As you know from our regular talks, we are all about being and becoming more self-sufficient. We have been hitting on that theme for some time, in most of our talks, there is some element of becoming more self-sufficient. We have been considering a series of talks on how to start a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Please note, everyone’s idea of a self-sufficient lifestyle is different. You need to do some personal thinking and decide what that means to you and what you will need to do to get there. Be reasonable with yourself. Set short-term goals and long-term life goals as well. This will give you some short, more quickly reachable goals and something to work towards.

Of course, taking out things that you do not need and things that hurt or weigh you down is a good thought also. But that is a talk for a different day.

Being self-sufficient is always a good thing but especially these days when everyone is feeling the pull of worry. Everyone is pinching pennies and trying to be sure there will be enough to go around. With all the economic upset, the political unrest, and the variety of health concerns, life has gotten very shakey. The traditionally employed working paycheck to paycheck, are always worried that they may be downsized. The self-employed are finding it harder to get jobs and worrying about the next set of bills, not to mention emergencies and unforeseen circumstances.

Being able to do for yourself and be less dependant on others for your needs, who does not want that kind of freedom in their life? Being able to make the things that you use every day, the things that you and your family need to get on, would a big weight off your shoulders. Knowing that if it came down to it, you and your family would be able to hunker down, make what you need for yourself, and be ok. Doing things this way, would not be a resort vacation but you and your family would be able to survive and be comfortable. That is far more than many can say.

Sewing and being able to make or repair your own clothes is a rare skill these days.

You may not have to or even want to do some things right now but having the know-how and, ability to do them when the need arises is high on our list.

Pressure canning is one of those things that we do not particularly like to do but we know how to if the need arises.

We are fond of “The Walking Dead”, we have a joke, what will you do when the zombie apocalypse comes. We do not expect an actual zombie attack but the idea is the same. When you do not have the ability to go out and buy things like normal, whatever the reason, what do you do. If you can make things to substitute for the things you would normally buy, you will not be the worse off.

Of course, DIY is not always considered “as good as” the store-bought things, but in many cases, DIY is better. Some people consider store-bought to be “the real thing” and homemade does not measure up. But we think homemade is better. You can make substitutes for store-bought and actually know what is in it. Usually, you can make homemade items for pennies compared to store-bought. Will your homemade be exactly like the commercial item? Probably not but that is kind of the point of not using store-bought, you do not want all those commercial products. And if the situation has gone south, you may not be able to get commercially made products anyway, as we all saw in mid-2020 with the toilet paper crisis. We are still not sure what that was about.

Again, there are things you may not need to make right now or even want to make now. But if you know how to do it, you can slip right into self-sufficient and DIY when the time comes. If you already know what you need, the process it takes, and what you will get, you are halfway there.  You will have the ability to get or make the things you need to take care of your family when things get hard.

So with this in mind, we will be doing a series or actually several different series on ways to be more self-sufficient. There are so many different ways, no one way is right for everyone. So again, you will need to look at your current life and decide for yourself, what you want and how to get there.

We hope to give you some ideas of what can be done, how to do them and on the occasion what not to do. We have not yet figured out all that we want to do in these series, as with most things, this is a work in progress. We will add things as they come up or as we think of new things.

So far, we are planning a food supply series. This will focus on growing your own food supply with fruits, veg, and nuts. We have been working on this project for some time. Yes, as a working farm, we already grow stuff, but there is always something that we can add to make our farm more self-sufficient and more sustainable.

Pears and Walnuts.

We plan to do some talks on how to use your newfound growing projects to make ingredients that you can use for recipes. As you know from other posts, we are big on DIY projects. We will share some possibilities for your plant projects other than just eating, as with the personal care DIY series we did some time ago. We hope to be able to share ways to use the “leftovers” from one project to do or finish other projects. Again, from past posts, you know we like to use all that we have for as many different projects as we can.

For example, I love the smell of patchouli, it is one of my favorite essential oils when making my personal care products just for myself. If we can grow the patchouli plant, yes it is a plant. Then we can make our own patchouli oil to use in our personal care scents. I know, it came as a shock to me also that patchouli is a growing plant. Not sure where I thought it came from but I guess I thought it was just a made-up scent. I guess you can learn something every day if you are open to it. Anyway, this is a several step process to a more sustainable and self-sufficient way to make DIY projects. It is life-altering, no but just another small step. This way, we grow a new plant, that is good for the environment. We make ingredients that we would normally buy, which saves us money. We can get another DIY project, that makes us happy and more self-sufficient.

As I said, there is not yet a full floor plan for these series but they are a work in progress. We want to make homemade paper, which is very much just in the research and planning stage.

Papyrus, a water plant, was historically used to make paper.

Our two baby plants are growing well.

As you can see, these plants are far from making paper.  But there are other ways to make paper and we will be trying out some of the alternative ways as well.

We have had some setbacks with our make your own vinegar project.

…  NOT this.

New plant projects are going well.  Some of the plant projects are going better than others.  That is to be expected as they are new experiments that we are trying our hand at.

The garden is producing well, at least the veg that we normally plant every year and know grows well here.

These are just some of the things we plan to talk about. It may be that none of these things by themselves are life-altering. But put together, each one is a small piece of our ongoing farm family life. So please stay with us and visit often to find out how things are going with our new projects. As always, we would be glad to hear from you, your thoughts, likes and dislikes, and subjects that you would like to talk about.  We hope you will join us for these upcoming experiences.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.