Our Journey To Self Sufficiency…
Our dream of complete self sufficiency isn’t a new one. It is one that has been fostered and refined over many many years. We’ve been growing food in suburbia as a family for 10 years, and many more as children with our families. We were quite successful at growing food in our smaller space, but we wanted more space, more freedom, freedom to plant 7 lemon trees if our heart so desired, and our hearts did. Growing in suburbia was a fantastic test run for me, I got to learn the basics, I got to learn the rhythms of the seasons and I got to fail.
My husband and I had always dreamed of moving onto a farm, one of our first dates together we dreamed of raising our children on the land, we would grow some food of course but we envisioned nothing as crazy as what we are doing now. On our honeymoon 18 months later we travelled around Australia in a purple 1971 kombi van, 9 months into the trip we hit Western Australia where my husband spent most of his childhood years. We stopped into his mates place where they were living their version of a self sufficient life, and I was in awe. I learnt so much in the short 2 weeks we spent there and this was our new aspiration. Living off the land growing healthy food, free from the manipulation of the industrialized world. For our 10 year wedding anniversary we decided to finally sell up and buy ourselves a present, that present was our 54 acre farm.
After being on our farm for a year ‘living the dream’ I was becoming increasingly frustrated at my reliance on the supermarket, a place I despised. I think this is a realization of many during this new time of need. I had this beautiful productive garden, but produce was rotting because I had planned my meals around my supermarket ‘haul’ and I didn’t want to waste produce I had spent money on. I knew I needed to do something drastic, so like when I made my family go paleo and removed all the contraband from my family home, I did so too with the supermarket and removed my reliance on that system entirely and just made do with what I had.
I became creative with what I had, have you ever eaten cauliflower leaves, or radish seed pods or garlic scapes? All delicious and not what we see as regular foods. In that place of frustration of seeing my hard work NOT paying off I decided our family would embark on a year long challenge of only eating what we grow, forage for, barter and trade or purchase with the funds we make from selling our excess produce. You see self sufficiency doesn’t need to look like you doing it all yourself. I dare say that is completely and utterly impossible. But it can see you living completely self sufficiently using your resources and the resources and skills of those around you. It’s been a surprisingly easy and incredibly abundant endeavor. It has fostered many relationships, all of them new, for regular bartering. Earlier this year I swapped an excess rooster from my last hatch for a shoulder of pork, something we were yet to produce here on our farm, the week before that with another lady I swapped my excess cucumbers for tomatoes and spuds. I also trade my excess veggies regularly for dairy. I do sell some of my excess which purchases things I cannot grow like spices, coconut oil and chocolate.
Now 15 months on, we have well and truly completed our challenge, and now the supermarket is somewhat of a treat, we certainly don’t need to shop there but I do crave giving my kids a sense of normalcy, even though the way we live is nothing but (and neither am I). We now indulge in things like premade pasta, a huge luxury after spending a year making our own, nowhere near as delicious, but it makes for a quick meal when we are having too much fun outside. And on Wednesday evenings when we go and collect the supermarket waste we use to make compost (over 3000L a week from one supermarket) we indulge in a box of ice-creams for the ride home if the sunshine is still warming our backs. But we are careful to keep it at that a luxury, something that we dip into for a treat and for special occasions like birthdays, so that we can continue to enjoy this wonderful lifestyle we have created for ourselves.
I will continue to write about our lifestyle touching on permaculture design principles, becoming self sufficient, preserving our harvests, organic farming, heirloom vegetables, how tos, seed saving, useful plants, foraging and bartering. If there is a specific subject you would like me to touch on please leave that in the comments below.