They Bought an Abandoned Plot and Grew THIS (80% Self-Sufficient)

For more about Dan and Laurie’s garden adventures, you can follow their YouTube channel here: @freedomforestlife

How much land would it take to feed ourselves almost entirely to the point of being virtually self-sufficient? And what would that look like? Which plants would we need to grow and just HOW HEALTHY would we look if we ate 80% of our food directly from the land we grow it on? Well, Dan and Laurie at Freedom Forest Life can answer all these questions in this jaw-dropping garden tour of their incredible off-grid plot. They transformed an abandoned, overgrown tangle of weeds to an abundant garden of Eden. Ben takes a visit to see for himself in this week’s episode.

Self-sufficiency is something we all aspire to, and today’s couple, Dan and Lori, 
grow up to 80% of their own food. They’ve got an astonishing 
variety of produce here, including some really rather unusual gems 
you just won’t find in your average garden. Come on. I can’t believe how much this feels like a jungle. We’re in the south of England and this 
might as well be summer in the Amazon. What is the thinking here, Dan? Well Ben, I’ve always been mystified by the 
rainforest ever since I was a young boy, seeing tribes on TV and living 
self-sufficiently in the jungle. I just wanted to bring a bit of that 
to the UK create a tropical paradise. And you used to live with tribes or 
spent some time with them at least? So for a number of years yes, I 
wanted to really discover what it was to be with people still living 
an indigenous way of life, completely disconnected from the outside 
world, just to see how they grew food, how they interacted with each 
other and lived in community and interacted with the forest 
and the landscape around them. And these are eucalypts, how old are these guys? These guys here are around seven years 
old and I grew those from seed as well. So, I’m sorry, but my mind is totally blown here, seven years old and they are, I mean, they’re big. They’re pretty fast growing 
yeah, believe it or not, they actually grow faster 
here than they do in Australia because of the moisture and the good soil we have. And do you use it for anything? Yeah, so we’ve started growing small 
little patches of these as firewood as our own sustainable source of firewood. We grow these because they grow much 
faster than the native trees for wood. So, as well as being a beautiful place, the jungle 
also provides a hell of a lot of materials for us. Take for example, there’s two crops 
right next to each other here, we have our own bamboo and we have 
loads of different varieties of this, so we no longer have to buy bamboo canes 
for when we’re doing supports for plants and we also have here some cannas and this is 
a really beautiful, tropical looking plant, but also has loads of different uses, for example, 
traditionally you can wrap foods in these. Some of the native people of 
South America would do that. I’ve heard you can eat the inside of 
the stem here and in times of famine they would even boil up and eat the tubers 
under the ground as well, the rhizomes. It’s got that look of banana leaf again like 
when you wrap up fish and other things in them and steam it so it’s that 
kind of feel. Yeah, so cool, but we actually use them most of all 
just as sustainable dinner plates. So we have a barbecue then you 
can just chuck it on the ground. A great idea, no plastic plates just 
chuck out the leaf, nice, I like it. This is our food forest Ben and 
it is such a valuable space to us, particularly at this time of year, 
we are blessed with so many fruits. And a food forest is kind of a hybrid orchard, so instead of just having well spaced 
trees with lots of grass in between, you utilize all the grassy areas 
for things like fruiting bushes and shrubs and other perennial 
vegetables and herbs. This gooseberrry bush that we’ve got 
here, thank you for helping me pick these. Thank you for letting me help with this. We have been meaning to get to 
this job for quite some time and these gooseberries are more than ripe. The red ones are just so pretty, aren’t they, they’re kind of like little 
jewels hanging down, aren’t they? Yeah, this is hinnonmaki red, 
this is one of our favorites, the flavor is just, it’s almost 
a little bit more like a grape and they just look so 
beautiful on the bush as well. So, I’m going to make some gooseberry 
compote with these later on, so, yeah, they will go to good use. Dan, there you are! Now there’s a lot of beans 
here isn’t there? Is this all for you guys? This is just for us actually, yeah. We tend to grow quite a bit more 
than what we might actually need due to losses and some crops 
might do better than others. So we kind of take into account 
for that by growing quite a lot. So these particular beans, we dry most 
of those and store them in glass jars, that gives us a really good source of plant-based 
protein over the winter. Lovely stuff. I love the way you’ve got these little 
alleyways of like tucking in corn here, there’s no dead space here, is there? That’s it, we find with corn some 
places they get absolutely decimated by mice and rats and squirrels. So, by 
dotting them in a few different places, hese have been untouched, but others 
have been completely wiped out. You’re like spreading your bets 
as it were. That’s it. I like it. Now I see you’ve got loads of potatoes down 
there, can we go and have a look at those? Of course, yeah. These potatoes are looking 
pretty vibrant, aren’t they? What are you growing? So here Ben, we’re growing quite 
a large area of Sarpo potatoes, they’re virus and blight resistant. Yeah. That’s something we used to 
have quite a big problem with, these have been an absolute game 
changer. And do they store okay? They do, we keep these and we’ve 
got potatoes all the way through even to the end of spring sometimes. 
