I’ve just finished watching the repeat of the TV series ‘It’s not easy being Green’ in which the Strawbridge family show us their skills of transferring themselves to an almost 100% green existance.
It’s the second time I’ve watched it, finding it just as interesting as the first time around and I certainly take my hat off to them all for the example they give us of helping us help ourselves etc. by using the valuable resources around us.

I couldn’t help being reminded as the programme progressed to what Dad Strawbridge said in the first episode, that he only had £100,000 to set things up with.
The first thought which came to my mind was ‘how many of us have £100,000!

Even on series such as ‘Grand Designs’, the eco-friendly houses are usually being built by those who aren’t eactly short of a bob or two and I can’t help wondering if all this media is pushing green / eco into a bracket of wealth?

For instance - I would love to be like them and become fully green so to speak, but I live in a rented property and don’t have any money! In some ways, my part of the green scene is a necessity rather than ‘an extra’.
I grow my own vegetables organically, keep chickens up the garden, burn wood as much as possible in a Rayburn - but that’s about as far as I can take it.

Even then, I have much more than most; I live in a semi-rural situation, have a very helpful Landlord and have access to a lot of ‘frugal freebies’ around and about.
I can’t afford solar panels and run a generator from the stream opposite - it’s impossible and even if I could afford it, I could be moving on and couldn’t take it with me.

I think it’s here we have to separate ‘green’, self-reliance’ and ‘frugality’. They are all inter linked and overlap, but they are separate.

I’m sure most of us are playing our part to reduce energy consumption and have a cleaner fairer planet, but most of us can only go a certain distance in this and shouldn’t have any ‘guilt’ over not being able to go the whole hog like some of these TV programmes go.

We should watch them and pick out the things we can achieve with the materials and living circumstances we have. Some of us may be able to have a garden farm and others just a window box but….

both are playing an equal part in the battle for more natural living.