Become Self-Sufficient? Yes You Can

Permaculture, homesteading, sustainable living, they all go hand in hand. They all describe the cultural goal of living ‘with’ nature as opposed to using it for personal gain without giving any thought to its health. Attentiveness to the needs of Earth requires the constant and sustained effort that these ideals embody.

When mankind undertook the domestication of animals and the cultivation of landscapes for his personal consumption, he accepted an unwritten responsibility to, in return, provide the sustenance required to maintain those systems now that they no longer depended on nature to provide. The resulting symbiotic relationship has not always been honored in the healthiest manner possible. Mankind introduced chemicals in order to ‘persuade’ nature to give up more, and at a quicker pace, than was previously possible. We have not always been able or willing to replenish what we have taken. As a result, we have witnessed the collapse of entire eco-systems while certain species of animals have disappeared forever.

Self-reliance and self-sustainable living are prized goals of the ‘back to the land’ movement begun over fifty years ago. It is rooted in a basic life ethic which recognizes the intrinsic worth of every living thing. Many people romanticize the sustainable lifestyle but not quite as many are capable of ‘pulling it off’. To put it bluntly, we have become spoiled by our creature comforts, our ability to ‘run to the store’ at a moments notice for butter or an outfit for this weekends party or even a family meal.

Returning to the land and becoming self-sufficient requires talent, perseverance and an education in what true self-reliance entails. It can be done, but you have to be willing and committed to making it work.

That being said, here are some words to hopefully define what many see as ‘trading convenience for a life that fits their moral values’:

Permaculture -

Permaculture is about harmony between people and nature. It is sustainable land use design. Only when you know how the wind and the sun flow over the land, how the animals move, how the soil is composed and what plants naturally flourish there, can you begin to design a system that truly fits there.

The use of traditional farming methods, knowledge of local flora and fauna, and knowledge of cutting edge ‘appropriate technology’, to create human settlements that sit lightly on the earth.

Elements in a system are viewed in relationship to other elements, where the outputs of one element become the inputs of another. Within a Permaculture system, work is minimized, "wastes" become resources, productivity and yields increase, and environments are restored. Permaculture principles can be applied to any environment, at any scale from dense urban settlements to individual homes, from farms to entire regions.

Homesteading –

Do It Yourself is the mantra of every homesteader.

Personal self-reliance, a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money. This is the single most important requirement for being a homesteader. Changing your own oil, growing your own food, collect and use rain water instead of using municipal or well water, supplement your home’s heating system with solar panels, all of these things are the marks of a homesteader.

“Homesteader" might be the antithesis to "consumer." Even the term "consumer" implies that one only consumes: continually buys, uses up, and buys more. A true consumer gives nothing back to the planet in return. A homesteader, on the other hand, creates, nourishes, and nurtures. A homesteader is a worthy steward to the Earth.

Anyone can be considered a homesteader in any environment, suburbs, urban, or rural. If you grow your own food and raise a few animals for your personal consumption, then you are considered a homesteader.

Sustainable Living -

A lifestyle that attempts to reduce our use of Earth’s natural resources through changes in transportation, energy consumption and diet. Proponents of sustainable living aim to conduct their lives in manners that are consistent with sustaining a balance that is respectful of Earth’s natural ecology and cycles.

The recent downturn in our economy brought many new faces to the idea of self-reliance and sustainable living, but, as is often the case, when things start improving those faces tend to fade back into the crowd of those not yet willing to sacrifice their big fuel guzzling vehicles and expensive manicures. I’m not trying to be judgmental here, it is what it is.

Even those people willing to send us closer to the bottom of the fossil fuel well faster than the rest of us can do something to help society. Stop buying non-recyclable materials, start recycling and continue doing it, flex your political muscle to force more widespread acceptance of renewable energy, and put your money where your polluting tailpipe is by scaling back on those unnecessary, over-sized, ego-boosting, fossil-fuel-guzzling, road hogs.

We are in this mess together, like it or not, and we really should ALL try to do our part to make it last as long as we can.

The home gardener has taken the necessary first steps towards becoming self-sufficient. You can too. Learn how to grow your own food, hoe to preserve it, feel yourself becoming physically and mentally healthier and soon you will begin to hear that small voice inside you saying ‘yes I too can break away from the energy grid that is sucking money right out of my pocket’. Before you know it you will be referring to yourself as self-sufficient.

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Permaculture: A Revolution in Food Security

This is a topic I posted on one of my other blogs at “Are We Green Yet?”. I feel the subject is topical enough to post here as well. I was going to rewrite it to take out some of the political aspects of it but reconsidered when I realized that a little politicizing is good for gardeners now and then. And after all many of us are part of the new food revolution, so here goes.