Really? Well, that’s good going. Now, this is something that we have to 
address here now, bananas in England? Bananas, here they are, you’ve got 
to bring a taste of the tropics. Yeah, well it feels tropical 
on a day like this, doesn’t it? And do you have to bundle them up in winter? 
How do you protect them from getting frosted? Well, this particular variety is called Musa 
basjoo, and it’s root hardy to almost -18° celsius What? So, you can wrap these if your 
temperature goes below -2 for the stems, but actually we find once the stems get 
big after the first couple of years, we no longer even wrap these. Right, so they get a bit clobbered 
cosmetically, but then they spring back. They often look a bit rough over 
winter. If you live in a very cold area, they’ll die right down and grow back up, 
but here, they just survive over winter. I have seen bananas before in 
England but this is probably the most magnificent specimen I’ve ever 
seen, so fair play. Absolutely beautiful. Now this isn’t nasturtium is 
it? But it looks very similar. No this is actually called mashua, 
it’s basically a perennial nasturtium, but it is even better than nasturtium 
because all parts of the plant is edible. It’s got the classic sort of spicy leaf that 
nasturtium has got, but it’s a little bit thicker. It is isn’t it? Yeah. The flower, 
when they come out later in the year, they’re a little bit different 
to normal nasturtium as well, beautiful orange trumpet 
flowers, you can eat those, but the selling point of this 
plant is it creates an edible tuber under the ground that you harvest in 
winter, it looks like a great big grub. You can eat it raw, grate it, use it in 
salads, it’s spicy a bit like wasabi, or you can cook it and it gets 
really creamy and much more mild. Nice. I love plants like that where 
absolutely every bit can be put to use, that gives you more bang for your buck, 
doesn’t it? Yeah, absolutely brilliant. one of our favorites, it’s from the Andes 
and yeah, we really, really value it. Dan, hello, now this is, 
is it oca? This is oca, yes and this is a tuber crop in the 
oxalis family which we really value. There’s many ways to use it, but we’re 
using it this year as a ground cover in amongst some of our other plantings. And that really must be helping with this 
sort of baking hot season we’re having so far. It definitely is, especially 
when things were getting started, it just provided that bit of shade as well. Yeah. And the corn’s got a lovely kind of 
purple tinge to it, so I’m guessing that’s not your common or garden sweet 
corn, is it? What have we got here? This is a variety called 
Painted Mountain. Oh yeah. And viewers in America might 
know of this type of corn more, which is often known as like a 
flour corn or a flint corn. Yeah. Which isn’t one that you eat fresh which 
is really sweet, but you dry it out. What would you use that for, 
like making tortillas or? So it can be used in a number of 
ways, you can grind it into a flour or down into kind of like a grit and you can 
make porridge or tortillas or cornbread even. Gosh, it’s quite versatile, isn’t it? And you’ve got two of the three 
sisters here with these squashes they’re looking really quite abundant, 
they’re clearly liking the sunshine. What are your favorite 
squashes, what’s growing here? Well, we love to grow a variety 
called spaghetti squash, which is one that literally does come out like 
spaghetti, you can pull your fork through it. And we also grow one called jumbo pink 
banana as well, which is a massive beast. Appropriately named by the sounds of it. And what makes these crops beautiful is they’re 
all ones that we can store over winter as well. In that time when it’s leaner, we have good 
bulk of nutrients for us. Yeah, fantastic. So Ben, this whole area used to 
