life has gone from a hobby to a side hussle building the infrastructure and later to a full time income enabling us to do great things in the years ahead. If you’d like to support us you can become a member of the Gardens for Life support community or join us our Birdland Homestead page on Patreon. (Links below) We highly appreciate all of your support! Thank you again.
Immediate goals
Time to take a deep breath. We aren’t going to change what we do here at Birdland cottage and Gardens for Life, but we are looking forward to doing more of the same, publish more of what we’ve already been at and all sorts of extra projects. Can’t wait to spend more time with family and friends both 2 legged and 4 legged. Because we also like bushcraft we will be announcing our new bushcraft boys youtube channel this Spring. We’ll be making videos about what plants – veg, flowers, trees and berries we’ll be growing from seed and cuttings in this exciting 2024 growing season. I will be hosting live Q&A sessions to give our audience a chance to interact with us and ask questions. This may also include interviews with other interesting like minded producers from Ireland and beyond.
Community
We are looking to build a community of like minded individuals and families that are somewhere along the same journey and have similar values. We’ll start by continuing to host public events such as the upcoming seed and plant swap on the 3rd of March in Roscommon and workshops and courses about growing food using no dig gardening, plant propagation, forage walks, all things homesteading and how to start a business.
Long term goals
To me the most enjoyable aspect of the garden is to grow as many multi functional perennial plants as i can, experiment and figure out what does well here in Ireland without having to spend too much time pampering it. With the coming growing season we’re also looking forward to growing more of our own food, not only for self reliance but most importantly for better quality, flavour and nutritional value. It would also be nice not to have to buy so much packaged foods from the shops week upon week. Local produce beats industrial food in every way, especially freshness. What we don’t produce, we’d like to find from a more local and sustainable source.
Going full time on the garden is definitely a significant step on our journey from our consumer lifestyle to a producer lifestyle, which has always been a goal. A homesteading podcast and book are also coming within reach and will be announced when the time has come. A yet seemingly more distant but fundamental goal long term is to scale up our forest garden to 10+ acres. In years to come we’d like to acquire a woodland preferably with mixed trees, but conifers will do too and adapt it into something that we can benefit from as much as the wildlife by using numerous techniques we’ve been practicing for many years.
Final Thoughts
Think of your greatest ambitions, your short term and long term goals, your dream. Keep trying until ideas begin to form & paths become evident. Instead of saying i can’t, ask how can i.
At Birdland cottage we like to say we don’t believe in coincidence, but we do believe in luck. As a great Roman philosopher Seneca once said: Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Another noteworthy phrase: It is better you regret something you have done, than to regret something that you haven’t done.