Work took me to rural Essex today, following a damp day by the roadside I decided to revisit Colletts Farm shop at Wormingford. Their milk is now available in glass which is a bonus, and their scotch eggs are rather wonderful! Looking foreward to spreading some of their raw milk farmhouse butter on some of… Read More Wet nuts and raw butter, (farm shopping around Essex).

Work has taken me across to Norfolk again, just outside of Diss there is a small brown and white farm shop sign. If you follow those signs there is Place Farm, with its lovely little farm shop! They are on facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/Place-Farm-Eggs-More-100523731637736/ The shop majors on the free range eggs produced on the farm (we… Read More New farm shop!

We like to support local events and think this one is really worthwhile. It takes place at Trinity Park Ipswich in the cow sheds. The organisers have struggled to get the word out about this on social media so please share the details with your friends. More info can be found by clicking the image… Read More Suffolk Farmers Market 17th October 10am – 2pm

Thank you to those that followed yesterdays breadmaking thread on Twitter. Incase anyone missed any steps, the photos are below. The ingredients used were; 3 cups strong white bread flour 2 cups strong wholemeal breadflour 1 cup light rye flour 1/2 cup mixed seeds 1 teaspoon seasalt 2 teaspoons Suffolk honey Approximately 1 1/2 mugs… Read More 321 Bread

I like jam, the little living gentlers like it as well. I also like making jam, not that I am great at it, its either runny or solid. But I enjoy making it. So today was Blackberry jam day! Having promised for a week and with work having to come first, I finally took the… Read More Jam!

There is much said about unnecessary plastic packaging, and indeed here at #livinggentler we are vocal about it ourselves. In particular we have a real issue with the plastic wrap around toilet paper and kitchen towels, its single use, has very limited recycling opportunities and generally just ends up in the waste bin. We already… Read More Paper packaging

Making happy memories is really what life should be all about. Today my 89 year old mum saw her first solstice sun rise. What made it special was that she was sharing this with her grand daughters as they saw their first sunrise. With three generations from one family making a special day memorable… Sometimes… Read More Summer Solstice Sunrise

We eat lots of it at #livinggentler Greek set, Greek style, and ordinary yogurt all find a place in our fridge. Its good for you, is a great source of protein, and tastes great either as it is, or mixed with fruit and / or honey. BUT and this is the thing for us….. most… Read More Yogurt!

A quick visit to a new (to us) farm shop… First impressions of Alder Carr Farm are very favourable especially as they have a massive range of flours from local and regional suppliers. Some in small bags some in sacks. The majority of the products are local, thete is a cheese counter and a butchery… Read More More for our directory

With it being pay weekend, and the #livinggentler fridges and cupboards growing empty, we went shopping. We have a brilliant butchers in our village so our expedition started there.. Pork, bbq burgers and sausages… And vitally important from their deli/bakers some bread flour. Many thanks EW Revett and son (www.revett.co.uk). On our route out to… Read More Local shopping

We were told about this one by a local friend of our who delivers to them so we thought we would give them a try. Farm shops come in a variety of shapes and sizes from big commercial undertakings to simple one to one service. The shop at Pruttons Potatoes is of the second kind,… Read More Another day another farm shop…

This blog is written because of the family’s long held belief that we could be doing things much better than we were. We have made changes to our lifestyle but there is still further we can go with this. Its about a philosophy and us doing what we think is right then sharing it with… Read More Living gentler goes global!

I know we bang on about it here at #livinggentler but we feel it is so important to source locally. We managed to source these veg locally without resorting to any of the big four supermarkets, or the discounters. Small independent retails ate the heart of a community whether thats in a village or a… Read More We love local!

Its a lovely sunny day in our corner of Suffolk, the girls are quietly working their way through their homeschool tasks, and there is movement elswhere in the house. The bread from the weekend has almost gone so it is time to get some more on the go. We are trying some Wessex Mill stong… Read More Todays adventure with bread flour!

