I guess self sufficiency depends on how you look at it. I mean, I don't know if it is a realistic goal for many of us simply based on where we live and what we have to work with. Let me clarify this by saying for me I could see this being a reality if I lived on some type of farm as opposed to an apartment in the city. I live on neither. I have a nice 1 acre homestead that has about 1/8 acre set aside for a raised bed garden. I started catching rainwater and for the past month have used it almost exclusively to water te garden. I have a few citrus trees. I'm retired at a very young age. Money isn't a problem but I get a huge feeling of self worth and satisfaction by growing food, using sensical, live off the land methods. I'd like to explore solar power. Right now my goal is that I produce 75% or more of my family's food. Realistically, I think I need about another year or two to do this.

quote:

quote:
I guess if we are not on welfare we are self sufficient.


I do volunteer work for folks who are on "welfare". What's that supposed to mean? These are people who have no legs, some no hands, and some who are veterans. They are actually pretty good gardeners! One lady is in a wheelchair and has her own website on gardening from a wheelchair.

Linda, the people you work with are obviously the ones who actually need welfare. And it sounds like they actually want to be useful productive people.

The people I see in my area who are on welfare are far different. Most of them are young unwed mothers who are churning out babies faster than I can pay my taxes. They have no desire to work, nor support themselves. Or there's the man down the street who lost part of his hand in an accident who is living on a disability check. He's a great gardener, he grows most of his own food. But he's also perfectly capable of holding down a job and won't becuase then he'd loose that disability check that your and my tax dollars are paying for. Seems like that money would be better spent helping your folks in wheelchairs get more raised beds to garden in.

I have no problem with my tax dollars paying welfare for disabled vets and people who truly can't work. But the system needs an overhaul, badly.

Take it from someone who has approached "self-sufficiency" about as close as it's possible to get and still remain alive---self-sufficiency sucks!
The ILLUSION of self-sufficiency isn't all that bad, and can even be enjoyable and satisfying in some ways, but TRUE self-sufficiency is a bumpy road to hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, and a very short life span.
These carbon shells we walk around in just aren't cut out for it.

I have worked with the "other" welfare recipients, and it makes me want to just slap some faces. But, really, it's not fair to put all of them in the same category. I know what you're talking about, and as long we all know the difference, I'm right there with you.

quote:

Originally posted by James_1:
Basically we need food, shelter and water. Ask; where do we get these things? For the most part it is very difficult to provide these things yourself unless you belong to a hunter-gatherer society. Lets face it, most of what we have for survival comes in on a truck and is bought with money. If you want to be self sufficient it requires that you be proficient at making money.

I guess if we are not on welfare we are self sufficient.

If I can use James_1’s definition I am there, almost anyway. I own (no mortgage) an acre with a small house and have some money left over at the end of the month. My wife and I grow our favorite flowers and a few of our favorite veggies too. We grow the veggies more for the flavor than to be self-sufficient but I guess that if we had to we could expand our garden.

We have room in the back of the garage to put canned goods if we needed to and we have room to put in some fruit trees too if we needed to.

I could also keep all the fish I catch but for now I practice “Catch and Release” for the most part. And I could also take up hunting again, though I haven’t done that for almost 40 years now, because we are surrounded by deer, rabbits and thousands of game birds.

This is a huge issue for me. Without getting into all the details as to why, I am currently dependent on a local food bank for much of my food. I can only expand my garden as funds allow, but this year's garden will be about three times as big as last year's. We live day-to-day, and need to put up a 7.5' fence around the garden to keep the deer out, so expenses entail mainly if we have the extra money to put up this fence. I am hopeful that we can triple last year's garden size, and continue to do so in the future.
Complete sustainability is the plan, except that adding solar is beyond imagination at this point. Food wise, it is a realistic goal within the next two years. By next year we should be able to add add a chicken coop, and maybe a few sheep. If we can get to the point of total food sustainability, a major portion of the goal will have been accomplished.
We have plenty of wood to burn for fuel, but burning restrictions prevent this. This is the impediment to full sustainability.

