Self sufficiency

Visit to the smallholding of a couple who practise and publish about self-sufficiency.

A BBC Look East news report. David and Katie Thear sit at a table where they edit Practical Self-Sufficiency magazine, which started in 1975 and now has 40,000 readers, meeting the need for a beginners’ guide. On their one acre smallholding at Saffron Walden they practise what they preach, with the help of their children. There are chickens and geese, the goats are fed, and children tend the rabbits. Katie talks about their experimentation with livestock and growing. She is trying raised beds for vegetables in the Chinese style, and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, seen with piglets. The woman interviewer asks her about self-sufficiency being associated with eccentricity and whether they are putting the clock back to former knowledge which has been lost. Katie says that there is nothing new in what they are doing, but they are not doing it full time. David Thear tends a log-burning stove and talks about the guide he has published and the range of stoves now available in the UK, and wood from felled elms. Asked whether this can be costed as a viable way of life, he says they would advocate having a secure income while trying self-sufficiency.

Keywords

Self-sufficiency; Smallholdings; Animal husbandry; Vegetable growing; Magazine publishing; Green; Environmental; Fuel

Background Information

Obituary for Katie Thear by David Thear published in The Guardian 2 April 2010: My wife, Katie Thear, who has died of cancer aged 70, was a pioneer of the self-sufficiency movement. In the early 1970s, she and I became interested in becoming more self-sufficient, but found that there was no practical information available. Katie proposed that we should start a magazine to provide the help that was needed. In 1975 we moved to a small cottage in Essex that had two acres of land. We set to work to create a smallholding, and Katie contacted dozens of people to gather material for the magazine. In November that year, the first issue of Practical Self-Sufficiency was published, and circulation quickly ran into thousands. She presided with an easy-to-read style that was very popular. She also began to write and edit books. One early title was The Complete Book of Raising Livestock and Poultry, first published in 1979 and still in print. As she became better known, Katie was invited to appear on radio and television programmes and used her growing influence to speak out against the worst excesses of factory farming. She faced down her critics from that quarter with courtesy and good humour. In 1990 her book Free Range Poultry was published, establishing her as an authority on the subject. She was invited to address the annual Small Farm Conference in the US. In 1994 she gave up the editorship of Practical Self-Sufficiency. The magazine was eventually sold to Archant Publishing in 2001 and continues today as Country Smallholding. Katie had 22 non-fiction books published before writing her first novel in 2008, Hearing the Grass Grow, in which she returned to her Welsh roots. She was born in Tudweiliog, on the Lleyn peninsula, before her family moved to Liverpool. A fluent Welsh speaker, Katie rejoiced in Welsh culture, including the traditional stories, poetry and music. She sang lullabies to her children and grandchildren in Welsh. After school and college, she began her career as a teacher of biology, first in Liverpool, then in London, where we met and married in 1965. In the 1980s, she fulfilled an ambition in receiving a degree in English from the Open University. Katie was essentially a home person. She enjoyed gardening and created a loving home for our family, always putting the children first. Later she had the same love for her grandchildren and never missed any event in which they were taking part. She is survived by me, our three children, Matthew, Helen and Gwilym, and five grandchildren. Broad Leys Books website: Katie Thear died on March 18th 2010 after a long battle with cancer. Her contribution to the Self Sufficiency movement and her role in giving practical help to smallholders during the last thirty years has been substantial. She founded the magazine Practical Self Sufficiency in 1975 with her husband David and it was an immediate success, meeting the needs of a growing number of people who needed information on growing fruit and vegetables organically and raising poultry and livestock on a small scale. The magazine always had a practical focus and, as readers sent in their own contributions, PSS quickly became a forum for people to share ideas and help each other. Katie also practised the entire range of smallholding activities developing half an acre of fruit and vegetables and over time she and her husband kept a wide variety of poultry and livestock. She constantly experimented to adapt traditional techniques for the present day, being one of the earliest users of raised beds in her vegetable garden in 1976. She also taught herself how to make best use of the produce - including making butter, yoghurt and cheeses from the milk of dairy animals. After twenty years, Katie stood back from the editorship to concentrate on writing more books on smallholding topics. She had twenty two books published, most of which are still in print. Katie Thear was both a pioneer of the Self Sufficiency movement and a substantial contributor in providing help to smallholders for more than thirty years, throughout which time she would readily help anyone who approached her with problems. The magazine that she founded thirty five years ago continues successfully today as Country Smallholding.