gardening

How I’m Preparing For An Uncertain Future

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Firstly, I must apologise for not writing on here for a while. There are a few reasons for that which I’ll briefly explain and if you’re still following me here, thank you for sticking around! This blog was the first thing I ever set up to share my writing on, and it’s still hugely important to me, so rest assured, it’s not going anywhere!

In all honestly, my head has been in such a spin lately that it’s been hard to write. At all.

I haven’t written anything on Medium for a while either, despite having so much whirling in my head. I just about manage to write and post my weekly round-ups on Substack – probably because they are quite short and quick to write and follow a sort of template.

I cannot allow myself to write too much fiction at the moment because I am still in the middle of the endless editing…. More on that next week, but I am getting there and Black Hare Valley Book 2: 1966 is edging closer to publication, I promise!

Last year was a tricky one for me creatively. I started to struggle a bit with my day job as a creative writing tutor for children. I’ve had to make a lot of changes there to make it work, and I’m pleased to say that they do seem to be paying off. Again, that’s probably another topic for another day! But the burn-out stretched itself to writing on Medium and my blog. I kept thinking of things to write and then not writing them, which is very unlike me. I definitely lost a bit of confidence and I’m not entirely sure why.

One thing that has been on my mind a lot though is preparedness.

And that mindset and accompanying concerns has led me to writing this post. I am really hoping writing it kickstarts my creativity again when it comes to regular blogging and essay writing!

Firstly, what is preparedness and what does it mean to me?

Preparedness for me simply means planning ahead to make life easier for future me. It really is as simple as that and I think I’ve been doing that for a while now. For example, making two batches of cookies and freezing one batch so future me has some back-up snacks! Baking two loaves, instead of one, and chucking one in the freezer in case we run out of bread and forget to pick some up. Stuff like that.

But in recent months the desire to be more prepared for an uncertain future has really spiralled in me and taken over my life. I wouldn’t call myself a doomsday prepper – far from it – but I do think we are living in unprecedented times which call for us to change our thinking and our habits.

El Nino, climate change related disasters, wildfires and floods, extreme heat, war and conflict, cyber attacks and rogue AI are all here, right now.

Food prices are never going to go down again unless we change the entire system.

I can’t change the world but I can do everything possible for me and my family, and hopefully in time, my community. Preparing for the worst is not fear-mongering, it is simply thinking of future you and making sure everything is okay for them.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Vegetable plot/fruit trees/fruit bushes: I planted two apples, a pear, two plums and various fruit bushes when we moved here nearly 17 years ago and I am so glad I did! Though the apple harvest this year has been disappointing, I have managed to grow and preserve fruit from the garden and that feels very reassuring! I am now pretty good at keeping the plot producing year round and currently have just as much growing out there as I did in the summer. I have just added a brand new extension to the plot which will be potatoes and I have plans to extend the plot up the side of the garden to grow even more. I have grown and harvested oats for the first time and I’m planting wheat again soon.

Keeping ducks and chickens: I’m lucky that I have the space to do this and I have recently added to the brood. Two ducklings were born last month and are being raised by their lovely mum, and the chicks we raised in the spring are now adult and laying eggs. Currently I have six ducks and eight chickens. I keep males too so that I can always have more! I have plans for a few more chickens and then I’d like to start selling eggs locally.

Making my own compost: I have one main compost heap and another smaller one that is central in a ‘key-hole’ raised bed. I did still have to buy in compost this year but a lot less than usual, and with all the duck and chicken poo fertilising the land, I am very lucky!

No waste: Or at least, as little as possible! Food scraps go to the hens and ducks or into the compost, or to make things like apple cider vinegar and stock! Egg shells are washed and stored and eventually baked and whizzed into grit that gets added back into their food. It all goes around in a very satisfying circle.

Water collection and storage: We recently bought a second water butt and I would like to get a third in time. I also have another small container that collects rainwater. I also bought two of those water filtration straws to keep as an emergency. I’ve got a small amount of stored bottle water too and I’ve water bath canned some water in jars which can last for decades.