I am much less than five percentage points,
off the family's World War Two Victory Garden.

trinharder--just keep on truckin'. It's hard in this day and age to make all things click together to make it work. If I lived closer to you, I'd be more than happy to give you my surplus from the garden as would most folks in here. I take so much to the Food Bank/Pantry here in town. Not because I feel sorry for folks as much as I just don't want it to "go bad" and throw it out. I have my grandparents old home, and I mean OLD HOME. It has an inefficient oil furnace that I turned off about 5 years ago. We use space heaters in the rooms we occupy, and that costs about one-fourth of what the oil would cost. When I can get the money, I hope to convert to solar completely using the same pipes here already installed that relied on oil. Fortunately the house is pretty well insulated and those space heaters work great. It's just hard to leave home during the coldest times of the year because you need to be close by to monitor them. I, too, have a problem with heating with wood and regulations. Over the years I have acquired several wood-burning cook stoves. My homeowners insurance has said that I cannot use them here because of a fire code. Mind you, they are in top notch condition, but they cannot be within the confines of the house. I can put them on the outside porch and use them, and enclose the porch area..but I don't have the money that it would cost to enclose the area and add a chimney to meet code. I don't want to set up shop so to speak and heat the outside air and not be able to use it. I am truly sorry you are having a hard time right now, but I will keep you in my prayers. I have loads of seeds, and will be happy to send you some. Just post a list of what you need/want, and will send what I have.

My point is simply that; in the society in which we live it is pretty much impossible to be self sufficient in terms of providing for ourselves everything that we need. But we can be self sufficient in that we don't rely on others for our upkeep. In other words, we pay our own way. To do that requires sufficient money. If you want to be self sufficient, the best thing you can do is learn how to earn money. Just because we garden and grow some of our own food does in no way make us self sufficient. Neither are those on welfare self sufficient. I do not say this to impune those good people for whom you work, nor any others who are on welfare. Just stating the facts.

Yes, we can do much to provide, and yes, we do. It is this common goal that brings us together in a forum such as this. The question was: Are you satisfied with your level of self sufficiency?

The answer is: Only if we can earn enough money to buy the things we can't grow in the garden.

quote:

Originally posted by earthworm77:
I guess self sufficiency depends on how you look at it. I mean, I don't know if it is a realistic goal for many of us simply based on where we live and what we have to work with. Let me clarify this by saying for me I could see this being a reality if I lived on some type of farm as opposed to an apartment in the city. I live on neither. I have a nice 1 acre homestead that has about 1/8 acre set aside for a raised bed garden. I started catching rainwater and for the past month have used it almost exclusively to water te garden. I have a few citrus trees. I'm retired at a very young age. Money isn't a problem but I get a huge feeling of self worth and satisfaction by growing food, using sensical, live off the land methods. I'd like to explore solar power. Right now my goal is that I produce 75% or more of my family's food. Realistically, I think I need about another year or two to do this.

Would you call yourself a suburban homesteader?

quote:

Originally posted by weedkicker:
Take it from someone who has approached "self-sufficiency" about as close as it's possible to get and still remain alive---self-sufficiency sucks!
The ILLUSION of self-sufficiency isn't all that bad, and can even be enjoyable and satisfying in some ways, but TRUE self-sufficiency is a bumpy road to hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, and a very short life span.
These carbon shells we walk around in just aren't cut out for it.

Yes, it is tough work. I have seen strict Amish and can see that. And they are not 100% self sufficient as some use NG and some use kerosene for light. They buy horses at auction and other items as well.

I've read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder books and while some of it sounds romantic, for the most part it sounds like a very tough life.

But if our future life hold true to the prediction that all fossil fuels as well as uranium will be running our in the near term future, self sufficiency is a goal we must shoot for all the while realizing we will never actually be able to perfect.

I come to self sufficiency from a survivalist background. You touched on the problem in your post when you mentioned carbon.

We have built our lives artificially on a carbon based world. We have built it on steroids call crude oil and its byproducts and our drug is being taken away from us. And if we are able to perfect a few areas of self sufficiency, our neighbor may be able to perfect some others and we can barter if need be and still live some sort of life.

No, it may not be as pumped us a life as when we were on steroids, but it is still a life. Of course, the brainiacs may find out how to burn water and air and we may avoid the catastrophe of no crude and NG...but they will still have to figure out how to make tires from corn as crude oil is a necessary ingredient in tires.