A new term has entered our lexicon, peak oil. What the everyday consumer is supposed to envision upon hearing this term is that the world has already extracted half of the planet’s natural oil resources and from this moment on the rate of production has entered a terminal decline. What this means to us of course is that the price of oil will only go higher due to its increasing scarcity and our ever increasing population size and our continued dependence on fossil-fuel-burning industry. British Petroleum (BP) claims we have not reached this ‘peak’ point while other oil companies say we have. And the debate continues without any clear way of knowing if we have reached peak oil because no one knows exactly how much oil is available under the planets surface.

Personally, I don’t know who to believe because I am not an expert, so I, like the rest of us, am at the mercy of those who are, or claim to be, experts. I do, however, believe we should aggressively research alternative energy sources no matter how much oil remains to be extracted. The longer we wait to actually adopt an alternative energy source(s) the more money we are throwing at big oil who clearly have no real interest in pursuing an alternative to using their product and the more environmental damage we are doing to the planets surface, air and water.

In the meantime, while we watch our government drag its feet in setting token and ineffective attempts at environmental policy while agribusiness and oil executives suck every dollar out of our pockets, there is a movement underway that has, unwittingly, been developing for years by individuals covering a wide spectrum of people who call themselves home gardeners, urban farmers, weekend garden ‘hobbyists’, and lately, locavores.

Permaculture and the increasing desire to become self-sufficient and sustainable is a lifestyle whose time has returned. Farming communities survived quite well for many, many years before we became industrialized and traded our independence for the convenience of having such things as: out-of-season fruits and vegetables every day of the year, and someone else to grow and can our foods.

With the emergence of recent issues concerning food safety, food and gas prices, genetically modified food, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation of food over great distances, and food freshness and quality, more and more people are becoming painfully aware of the dangerously vulnerable position we are being forced into. The continued reliance on agribusiness, government, big oil and even financial organizations to provide for our daily necessities is in jeopardy.

I am convinced that communities everywhere need to create local, sustainable, community gardens to supplement each individuals home gardens for the purpose of creating community food surplus in case of national emergency. I realize I may sound alarmist, but our nations cupboard is bare.

I recently discovered a group based in Nevada City, California, called Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy. APPLE is a grassroots group striving for a more self-reliant, sustainable local economy (as opposed to global economy that the world’s money changers are pushing for). They produce locally what they consume locally, as much as possible. It is an intuitive idea that I believe many people have been craving as an answer to our need for food safety and community activism. It is a means of re-establishing our own control over what we eat and how it is grown.

They have produced over 100 videos, they call them conversations, featuring everyday individuals who adopted permaculture and have taken the step towards sustainability in their own yards. Be sure to watch #51 “An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability” and #100 “Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg”.

One such video, entitled “How Much Food Can You Grow in Your Yard?”, shows an urban lot, measuring 75’ by 125’, in Port Townsend, Washington. The home owner, Judy Alexander, takes us through her self-sustained property re-educating us on how it is possible to grow enough food to sustain your family and have excess for neighbors, friends, or community storage.

Whether you agree or disagree with the narrators assessment that we have reached a peak of human innovation, information, wealth and health, check out the videos for some very educational insight to what it can be like to regain our independence and get back the satisfaction that being in touch with land brings.

There are of course many other groups out there creating their own sustainable eden. One of my personal favorite experiments in permaculture is taking place at the “Little Homestead in the City”. They call themselves eco-pioneers living a homegrown revolution on a sustainable, real-life original urban homestead. They have set an excellent example of how anyone can create an environment that reaches out to the community at large and can therefore inspire others fulfill their own need for independence. It truly is a revolution.

Our dependence on oil is becoming more and more expensive in terms of cost of extraction and production which gets passed on to the consumer, and in the cost of damage to the environment in terms of exploration, extraction and burning of oil which is felt by everyone. We are being forced to accept higher food prices as the result of short-sighted use of food crops for the production of bio-fuels instead of using non-food crops. In our rush to sever ties to foreign oil we are made to believe that the only immediate answer is to damage the environment further by increasing the number of offshore oil wells.

Through the use of the internet and our increased access to each others gardens and skills, through blogs and websites as educational tools, we are all becoming more empowered to take the course of our future into our own hands, to grow our own food, and share the excess with neighbors in an attempt to get this food revolution off the ground.





Further reading:
Instant permaculture for the suburbs

Are we running out of oil?

Why peak oil is probably about now

Permaculture Institute

Homesteading Today

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