Win your way to self-sufficiency

Ever wanted to collect fresh eggs from your own chickens, or pick your own thyme from just outside your back door? Maybe you would like to know why people in glass houses discourage their neighbours from throwing stones! Or perhaps you are truly concerned about air miles, where your food comes from and would like to produce as much of your own food as possible!Well the Westmeath Examiner have an exciting new competition that will bring that dream of self sufficiency to life for one lucky reader.Belvedere House, Gardens and Park have teamed up with the Westmeath Examiner and a host of sponsors to create the ultimate lifestyle prize, offering one lucky reader the opportunity to win everything they need to transform their back garden into a small holding.Bartle D'Arcy, General Manager of Belvedere House Gardens and Park and local Grow It Yourself (GIY) "champion" believes that self sufficiency has become the dream of a large number of people. He told the Westmeath Examiner: "Modern society has become so dependent on processed food from supermarkets."But people are beginning to ask more and more questions about where their food comes from and whether it is in fact good for them or the environment. Issues such as air miles, how their food is reared or grown and where it is processed is all being taken into account."Yet while these questioned are being asked, the skills to move away from supermarket dependence have all but disappeared. This competition will offer the winner the tools, the animals and the training needed to move towards self-sufficiency."While many would have envied the happy go-lucky and carefree days of Tom and Barbara Good in Seventies show "The Good Life", more realistic champions of self sufficiency have come from programmes such as the popular River Cottage, which follows, through the seasons, an adherence to the principles of self-sufficiency, food integrity, and the consumption of local, seasonal produce."The presenter and owner of River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall talks about a scale where, at one end the person is completely self sufficient and at the other end is completely dependent on buying food in supermarkets."Everyone exists somewhere on this scale and whilst the dream of becoming totally self sufficient may for the majority of people be only that, there is no reason not to resolve to move towards that end of the scale and increase the amount of food you produce yourself," says Bartle.The competition Belvedere House has organised with the Westmeath Examiner has been designed with these ideas in mind.Belvedere House will host its second annual self sufficiency Show "The Greatest Show on Earth" on the Weekend of 17th and 18th April, where experts in all fields of Self Sufficiency will come together to share their experience with seminars, demonstrations and workshops.Will Sutherland, co-author of the world-famous book "The Complete Guide To Self Sufficiency" will be present all weekend and a five day course at "The John Seymour School of Self Sufficiency" for two people forms part of the overall prize."Self sufficiency was a widespread practice not even a generation ago and is a very worthwhile family based recreational activity."I remember buying "The Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency" book for just 10p in a bazaar when I was just 11 years of age. Back then 10p was a lot of money, especially in Cavan," remembers Bartle."I thought it was brilliant and I used it to start a vegetable garden at my home in Mountnugent."Soon all my friends were doing the same thing and my mum was giving away runner beans and cabbages, carrots and onions because we had loads: too much for us to eat ourselves."The overall winner of the "Self Sufficiency Competition" will get a fantastic opportunity for a life-style changing prize and will hopefully introduce others to the benefits of producing some of your own food from the back garden," says Bartle.