What seemed to be missed in the OGL discussion was the idea of not costing ones time at all. If you save your own seed and grow your own food this is not an expenditure of your cash income but the entire product is effectively additional income. Getting fresher food, less contaminated food, food with less food miles, keeping fit etc are all side issues. If you don't buy any vegetables then you have added to your total income by the amount you would normally spend on vegetables. We were food self-sufficient in everything except grains for several years (we have too many local wild birds to be self-sufficient in grains) and also sold a lot of surplus product during that time - a five person family cannot get through the milk given by a jersey cow so we sold butter and cheese and yoghurt as well as surplus veg - and we were financially better off with only one of us earning than we are now with both of us earning. But it was also a tie. If you go away for long and leave your garden the weeds grow and you can't leave a heavily milking cow without someone to milk it. Now we just grow most of our fruit and veg we are much freer to pursue other interests - and we still get a good margin of extra income on a lot less effort
kathryn