Preserving food: This is a new area for me and I’m really enjoying it! Obviously I have always frozen excess food, but this year I also started drying, canning and pickling! The only thing I haven’t tried yet is fermenting. (Unless you count the cider vinegar) What constantly goes through my head is it’s all very well growing food, but we also have to build up a store cupboard and preserve things for Winter. Just like the old days, I guess.

Keeping a store cupboard: I only started this fairly recently and it has already been a life-saver a few times. We don’t have a huge budget and cannot afford to rush to the shops to stockpile food, water and medicines if the worst happened, so I started small and slow. If I didn’t need a bag of pasta, I would buy one anyway. Old me would look at the cupboards and make a shopping list based on what we didn’t have. Now I do that, but I also add things to the list that we do have. That’s how I’ve slowly built up my supply. I pay particular attention to dried food such as oats, pasta, rice, noodles, tinned fruit, vegetables and meat, and preserving ingredients such as salt, sugar and vinegar. Recently one of our daughter’s left home to start her adult life and had no money for food due to paying out deposits and so on, but I was able to give her plenty of things from the cupboards to get her started and it didn’t leave us short at all. Last week we didn’t have much money, but we didn’t need it because the cupboards are all so full. This week, payments came in, so I went shopping and replaced everything we had used to get it back to the same level. Incidentally, I do the same with the car now. I keep it at half a tank full of petrol at all times.

Being prepared for emergencies: The local wildfires this summer were far too close for comfort and finally prompted me to put together a get-up-and-go-bag. This is a work in progress but so far consists of: a first aid kit, hand sanitiser, wet wipes, bottled water, crackers and chocolate spread, biscuits, cereal bars, dog food and fork, torch, wet weather gear, lighter, waterproof matches, small amount of cash, toothpaste and toothbrushes and important documents in a waterproof wallet (including written down phone numbers.) I have a separate ‘breakdown’ bag for the car, which makes me feel much better as we do tend to a lot of long road trips in our old car… Waterproofs, small first aid kit, wet wipes, hand sanitiser, dog food, torch, cash, cereal bars, waterproof matches, lighter, blanket and warm hats. And for the lounge in case of power outages (which we get a lot of around here anyway) the ‘blackout box’ which is also a work in progress and so far has: candles, tealights and small glass jars to place in, phone numbers, a lighter, waterproof matches and a radio.

There are more things I want to add to both bags and the box but I feel all three will make life easier and less stressful in the event of an emergency of prolonged power cut. I felt better as soon as they were done.

Thinking and planning ahead: It is sometimes hard to think about the future when the world is in so much turmoil but we can’t give up, can we? I think gardening is all about hope for the future which is one of the reasons it is so good for us mentally and physically. Growing a garden proves you have faith in a tomorrow and are actively planning for it. Planting grains such as wheat and oats is a bit experimental for me at the moment but I would love to eventually grow my own chicken food! And of course, my own porridge oats and flour. I am also growing lots and lots of beans, and in particular drying beans, such as kidney, butter and cannelinni. My plan is to have jars and jars of dried beans, as they last up to 30 years! I am also drying and saving beans and seeds to plant again next year. We will get more water storage at some point and as I said, the food we grow will only continue to increase as we gradually let it take over the whole garden!

I totally appreciate that not everyone can prepare to this extent. Not everyone can have ducks, chickens and fruit trees, and not everyone has enough space to grow grains, or vegetables. But everyone has a windowsill and you can very easily grow herbs that you could maybe swap locally for other food. You can grow lots of things on a balcony or in a small garden. People also need to unite together and target their local councils to open up spaces for community growing. This is something I would love to get involved in…

As for stocking up, again, I know not everyone has the budget to do this, but what I would implore lower budget households to do, is just buy one extra thing each week, one bag of pasta, rice or beans that you don’t actually need. That’s how you slowly build up supplies.