be thick with bramble and gorse and slowly over the years we have 
brought it back to what you see today. Bramble and gorse, how did you get on top of that? Because I imagine that must 
have been an absolute nightmare. Oh yeah, Dan has worked incredibly hard over the 
years and he still is, yeah, he still is now. And we do have to really keep on top of 
particularly like the gorse will seed still and if you pull it out while it’s small, 
it’s really easy to keep on top of. But yeah, and actually the gorse had created 
quite a good mulch on top of the soil here, but we have used a lot of compost 
and then we wood chip the paths to really add in as much fertility as we can and the wood chip also helps to lock moisture 
in which continues to drain into the beds. It’s just a constant job, but it’s one we love. Where do you get your wood chip from, 
is that from a local tree surgeon or? Yeah, we’re actually really lucky, we 
have a green waste site very nearby. We would eventually like to get to the stage 
where we are 100% self-sufficient in compost. We do talk about getting a wood chipper, 
but it’s really easy for us to go and get. Well, if it’s a resource 
on your doorstep, why not? And it is, it’s all local, so it does still kind 
of fit with all of our ethics here as well. Yeah. And I was noticing this, you were telling me 
earlier that this is your nemesis at the moment, this sheep sorrel. Sheep sorrel, this is another 
thing that this land has been thick with, it seems to love it here. Our 
soil is actually slightly acidic so I’m assuming that this plant particularly 
likes acidic soil and it just runs, it’s got running roots a bit like bindweed, it’s another thing that we have 
to constantly stay on top of. But it is actually edible as well so it does 
have some uses then. Not all bad then. No. The leaves have a really nice, 
sort of slightly lemony flavor. It’s got an electrical zing to it almost, 
very pleasant. They’re lovely in salads and they are, I’ve heard, very medicinal as 
well, yeah, tribes of the past have used them in many ways before. I think 
anti-cancerous I’ve heard. Amazing. Allen heads? And the chickens love alien heads. They are pampered chucks getting all 
this lovely fresh organic produce. Do you manage to grow anything for them or is 
it just like scraps and so on that they get? We are working on growing as much 
of their food as we possibly can and that will hopefully build up over time. As you can see, we’ve got 
sunflowers growing in here and that will be snack food for them 
when the sunflower heads seed up. We’re also growing other things like 
amaranth and we give them a lot of kale. We will still always make sure they 
have chicken layer pellets as well to make sure they get the 
nutrition that they need, but we’re hoping to over time learn 
about lots of different foods. Having the chickens just adds another 
layer to our self-sufficiency and yeah, hopefully over time we can make 
them more self-sufficient as well with the food that we grow. Amazing. So, this is another amazing plant 
Ben that we use as a material. This is called the Harakeke I believe 
by the Maori people of New Zealand, often called the phormium. Yeah, 
that’s how I recognize it. Yeah. And this is a plant that they would 
use to weave baskets and mats with and it has a really amazing high strength 
fibre to it. Just comes away in little strands. Feel that, how strong it is, you 
can’t even break it. Oh my goodness! That is proper. Yeah. That’s incredible. So 
we use this as a replacement of garden twine. Yeah. And you can make it a bit more 
nimble literally by running your secateurs. Oh, you get it kind of bit more supple like 
lwhen you’re tying a ribbon or something. And it’s ready to go, you can tie bits together 
to make longer lengths as well. I love it. Steaming up here Dan, I reckon it must be over 
