Setting Up for Self-Sufficiency

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Setting Up for Self-Sufficiency

Image by kevinthoule via Flickr

The Self Sufficient Life - Just the Beginning by Turina Hira

Sometimes an adventure finds you, sometimes you plan to go on an adventure. For us it is a bit of both.

The Ideas

At first when we discussed the possibility of setting up our small farm, we had lots of ideas, we wanted to be able to:

Most importantly eat great, homegrown food (most important to my family that is)

Grow almost everything we would need to feed our families

Make products from our crops and meat that would be sustain us as well as have some to share around either for profit or to give away

Be in a supportive environment, where you know you will get looked after, and what better group than with family

Get back to making things with our hands, doing the crafts that interest each individual

Making a viable biofuel to run any machinery we might have

Have a safe haven of sorts, not to run away and hide from the world, but somewhere our kids could run around and just be, well, kids

We shared our ideal dream farm with each other, every one of us having a different spin on the same idea. We wanted a self sufficient life, that would be an ideal safety net if the economy was to get worse, I won't say a fool proof safety net, but at least we'd be well fed!

So, that said, the most important thing for us to do now was to:

Make a plan

Find out how much we would approximately need to set this farm up

And how much to upkeep it in the first few seasons before it became self sufficient

Figure out who was to do what

Decide what we were growing and how

This is where we are at, the research stage, we could have dropped everything and set up house straight away, but it is not in mine, or probably any of my family's nature to do so.

Researching the Facts and Fantasies

Our first stop was initially the library for an arm load of books, and the internet of course, where you can find almost any article, review, blog, website, etc. you wish on our ideas.

The question now is, after some research, what sort of self sufficient farm are we going to be?

It would be easy to get some land, put a quaint little farm house on it, putting in water, plumbing, and electricity from the main lines, put in what ever veges we want, buy a couple of cows, some sheep, chickens and a pig or two, and we'd have our happy little farm.

But as we are all too aware these days, we need to look deeper than our fairytale ideal. We need to consider our environment, or rather choose whether we will do so. To be sustainable or not, or even what that means, what sort of agricultural methods we will use, permaculture, grow organic or use pesticides, use green initiatives, be ecologically sound?

What will we use to power our village, solar, mains, wind, generator, bike power! Do we want to change our ways to help save the planet we are on, or could we get by doing the things we now, while the green crusaders are saving us?

To get these answers I am reading widely.

I joined a lot of forums, where I am posting these types of questions and getting some great feedback, and, doing a lot of internet research.

Plus, we are hoping to visit various ecovillages in New Zealand, transition towns, I know of one just outside of Sydney I am hoping to visit, and other developments, just to see what people are doing and how.

The future is exciting, hope you enjoyed the read and I hope you'll join me on any future updates.

I am a homeschooling mother, interested in this ideal of a self sufficient life, where my research will lead is an exciting prospect for me and my family.

http://selfsufficientlife.brighterplanet.org/

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