What do you think? Am I nuts? Or are you feeling and thinking the same? Have you made any changes to your household to become more resilient? Do you think the governments need to be doing more? Or would that just make people panic?

Growing Our Own Food Feels More Important Than Ever

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

Plus learning to forage and preserve…

recent additions, Egg and Shumpert enjoying the garden – image is mine

I’ve always been into growing my own food, but mostly it has been for fun. When I was a kid we grew runner beans, pumpkins, tomatoes and lettuces and my grandfather grew peas, marrows, potatoes and more. Their generation, and to a lesser extent, my mother’s generation, were used to growing their own. They didn’t grow everything they needed, but they grew what they could with what they had. With the rise of the supermarket that trend has diminished greatly and children growing up now are unlikely to even know where food comes from, let alone know how to grow it themselves.

I never wanted that for my kids and I have always grown something. Bags of potatoes are so easy, for example, as are lettuces and beans. Over the years my vegetable plot has grown bigger and bigger and I soon added chickens and ducks, fruit trees and fruit bushes to the mix. I’ve had my successes and my failures, but failing has never mattered that much before. It’s been frustrating, yes. There are always weeds, pests and the weather to battle with when trying to grow produce, but failing hasn’t bothered me too much and I have always learnt something in the process.

That’s changed now and I wonder how many other hobby growers are feeling the same? I wonder how many people who grew food for fun are now buckling down and upping their game? Planting more than ever and worrying more than ever that some of it will fail…

Recent world events have seen oil prices soar and before long that will impact food prices. People were already struggling with the rising cost of living, so it’s scary to think how much of an impact this is going to have. In recent years, I’ve hugely resented the cost I pay at the checkout and I’ve made an effort to use the supermarkets less and less. I get a weekly organic vegetable box from the wonderful Riverford and I have armed myself with knowledge in the form of books. Yes, I Google things from time to time, but there is something very grounding and safe about actually owning the books…

My be-prepared-for-anything books so far are as follow:

The Self-Sufficient(ish) Bible – by Andy and Dave Hamilton

The Forager’s Calendar – by John Wright

Living on One Acre or Less – by Sally Morgan

A Modern Herbal – by Alys Fowler

The Good Housekeeping Complete Book of Preserving

That should do it! I also really want a drill and the skills to knock up animal shelters and fences, but all in good time!

My aim is to keep adding to my skills and my knowledge, even if I don’t need to use the things I’m learning. At the moment, for example, I’m discovering that many of the weeds and herbs that grow in my garden have huge health benefits. I’ve been making refreshing tonics from cleavers, or goosegrass as it’s also known, and warming teas from rosemary and nettle infusions. I aim to try dandelion next – apparently you can consume every part of this amazing plant, even the roots!

I’ve stopped buying stock and instead make my own by saving vegetable scraps and peelings. I also freeze apple cores and peelings and when I have enough I make my own apple cider vinegar. I’ve learnt how to make a natural cleaner from vinegar and pines cut from the Christmas tree. I bake my own bread, cakes, wraps and pizzas at the weekend. It’s all little bits, and I still shop at the supermarket more than I want to, but it’s a process and I am enjoying it. It feels like reclaiming something we have all lost.

And as for the garden, it’s slowly awakening from its winter slumber. The fruit trees have all blossomed and the plum tree already has tiny green plums growing! I took tons of cuttings from my redcurrant and blackcurrant bushes last year and they’re all now in the ground and doing well. I’ve got potatoes, onions, leeks, parsnips and beetroot in the ground and peas, beans, lettuces, tomatoes and peppers all starting off inside.

It sounds a lot but it does not feel like enough! Not by a long shot. I’ve got some wheat I plan to plant in one bed as I’d love to try and mill my own flour. I have a small packet of oat seeds to try as well.

I am sure there will be many, many failures along the way but it really does feel imperative that I grow more than usual, that it succeeds as much as possible – just in case!

I now have two weeks off work for Easter and plan to be outside as much as possible, planting more seeds, transplanting seedlings, making more raised beds and filling with compost. I’ll be exhausted but perhaps I will sleep better at night.