Many people don't realize that petrochemicals comprise about 9 to 10% of a barrel of crude oil value to mankind. In short, if we stopped burning crude and just used it for petrochemicals we would still deplete our crude supplies, albeit it would take much longer to do it.

I am a transplant from L.A., lived there 35 years and moved in 1989 to the NE US to 'city-country' as opposed to 'city-city'. I had a big shock the first time the electric went off for more than 5 minutes in my new local. That was the day I learned about self sufficiency about 17 years ago.

Bought some candles and a flashlight and went on from there. But that only clued me into 'short term survival' with my preparedness aimed at 4 to 6 weeks.

Then came 'peak oil' ' peak NG' 'peak food' 'peak water' 'overpopulation' and had my eyes opened to long term, indefinite survival.

You still have some valuable time left to prepare for what awaits you down the road. We are in the 'Indian Summer'. Don't wait until the winter sets in to start work on your preparedness efforts.

One other point; none of us will be ultimate survivors, we all have to die one day. But the successful survivor extends his or her life beyond an earlier death...a death that was caused by ignorance of how to make that life last longer.


Book and DVD list. All available from your local library.


Beyond Oil: the view from Hubbert's Peak
by Deffeyes, Kenneth S.
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/

The Coming Economic Collapse - how you can thrive when oil costs $200 a barrel
by Leeb, Stephen

A Crude Awakening - the oil crash
Lava Productions AG, Switzerland DVD
http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/

The End of Suburbia - oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream
by Greene, Gregory DVD
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

High Noon for Natural Gas: the new energy crisis
by Darley, Julian
http://www.highnoon.ws/

The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century
by Kunstler, James Howard

Oil Apocalypse
History channel DVD

Peak Oil Survival: preparation for life after gridcrash
by McBay, Aric

Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world
by Heinberg, Richard

Resource Wars: the new landscape of global conflict
by Klare, Michael T
http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-...uction/dp/0805055762

A Thousand Barrels a Second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world
by Tertzakian, Peter

Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy
by Simmons, Matthew R.
Well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields.

Who Killed the Electric Car?
Sony Pictures Classics release
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

Zoom:the global race to fuel the car of the future
by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.

quote:

Originally posted by trinharder:
This is a huge issue for me. Without getting into all the details as to why, I am currently dependent on a local food bank for much of my food. I can only expand my garden as funds allow, but this year's garden will be about three times as big as last year's. We live day-to-day, and need to put up a 7.5' fence around the garden to keep the deer out, so expenses entail mainly if we have the extra money to put up this fence. I am hopeful that we can triple last year's garden size, and continue to do so in the future.
Complete sustainability is the plan, except that adding solar is beyond imagination at this point. Food wise, it is a realistic goal within the next two years. By next year we should be able to add add a chicken coop, and maybe a few sheep. If we can get to the point of total food sustainability, a major portion of the goal will have been accomplished.
We have plenty of wood to burn for fuel, but burning restrictions prevent this. This is the impediment to full sustainability.

Wow you got deer worse than me. I can get by with a four foot fence.

Suburban Homesteader, perhaps. My area is quite rural but not a farm area. Those deer of yours must not be good jumpers. I used to live on LI NY and would see deer caught in the barbed wire, half over the fence at the Grumman Naval Reserve. These were 8ft fences, I'd guess most of them made it over without incident. Yours are just playing with you Allen. lol

If you fence your garden into small area’s, like 3 feet by 8 feet with a 4-foot high fence then the deer will not jump in because they fear getting trapped is such small spaces.

I fence only the growing areas and not the paths in my garden. I leave one side attached fairly loosely so I can take it down by undoing it to get inside to weed, mulch and harvest the product.

It seems to work great for me and our deer roam in herds of up to a dozen so we definitely have a deer problem.

quote:

Originally posted by allenwrench:

Wow you got deer worse than me. I can get by with a four foot fence.

There's generally a small herd of 8-12 here on a daily basis, but the most I have ever counted in back of the house at one time was 32. I really don't know if an 8' fence is too high or not high enough--I've seen them jump some pretty tall fences. Essentially,I went with an (actual) 7 1/2' fence because it was easier to double up 4' rolls, and then I buried 6" under ground.