Is anyone self sufficient, or plan to be?

[Thediaryofanobody]

Just wondering if they are any self sufficient MN or anyone who aspire to be?
Why? How? When?

I quite like the idea of being more self sufficient but not sure if I'd be capable of it. We will hopefully be moving by the end of the year and will have more land to grow veg. But I've never grown veg before (well I did grow some tomatoes when I was 8) or kept animals for food.
I can be quite crafty when the mood takes so could learn to sew better to make household items such as curtains ( MIL does this she'd love to teach me) and knit clothing and blankets.

There are some very good books on self-sufficiency, which I'm sure you could get from the library. We grow some of our own veg and fruit, keep chickens but that's about it. You actually need quite a lot of space to be really self-sufficient, as you will need constant crops and also goats (or cows) for milk. If you plan on keeping pigs to eat, then you have to learn how to slaughter them, or take them somewhere, which I can imagine is quite traumatic. Don't have any experience of this myself (have to call in my dad to despatch any ailing hens!). Good luck with it though - I'm sure it would be a really fantastic, fulfilling lifestyle if you can manage it.

Surprise we plan to have Min 1 acre probably 2-3 acres. Will this be enough?
I BF but none of us drink milk due to diary intolerance's.
Pigs I have considered but not sure if I could then send to be slaughtered after feeding them everyday.
Chickens we certainly plan to have, in-laws keep chickens so hopefully they will be helpful with tips.

We're not, but we're doing what we can, in terms of things like growing our fruit and veg and herbs for the year (and we live in Canada, so it's a short season compared to many); heat with our wood; generate some of our own power; have 2 water supplies, etc.

We do buy a beef, a pig, many chickens and several turkeys each year.

Don't think we'll ever get to the point where we're totally self sustaining, but enjoy getting as close as we can. We have found that we have spent almost no money to get things where they are (but a LOT of work), but are at a point now where if we want to take the next big leap we'd need to make some sizeable investment.

In terms of gardens, we are 100% organic (enormous amount of work) and have an annual cost of only a few dollars for seeds that I can't save each fall. How much success you have in a certain amount of space is largely down to the quality of the soil, which you can work on over time. Our yield is now about 3x what it was 10 years ago in the same space.

It is extremely rewarding, but also an enormous amount of work. For us it is worth it as our ideal life would be entirely self sustaining...hope you find it as fulfilling....

see, modern self sufficiency depends on having half a million to spend on a house with land on which you can become self sufficient.
Nice work if you can get it
A bit bogus

mary we do not have anywhere near half a million but with careful planning we intend to own a fair amount of land and build a house. It is possible.

passingtooquickly Your lifestyle is pretty much how we'd like to live, 100% self sufficient probably would make life too hard.
Soil quality is a good point, will remember that when looking at land.

I would love to be but I cant see it ever happening so I'll stick with chickens and growing stuff. Hope to do meat chickens and quail again one day when my life stops being on hold

bronze keeping chickens and growing stuff is more than what most do, be proud of it.

I have a lot of help (not physical but info)
I'm a mod on a green forum and I ask advice on every single little thing and they are a fab help

I hope you get your space. I find its good for the soul too

LOL, we had nowhere near a half million! We have spent very little so far, far less than most people pay for a home in a town/city. It's definitely possible, and you don't need to be totally 100% self sufficient to reap the benefits of the way it makes you feel.

You do not need a lot of land, what you are talking about is enough if it is laid out carefully. Planning your land use based on things like where water naturally flows makes a big difference.

Bronze - that is great!

I think truly producing all your own needs would be a real challenge (shoes? tools? nails?) - although I find the Laura Ingalls Wilder books really interesting in their description of a life which really did involve almost no purchased items. (Pegs to hold the house together, anyone?)

Looking just at producing food & power I would say 1 acre is not really enough land. You'd probably want to plant all of your acre up to coppice woodland for heating/cooking for a start. Of course you don't necessarily have to have a smallholding as such - we run a land based business & have a house in a village & land about a mile away which is a cheaper alternative (until recently we rented the land). Harder if you have animals though (we have chickens but in our backgarden).

Vegetables - not much land needed - you can grow all the veg (including potatoes) for four adults on two allotments (been there, done that )

Animals - you need much more land especially if you are planning to grow your own food for them - I seem to remember a figure of 1 acre intensively cropped to provide fodder for 5 goats, for example?

Vegan organic is probably a less land intensive way to go if you really want to produce all your own food - but you need to allow for space to grow fertility building crops, and it is a skilled business.

Power - if at all possible, look for land with water & a drop suitable for micro-micro hydro - massively the cheapest & most reliable way to produce your own power. Otherwise it is achievable reasonably affordably with wind (if you can get planning permission & are in a suitably windy & isolated site) or photo-voltaic (need a south facing roof & either to cut your usage to the bone or spend a lot of ££s).

I would really recommend the magazine 'The Land' (published by The Land is Ours - who are also people that you really want to know if you are thinking of trying to get planning permission to build your own place). You might also find it helpful to visit other people who produce a lot of their own food/needs. WWOOF is a good place to start, there are also quite a few intentional communities out there that might be of interest (Old Hall Community in Suffolk is an inspirational place to visit).

A really good book is Surviving and Thriving on the Land by Rebecca Laughton - subtitle is 'how to use your time & energy to run a successful smallholding' and it does what it says on the tin. RL used to live at Tinkers Bubble (who are seriously hardcore) & definitely knows her stuff.

An inspirational but less directly practical book that you might like is The Fat of the Land by John Seymour (the original back-to-the-land guru from the 70s).