Writing and Life Goals for 2026!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

What do I hope to achieve in the year ahead?

Image by Wilfried Pohnke from Pixabay

Hello everyone! I hope you have had a truly happy and peaceful holiday season and may I wish you a very happy New Year! My last post saw me checking the goals I set myself at the start of 2025 and exploring the reality of whether I met them or not! I failed two, achieved six, and half-achieved two, which I thought was pretty good.

So, let’s not hang about. What do I want to achieve in writing and in life in 2026?

  1. Publish The Dark Finds You in January 2006! – This won’t be hard to achieve as the pre-order is already set up for the 9th January. I’m giving myself an easy start…
  2. Start final/final edits for Black Hare Valley Book 1 and release it May 1st 2026: I really hope I achieve this as I want this book to be released on 1st May because May Day is a very important day in the Black Hare Valley universe! Book 1 is with my editor right now so fingers crossed…
  3. Release another anthology written by the kids I work with – Not long after publishing The World You Gave Us, we launched another collaborative writing project where all the stories and poems had to be set in a strange town called Lakeside View. At the time of writing I am waiting for a handful of longer stories to come in and hope to have all editing and formatting done by the start of February…
  4. Finish The Dark Finds You sequel – This should be easy. I am almost at the end of the first draft of the book that wasn’t meant to happen. I would like to get this ready to go to the editor in 2026 with a possible release date of autumn 2026…
  5. Continue to edit/rework the rest of the Black Hare Valley series: At the moment I’m not sure how close I want to release each of the 5 books, so there is no major goal being set for publication after book 1… However, I do need to keep working on the rest of them and prioritise this series over everything else!
  6. Start the rewrite of The 7th Child – I recently finished the first draft of this family mystery drama and hated it by the end. I know how to fix it though and it needs a major rewrite. I was all ready to dive into this when the sequel for The Dark Finds You suggested itself! However, I really want to start the rewrite at some point this year…
  7. Continue to stick to Substack and make a few changes, and continue to stick with Medium: It’s always hard figuring out where and how to prioritise your time as a writer. Is it writing for other platforms that might make you money and/or improve your visibility? Or is just writing your own books? I’ve enjoyed both Medium and Substack in 2025 and I plan to stick with them with no particular pressure to do better. Just to have fun. I do have a few changes in mind for Substack though.
  8. Have my best year in the garden ever!!: Oh, I hope so. This might be my most important goal actually. I have worked really hard through the autumn preparing the vegetable patch for the spring and summer and I feel more determined than ever to do really well. I also see it as an emergency. We can’t rely on governments to address or slow down climate change, or help us adapt to it! I am really concerned about rising food prices and food security in general. The best thing we can all do is at least grow something. I also plan to get more ducks and chickens, plant more fruit trees and bushes and lots more herbs!
  9. Complete a reading challenge: I haven’t done one in ages but an author I know created one on Storygraph where you have to read a book starting with each letter of the alphabet. This seemed fun and simple so I signed up! Let’s hope I manage to complete the alphabet!
  10. Get better at sketching: This is partly because I dearly want each chapter of each Black Hare Valley book to start with a small ink sketch and partly because I used to love drawing as a child and it’s been fun to reclaim it. I did basic drawings for the chapters I serialised but they all need to be much better for publication! I hope to find a good YouTube tutorial that will help me…

So, there you have it! A real mix of writing related and general life goals for 2026. I am so excited to get started! Do you have any hopes or dreams for the year ahead? Please feel free to share in the comments!

Happy New Year!!

My 2025 Goals Vs The Reality!

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

What I set out to achieve this year and how well I did!

Hello everyone! It’s that time of year once again where I dig out the goals I set myself for 2025 and see how well I did. I always find this exciting because once I set those goals at the start of the year I do tend to instantly forget them! It’s fun to see where my head was at a year ago and what was important to me going into that fresh new year.

Let’s dive in, see what I set myself up for and see whether I managed it or not!