100 Fahrenheit or like 40 or something in here. I think well over 40 I’d say today. 
Yeah. But obviously someone’s enjoying it like the eggplant or aubergine and 
this guy here, is that a tromboncino, is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, this is 
actually we call them trombone courgettes. Trombone, yeah. I think they may be Italian 
and they grow literally well over a foot, sometimes over a meter and the 
really cool thing about those is you can use them as normal 
courgettes this time of year. Okay. But you can also leave them on the plant to 
mature and they store right the way through. So you’re getting like a summer and a 
winter squash all in one plant. Yeah. That’s really impressive. Yeah, again 
it’s like the bananas we saw earlier, it’s sort of full of surprises, 
you know, something you associate with sort of Mediterranean climates, but 
I guess today is proving the point nicely. Yeah, I mean we love to push the 
limits of stuff and try everything. So, we’ve got all sorts in here Ben, but a 
couple of things that I find really interesting is the kale, this kale plant over here, this is it going into its third 
season, it’s done two winters. And then we’ve also got the New Zealand 
spinach which we grow both inside and outside and you can see now how heat tolerant 
New Zealand spinach really is. Yeah, it’s incredible, I’ve heard 
it’s quite drought tolerant as well. It’s loving life in here and you know, 
you can feel how hot it is today. Another favorite thing that we grow in the 
tunnels every year are these Cape Gooseberries. We’ve got two different varieties that we’re 
trying this year and they are just amazing, they give us such a beautiful harvest when 
all of the other fruits from the food forest are just about finishing at the 
end of summer, early autumn. Absolutely love Cape gooseberries. Oh, gorgeous. Try this one Ben, this is Korean mint, it’s the first year I’ve grown it 
and we are absolutely loving it. Oh, that’s lovely, it’s got a real 
aniseed note actually, hasn’t it? Yeah, it’s amazing in teas. I’ve read that 
it’s the flowers that most people harvest for drying for tea, but I’ve actually been 
using the leaves and I think it’s fabulous. Oh, it is fabulous. So, I guess you’re saving the seeds here, 
do you manage to save much of your own seed and keep it going from year to year? We 
do try and save seed where it’s feasible, because again, that’s another 
layer of self-sufficiency, but we don’t save seed if 
it’s a really tricky one. You can see we’ve got the parsnips to the side of 
you there, they’re pretty easy to save seed on, these leeks here, but yeah, anywhere we can 
add another layer to our self-sufficiency and reduce costs and close the loop and 
keep everything in house, then we do try. And I can see all the insects are loving it 
too, there’s like soldier beetles, wasps, flies, hoverflies, it’s a buggy paradise 
here. Yeah and that is another reason why I just love leaving these leeks to flower because they just offer so much 
diversity for the wildlife as well. So here’s some more seed that we do save Ben. So we’ve got pea and bean seeds here and they 
are, of course, really easy seeds to save. So we just put them in these drying 
racks and finish them off in the shed. Really tactile and pleasingly kind of like 
you hear them rattling, that’s so satisfying. Yeah, you just want to keep running 
through them. You do don’t you! You guys are such sweet peas, 
you really are. Thank you Ben! This is a lovely part of the 
garden with all these cut flowers. Are you selling them or is it 
just for your own vases at home? A bit of both actually. So yeah, 
we’ve been really enjoying learning and trying to grow more cut flowers this year, 
some of them is for us and for the insects. And yeah, we have been doing a few 
markets where we sell our surplus produce and also some of the beautiful cut flowers. I think it sums up this area, 
you guys, you’re beautiful people and you’ve got a beautiful thing going on here. Thank you so much for having us today. Thank 
you, Ben. It’s been an absolute pleasure. You are a true English gentleman, 
thank you. Oh, cheers guys. Cheers.