John Seymour always bugs me. Sally did all the work and he took the credit

The editor of the mag I get (home farmer) is always banging on about him and its getting on my tits

Tavker can I ask what business you have?

Well, I do take your point, bronze - I think that he was one of those people who was impossible to live with but really good at inspiring others, which is a useful talent. (I can't remember who it was who pointed out that Gerrard Winstanley can't have had much time for digging given the number of pamphlets he turned out . . . but we probably wouldn't remember the Diggers if it weren't for them.)

Business - we run a (very) small seed company.

Sorry - OT and nothing to do with self-sufficiency - but there are loads of lovely pics of Sally (and the rest of the family's) work here

Can I ask a question to people aspiring to be self-sufficient?

What are your views on the whole population of the UK becoming self-sufficient or trying to be?

Do you mean everyone individually growing their own food, or do you mean the UK producing enough food to feed itself?

If the latter, there was an excellent article in the Land (I promise I don't write for it nor am I related to the editor !!!) called 'Can Britain Feed Itself', which was an update of a research study from 1975 - and the conclusion was 'yes - with some caveats' - there is more info here

Re. everyone individually growing their own food, I'm not sure without some radical changes in the pattern of population that it would be possible for everyone to grow all their own food. But it would be fantastic to see urban and suburban space used productively - I remember walking around the suburbs of Oxford a while back & looking at all those empty front gardens, & thinking how much food could be grown in them. Cuba post the Soviet collapse I suppose is a really good example of a drastic increase in food production at the micro level - there is a film about it The Power of Community if you haven't run into it - interesting although of course hard to know how much political slant went into it.

Takver thank you for all the info, Sally Seymour sounds truly inspirational and rather brave.

I do plan on us being self sufficient but not 100% I don't want it to be a hardship when it doesn't need to be I just want to be more independent and do things for myself rather than rely on others.

About planting woodland, we're looking at one plot of 3 acres, about 1 1/2 acres is woodland so thats a bonus.

The animal keeping can't really decide on what we will do, there will most likely be farms in the surrounding area so should be possible to know the source of the meat which will be an improvement.
Ideally I would like to Keep pigs and Hens. I do know a family that kept pigs to be slaughter and it worked out really well for them but as an ex veggie not sure if I could do it.
I have considered Bee Keeping too but that seems so much more tricky.

Will order the books from Amazon, thank you.

Good luck!

I also think it depends on if you mean individuals in the UK or the UK as a whole. I do think it is where we all should be headed, and each individual who contributes makes a difference - but unlikely that either would ever be 100%.

People were never really 100% self sufficient though....but communities were and still are in some places in the world. So for example, you don't need enough land to grow every type of animal you wish to eat... you just need to grow enough of whatever you do have to have extra to trade with your neighbor up the road for what he has. This is how many people get firewood for winter where I grew up. It's also how the wood guy gets his meat for the winter.

Second the Laura Ingalls Wilder writings as well - too far for me, but very interesting read.

Also if your space is limited (ours was as we have slowly cleared the land completely by hand over the last decade or so), you can always go up with veg or fruits. Tomatoes, strawberries, peas, beans, all kinds of things grow great hanging down from the edge of any roof you have, etc. In the first years I also planted crops almost on top of each other - early things were already harvested before later things grew too large. Lots of ideas, lots of fun, you have to want to do it and enjoy it though. Good luck!

Just another little note - bee keeping is quite easy, and the honey is a great sugar alternative for cooking (and if you have no family with allergies to stings - hence the departure of our honey bees!), and you will get used to the slaughtering (pigs and chickens both take very little space so you should be fine). I grew up on a cattle ranch and as a child it bothered me until my father explained the respect for the animal that is involved - has never bothered me since.

Thank you Takver and passingtooquickly, this thread is really interesting!

I'm not sure I see a distinction between every individual in the UK being self sufficient and the uk as a country being self sufficient, surely they are one and the same> We couldn't all individually be self sufficient without relying on each other and our neighbors and the community to do trade with, so we could only all be self sufficient if the country as a whole was too? Or am I just confusing myself now?

When I think self-sufficiency I don't just think food either, I tihnk everything you could possibly need. Rather ambitious I think.

I do find the consept of self sufficiency interesting, and do like to make my own stuff rather than buying it, and think that to have enough land to grow some of your own food is great, but it's a lifestyle choice isn't it, and will never be accessible to the masses with our current population and demands.

Good Luck theDiaryofaNobody, bee keeping isn't too hard I don't think, my parents did it when I was little, and the bee population in the UK is in serious trouble, so it would be great if you did!

OMDB - I think there is a difference - you could have a situation where we had farmers, textile workers, tradespeople etc, each specialising in their own area of work but trading only within the UK (or county, or town, whatever). Clearly that would be very different from each individual providing for their own needs.

Of course the UK has had a very long history of importing a great deal of its food and other necessities (thinking for example of the political importance of the Corn Laws) and lost its peasantry so much earlier than most other European countries that it really would be a dramatic change for us.

Having said that, you have only to go a few miles out from where we live now up into the valley and you can talk to people who remember when pretty much the only day to day things bought in were tea and sugar.

Wow takver you really know your stuff, respect to you.

yes Takver you are right there is a difference, I guess ethically speaking it would be better for there to be specialists rather than evberyone making their own of ev erything they needed?

I don't have a garden, so instead concentrate on frugal living and buying/obtaining second-hand stuff and other people's rubbish for most of our (non food) needs.

Riven eggs is better than nothing!