Goal No 1: Publish The Mess Of Us February 2025 

Reality= Achieved: Yeah, this wasn’t going to get missed was it? The preorder was all ready to go! An easy start!

    Goal No 2: Go through my editors suggestions for The Dark Finds You and prepare it for release summer 2025 –

    Reality= Achieved, sort of?: Okay, The Dark Finds You is released on 9th January 2026 so I didn’t meet the goal of releasing it in the summer of 2025. I did, however, go through the final suggested edits! Half and half?

    Goal No. 3: Publish The World You Gave Us through Chasing Driftwood Books 

    Reality = Achieved!: This anthology written by the children I work with was indeed released June 2025. I suspect that’s why The Dark Finds You got moved back several months! It was a hard slog editing, formatting and getting it ready for release but the kids were all so proud of it and we launched straight into another one!

    Goal No 4: Send Black Hare Valley Book 1 to beta readers and my editor 

    Reality= Achieved sort of?: Another half and half. I did send it to Beta readers if you count serialising for feedback here and on Substack? I certainly got feedback! It didn’t make it to my editor though so I didn’t meet that part of the goal. I’m now on the final edits before I send it, so I was close!

    Goal No 5: Get both Black Hare Valley books 2 and 3 to 5th draft status 

    Reality= Failed!: They were only in first draft a year ago and they are now in third, so I didn’t get close to 5th draft. I set myself a tough challenge with that one!

    Goal No 6: Finish the companion book I am working on 

    Reality= Achieved!: I just finished the third draft of this Black Hare Valley book the other day. It’s now book 4, rather than a companion book though…

    Goal No 7: Continue to build and progress Chasing Driftwood Books 

    Reality= Failed!: Honestly, this almost fell apart this year. I just don’t have the time I ideally would like to commit to it. We are still going however and we just posted a 2025 round-up on the website of everything we’ve been up to and what are plans are for 2026!

    Goal No 8: Continue to keep as physically and mentally well as possible! 

    Reality = Achieved!: I am still sticking with Pilates and Calisthenics in order to keep as fit and flexible as I can as I drift closer to my 50s! Still walking lots and pottering in the garden too. Mental health wise, despite the challenges of the perimenopause, I am doing well!

    Goal No 9: Restart my vegetable plot 

    Reality= Achieved!: This is one of the things I am happiest about. I actually did really well in the garden this year, especially with tomatoes which I have always struggled with! Considering I was giving myself a gentle way back in, it all sort of exploded. I’d say I’m even more into it now, even more obsessed with turning my space into a sustainable food garden! For the first time ever I got a piece of paper and planned my new patch. I researched companion plants and plants that hate each other. I took multiple cuttings of herbs and fruit bushes I already have. I put up a new fence and created an archway entrance which beans will grow up. I have also been making trellises out of old sticks and these form a sort of grid/fence structure from the old tires I have. It all looks quite quirky and I love it! I also planted winter seeds and currently have broad beans, peas and winter lettuces on the go! I created a keyhole bed which is a key-shaped raised bed (made mine out of old logs) with a chicken wire compost circle in the middle. The idea is the compost leaches out to the soil. I’ve got another compost in the corner and plan on adding a second greenhouse. I am genuinely so excited and I’m out there every day planning and sorting and preparing! I guess the lesson I have finally learned is that gardening starts in the winter!

    Goal No 10: Reconnect with nature whenever and wherever I can

    Reality= Achieved: I have continued to try to name nature whenever I can. If I don’t know the name of something locally I take a picture and look it up later. This year I have also become very interested in the benefits of herbs and plan to grow a lot more next year. I’ve been drying my own and plan to start making teas too.

    In conclusion, I failed two, achieved six and partly-achieved two which I think is pretty good considering it’s been a busy year!

    Look out for my first post of 2026 where I will set out my goals for the next year! Thank you, as always, for being part of my writing and publishing journey and for joining me here in my little corner of the internet.

    Have a wonderful festive period and a very happy New Year!