Short story.......... I was a corporate salesperson selling into the construction industry, travelling coast to coast, staying in hotels several nights a week, really beginning to hate being on the road. Chance happened, I got laid off and talked my husband into leaving the beltway and move to the West Coast where I was originally from.
We bought a beautiful home in the country, on 10 acres. It had a creek, big shop, and lots of space for the dogs to run. We were in heaven. We were even secluded............. which meant everything to us!
First chance we got, we tilled up a huge garden and fenced it in to keep the deer out. Our ground was hard like clay and so we had to spend a lot of time "remediating" our soil. I had experience in gardening from my younger years, so my husband and I were a little ahead of the game. We brought in truck loads of Manure Soil, and Garden Soil. We tilled again and again. We planted our first year and our garden was ok, but could be better. We planted Corn, Green Beans, Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Zuchinni, and of course carrots, lettuce, radishes.
That fall, we decided we needed a chicken coop, so Hubby set about building one. He did a great job! We painted it red with white trim and raced to town to buy some chickens. (I will post about raising chickens at a later time.) It took 6 months for our precious chickens to start laying eggs, which was so fun! We had 10 hens and a rooster. We used the eggs to eat and the manure from cleaning the coop every week, we put on our garden.
The following year, we added more manure on the garden, and added our chicken manure spreading it all around.......... Oh my! Best thing ever, chicken manure!
The second year, our garden flourished. We added more items. Sweet Meat Squash, Green Beans, Zuchinni, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce and peas. I canned everything I could. I put all that and more on our pantry shelves. Every spare dime we had, we bought food to put in the pantry, wood for the woodstove, and ranch grown meat for our freezer. We stocked up on toilet paper, honey, sugar, flour, and everything else.
We felt great when winter came. We only needed to buy minimal things at the store. It was a good thing too, because our income dropped substantially, due to market conditions. We learned to stop shopping, stop going out for dinner, no movies, just watching every dime. We made it a game to shop smart. Coupons, run around town getting all the bargain stuff..... bartering items for items we needed.
We learned so quickly how NOT to be consumers................. to stop consuming unnecessary things and blowing money. We started to do social things that didn't cost money, like watching movies at home, potluck dinners with family and friends.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do next........... what else can we do........... and I figured it out. With all the money we saved up, I decided to have a hand pump put on my well. So that if we lost power for any length of time.......... we would still have water. It came with a hose attachment. We installed it next to our garden so we can water it easily........... Yes. It needs to be pumped, by hand..... but the 9th pump, out comes wonderful clean water from our well. :-)
It is so important to not be dependent on downtown stores for your food, etc... It is important to learn how to garden and what it would take to feed yourself for an entire year. It takes a lot of hard work, I will tell you that. You learn every year what is worth gardening and what is not, and how to grow things you can put up for the winter, and how to cook using those items really good delicious food! How to ensure you have Fruit, meat, vegies, eggs, and where to find the other items you do not want to manage yourself. Like where is the nearest dairy cow? Do your neighbors raise pigs? Where can you get goat milk in a pinch......... can you trade for it?
We are not hippys. Not that there is anything wrong with that, we are normal folk. Most people don't even realize we do all this at our home.
Since 2010, these are the skills we have mastered: Gardening- a huge garden and 3 raised beds - potatoes, strawberries and salad fixings, Raising poultry for eggs, planting, trimming and maintaining fruit trees, maintaining our blackberry and blueberry bushes, preserving food by canning and dehydrating, coupon shopping and stocking up on main staples, how to prepare vehicles, the woodstove, our animals, our pantry, for the winter months. How to make & sell soap and beauty products. You never know, we may need to barter. We have learned how to make our own lye, and we live near a farm butcher where we can get fat for tallow............... and make our own beer & wine!
6 years in and we are now in a position to really be self sufficient. We still do not have solar panels, but........ it's on the list. We decided Food and Water was the priority.
You can start today. By taking on 5 tasks to make your family more self sufficient. If you have older children, sit them down and ask them to help you make a list on how you can learn skills to be more self sufficient. Have each child take on a task to learn and to teach the family.
Start buying in bulk, and stocking up. Ask yourself if the stores were empty tomorrow, what would you do? Could you do it?
Once you have this tackled, you will find that you will change many areas of your lives. Your life becomes stress free, because you are not working to blow money. Now, you are working for a mission of self sufficiency. You may find you can even afford to change that job you hate.........
In doing this, you will need to turn off the tv. Make sure you are watching no more than 2 hrs of tv per night. That way, you have time to do your learning, etc...
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you enjoy this, feel free to share the love! We will post more, and give comments on things you would like more information on. I would be so happy to help you!
Best regards,
Cat
