Self-Sufficiency 101…

June 19, 2014

I woke up this morning and couldn’t think of one thing to blog about, so I cut myself some slack and told myself that it wouldn’t hurt a thing to skip a post.  There.  That decision was made.  However, later in the day I was reading through a “freebie” magazine that I had picked up at our local Tractor Supply store and there was a quote from John Seymour that read, “You do not need 5 acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient…self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.”  That really resonated with me as I had read his book, “The New Self-Sufficient Gardener” about a year ago.

For those of you who don’t already know…John Seymour was an English author (and much more) who was born in 1914 and died in 2004.  He worked many different kinds of jobs during his lifetime, but he is best known as one of the first to promote the “self-sufficiency” movement.  He wrote books that covered the topics of self-reliance, personal responsibility, growing your own food, and living the joys of living a simple life. 

After I thought about his quote, I took a walk outside around our small, in-town, .33 acre lot with a run down ranch house and took stock of the things that Charming and I have accomplished over the past six or seven years.  The first thing we did when we settled in here was to establish a small back yard garden.  Then Charming built an arbor-type structure that would support a grapevine.  After that, we put in an herb garden and enlarged our garden to include thirteen 4’x8’ vegetable beds with walk ways in between.  Over the years, we added a pear tree, a plum tree, and a cherry tree.  Then we added a blackberry patch, which will grow bigger each year unless we thin it out.  We also added a rhubarb plant and two blueberry bushes.  In addition, several years ago we started composting our kitchen scraps and catching rain water to use for our garden.  None of this was done overnight.  We started small and have added a little each year and are slowly making our way towards self-sufficiency.  We see being self-sufficient as the “Holy Grail” of modern day living, especially in these tough economic times. 

I often hear my Daddy’s voice telling me (when I was a youngster) that I should learn to do as much for myself as I possibly could because “even if you never have to do it, you’ll know how to do it.”  These are words to live by, especially as it relates to growing your own food and working towards self-sufficiency.  The knowledge you gain on the pathway to becoming self-sufficient/self-reliant is something that no one can take from you.

John Seymour’s words are also true…you don’t need to own a farm, a tractor, or a herd of animals to become more self-sufficient, you just need to make up your mind to rely a little more on your own skills and a little less on the skills of others.  

Over the years, our garden has grown from a small, straight-row
garden to this easy-to-maintain multi-bed garden with paved pathways.
Although you can put as much money into a garden as you can
afford, all it really takes to grow vegetables is dirt, seeds, and a little elbow grease.

Charming built this arbor-type structure to support our Concord grapevine,
but grapevines can also be supported by attaching them to an outside garage (or shed)
wall or a deck post.  (Just be sure to keep them pruned so that they don't get too
heavy for the support.)  Beneath our grapevine is an herb garden with parsley,
rosemary, oregano, sage, thyme, dill, sorrel, chives, and lavender.  Most herbs
can easily be grown, from seeds, in planters on a deck or in a windowsill.

Our grapevine is full of grapes that should be ripe in the
August/September time frame.

Our blackberry patch was started with just a few free canes
provided by my sister, from her generous-sized blackberry patch.

We bought two blueberry bushes from the "end of the season"
bargain bin at Tractor Supply a couple of years ago.  If you look
really close, you'll see that the bush is producing berries.

This cucumber plant was a "volunteer" that came up on its
own, in the same spot where we had cucumbers last year.

We bought these compost bins at Costco.  They were a little pricey,
but it's now much easier for me to turn the compost by simply rotating the bin
than it was when we had the compost in bins on the ground and had to turn it
with a shovel.  Compost is made from kitchen scraps, grass clippings, dried leaves,
etc.  It's great for your vegetable plants AND you can make it for free!

We just purchased this wood splitter last week (from Tractor Supply, of course).
I finally convinced Charming that the cost of the wood splitter would be much less than the
cost of rotator cuff surgery if he continued to split truckloads of wood with an axe.  (He
just told me the other day that he was glad I convinced him to buy it.)  And
considering that our heating bill last year was about $125 vs the thousand or so that it
would've been had we heated entirely with oil, I think the wood splitter will actually pay
for itself.

Our water storage system for watering our garden is made from three
trashcans that we purchased at Walmart.  Charming cut a hole in the lid
of the trashcan (on the right) and cemented in a kitchen strainer to
filter debris out of the water as it comes down from the gutter.  He also added
spigots to the front of each trashcan with short lengths of garden hose
that make it easy to fill the watering cans.  There are also "overflow" pipes that go
from the highest trashcan to the lowest one so that the water spills over from one trashcan
to the next as it rains.  Each trash can holds 96 gallons of rain water, so we
normally have plenty of water for our garden even during dry spells.
(NOTE:  Many Cooperative Extension Offices hold free or low-cost workshops on how
to make your own garden watering systems.)