Now after over a month of lockdown, I realise I have learned some things about myself and where we in the http://www.livinggentler.co.uk family live. I have learned I really enjoy working from home, its challenging sometimes but I can almost do as much as if I were doing paperwork in the office. I like having… Read More What I have learned in lockdown.

We discovered Whitegate farm today, just off the A140 in Suffolk. Had a very friendly chat, bought some lovely milk supplied by their cows, and saw that they sell some wonderful cheeses! We will definately be back soon…. #livinggentler

We are putting together a blog page about what we feel are environmental confidence tricks by some big corporations. We have updated the page around liquid soap packaging, and would welcome comments about plastic micro packaging ready for our next update on https://livinggentler.wordpress.com/a-plastic-confidence-trick/

Well now here a thing…. Due to our love of liver, kidney, and haggis we already consume a reasonable amount of organ meat in our diets, but we can always do more. This campaign is designed to encourage people to consume nutrient dense organ meat, and reduce wastage from the meat industry in the process.… Read More Organuary 2020

Sincere Yuletide greetings to all our family, friends, and readers. So we tried our hardest to be as sustainable as possible and still enjoy a ‘normal’ christmas, as it turned out we had some unexpected fun along the way. Crackers… Usually supplied in a plastic box, filled with plastic ‘novelties’ that don’t even make it… Read More Christmas sustainability!

We like shopping locally, and we love buying local produce unfortunately local producers are largely overlooked by many. So a simple brunch plate such as in the picture…. Whats in it? The bubble and squeak patty is made from carrot, swede and potatoes from a farm in the next village. They have a little stall… Read More Local suppliers… Who are yours?

At the end of September I had a cardiac event. Sitting reading with number two daughter I got a sharp pain which wouldn’t go away… Hours later it was still there so I made the phone call I never wanted to have to make. 90 minutes later having travelled over 50 miles the ambulance arrived… Read More Counting blessings

The @livinggentler family had a lovely day at Tintagel, Our trip including a walk on the beach. With beautiful scenery everywhere, it was a shame the beast of waste plastic reared its head.. Myself and my eldest little environmentalist managed to find five pieces of waste the remains of a cola bottle, a blue milk… Read More Beauty and the beast!

We really are blessed here in Wickham Market, not only do we have an excellent butchery/ Deli/ Wine shop, and a Coop that sells local produce, but we also have a mini market on a Wednesday. So today it was drop the kids to school and a rainy walk into the village for some shopping,… Read More Shopping local

Unpopular, unprofitable, and unproductive. Fracking has been a contraversial subject for some time now. Aside from the environmental impact, in a time when we should be looking at moving away from fossil fuels the success of fracking on the UK mainland was always going to be questionable. Now it seems with the end of their… Read More An end to UK fracking?

The kids are loving our experiments with homemade bread. This is our latest 50/50 Chia, Poppy, and Seasame bread. Really pleased with the taste and texture.

Sustainability is a key feature in our living gentler philosophy and small wins count for a lot when living on a budget…. So we were recently giving sustainability some careful thought. ‘Energy star’ has researched the lifespan of common household appliances, and on average the humble electric toaster ends up in recycling after 5 years.… Read More Notes on sustainability

Nice day at the beach today, chilling, swimming with the family. The beach was surprisingly clean considering the number of people using it. We kept our rubbish and put it in our recycling when we got home. Along with a ketchup sachet, the end of a yogurt squeezable tube and some unidentified small pices of… Read More Day at the beach.

Anything that champions environmental and animal friendly ways of farming needs looking at. This film shows us there is an alternative to agri grown meat produced by the huge meat suppliers… And there is no surprise that pasture for life meats are more beneficial to us than meat from pellet fed indoor mass reared livestock.

One of the things we can do to contribute to our livinggentler strategy is to assess the impact of our actions. So looking at a simple loaf of bread, we ask questions about it and find we generally get these kind of answers for the average supermarket loaf; How far have we travelled to buy… Read More Our daily bread!