(inspiring music)
(leaves crunching)
- Hi, I'm Saronne, and I live on a smallholding
of six acres in west Wales with my husband, Bob.
I've been growing food for over 30 years.
I started in our family back garden when I was a child.
My mum encouraged me to grow tomatoes,
probably because I didn't eat my vegetables.
I hated vegetables,
but once I grew my own tomato plant
and ate the first tomato, I was like, converted totally.
And I have this incredible desire
to kind of grow more things.
(inspiring music continues)
I think I like to be in control of what I eat
in terms of the quality and what goes into it.
And I just really love the creative process.
And I feel really satisfied
when I can grow something from seed,
take it to the next step and the next step,
and ultimately cook it and eat it.
It's just to me, the most satisfying feeling in the world.
Self-sufficiency is about being empowered really,
and not having to look to others
to feed you and to provide things that you need.
It's that ability to just do things when you want to do it,
have the resources to do it
and the skills to be able to do it
and to get a really good product that you know,
the provenance of, it's just hugely important to me.
Keep a garden journal, because then you can look back
and see what worked the previous year, what didn't work,
the varieties that you grew,
what your family thought of the things that you've grown.
Every year is a little bit different.
Try not to be discouraged
if you've got a bad year weather wise,
because every year is gonna be a little bit challenging
in some shape or form,
but start small to begin with and keep your mind open.
Talk to people, write it down.
My gardening style is fairly informal.
It's kind of a chaotic by engineering.
I like to plant a variety of things, flowers now,
and vegetables and herbs, all kind of together.
There is a little bit of a purpose though, there are paths.
There are things that kind of are encouraged to self seed.
So, I let a few herbs go to seed and then drop their seeds.
And if they come up again, great,
that's one less thing I've gotta plant.
I try to encourage birds and nature into the garden,
because I think overall,
that's better for the health of the garden.
This year, I've grown a lot more flowers
to encourage the pollinators
and it's attracted so many bees, bumblebees, honeybees.
So, we're into September now.
Quite a lot of things are reaching their maturity now,
and I'm gonna be harvesting quite a lot of things,
but there's also things growing
that will be harvested later on in the season,
like the leaks and some of the brassicas.
Soil, that's the infrastructure of the garden.
You've just got to feed it and make it rich and healthy,
and I think everything follows on from there.
The better you treat your soil,
ultimately, the better your crops are gonna be.
The animals play a huge role in the garden.
They eat quite a lot of the garden waste.
So, any cabbage leaves
or rotten tomatoes go to the chickens,
the goats will eat some of the Jerusalem artichoke stalks.
Their manure is going into the compost pile
and helping to enrich the soil.
They play a huge part in the fertility
and the success of the garden.
Every year, I play it a little bit by ear,
depending on how the weather is going at the time.
Like a lot of gardeners who get really enthusiastic
about January, and I start planning things
and ordering seeds that I don't have,
but I've learned to become a little bit more patient.
In the past, I've planted things super early
and thought, I'll get a head start,
and then planted them out,
and they've not grown well because the ground is too cold
or you get a late frost.
So now, I'm kind of learning to just be
that little bit more patient,
because plants always catch up,
even if you plant them a few weeks later
than everybody else.
Every year I try to plant something new.
I like trying things that I haven't grown before,
new varieties, sometimes new techniques.
Letting things reseed amongst
the established vegetable plants is kind of an experiment.
Oh yeah.
Not putting netting over some of the brassicas
and putting it on other brassicas,
just to compare the difference.
Well, you know how that's gonna turn out.
Having said that, because there's so much stuff
growing in here, the damage done to the uncovered brassicas,
I think was minimal,
because there was a little bit more of a balance,
and things are beginning to grow through now.
So, you've gotta be prepared
to take a little bit of a risk and a little bit of a chance.
I also grow seeds from the Lampeter Seed Library,
which I help to run, 'cause I think saving
locally adapted seeds is hugely important, really good.
I've got stuff growing here that I've saved seeds from for,
you know, eight, nine years.
And they just, they're really happy,
and you know that they're just growing
because they've adapted to the sort of conditions
that I like to garden with.
My YouTube channel is just a way of documenting
what I'm doing on our small holding.
So gardening, cooking tips,
very simple cooking tutorials, preserving your food,
just giving a little flavor of what it's like
to live in west Wales on a small holding,
and that anybody can do it regardless of your age.
Next year, I think I'll continue to plant more flowers.
In fact, I think I'm gonna plant more flowers
amongst the vegetables.
It looks nice.
It attracts wildlife. (rooster crowing)
I have cut flowers.
It's a win-win situation.
I'll try different varieties of vegetables.
I'm building a hedge of kind of native trees and things
to help make it more of a microclimate
and to produce fodder for the goats that we keep as well.
Having poly tunnels is an absolute bonus.
I think because of the cooler weather temperatures
out here in west Wales,
having these poly tunnels just means
you've got shelter and warmth at the time that you need it
and you gain an extra couple of weeks,
either end of the season.
So you can start a little bit earlier
and you can end a bit a little bit later.
In fact, I have things going and growing in there
pretty much all year round.
Brassicas, they grow better.
I grow things, obviously outdoors,
but the stuff undercover grows especially well.
It never gets boring.
You know, picking that first ripe tomato,
digging up those first potatoes, harvesting those leaks.
It's just, I'm always amazed that it happens
and I'm always grateful that it happens.
And I'm always kind of astounded that it happens,
from that tiny seed, so much potential,
given the right conditions,
everything wants to grow and produce.
And I'm just really thankful.
(inspiring music)