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.

Definitely planning to be as self-sufficient as possible. Living with in-laws right now but have a five year plan (most unlike Stalin's though!) to buy some land with some friends and share the responsibility of producing what we need from it. Clubbing together make it much more affordable, as well as less of a burden - we can go away and know it's being looked after.

I would definitely recommend looking into a permaculture approach. It is low input, high yield and works on the basis of shaping nature, rather than fighting against it. An example of how it works is you use animals such as pigs and chickens to turn your soil so no digging is needed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
www.permaculture.org.uk/

I definitely agree that its more possible for a larger group to be seld sufficient than an individual. It could work much more efficiently

Tavker I'm very jealous of you
I've made dh agree that when we retire we'll move to wales

I'm still slightly homesick for the east of England (grew up in East Mids, lived in Cambridgeshire for years. Wales is very nice though.

we should do a swap

I would love to be, but we don't get much beyond growing a few veg and berries... I do love foraging and currently finishing off the last of last years blaeberries and brambles

I found Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle absolutely inspiring.. and actually this thread is leading me to revisit that. She makes the good point though that self sufficiency is not easily achieved anywhere (they had to leave Arizona to even stand a chance)

Re a community- would this be like the Lammas community in Wales?
I agree, I think it would be good if people specialised in one particular area and then bartered their produce (though sadly don't think most people have any call whatsoever for what I produce... so I would quickly be emaciated).

I saw something interesting today (guardian maybe?) about the amount of water required to produce various foodstuffs, which thankfully we always think of as less of a consideration in the UK, though in the future may not be the case.
Those of you looking at land, do you have a water source too?

That was a good article:

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/19/uk-virtual-water

Much of embedded water isn't actually used in the growing process itself but in the production of the fertilisers and pesticides, as well as transportation. Home-grown stuff has a far lower water requirement.

Captain - we do have water, it was one of the main reasons for choosing this property - though the intent was more for electricity generation than produce. We collect more than enough rainwater using eavestroughs and a chain of barrels on our barns & other buildings for all of our produce growing needs. Having said that, we don't use any fertilizer (other than our own compost) or pesticides, so our water requirements are fairly low. They have decreased as we have worked to improve our soil quality over the years, as well as learning how to plant in such a way as to take advantage of the natural flow of things.

Cap.Nancy, Lammas is more of an eco-village rather than a community as such, but still I guess that there will be lots of co-operation & mutual support.