How did you start being more self sufficient?

[Minutiae Manor]

Spend less than you earn. Think long and hard about every purchase. Answer this question: Is this item a need, or a want. Prioritize. When you do buy, buy quality. Learn to delay gratification. Make the meal away from home a rarity, not a regular occurrence. First financial goal is to become debt free.

Grow a garden. Don't have much land? Start small. Even an apartment dweller can have a mini garden with land lord's blessing. Hay bale or container gardening can be done as long as you have adequate sun light.

Don't be big meat eaters. It's surprising how little meat it takes to "make a meal". The less processed food you use in your diet, the healthier the diet should be and the less it will cost you. Even such things as starting with a pound of dried kidney beans instead of cans of kidney beans when you make a pot of chili.

Shop the sales, and base your weekly menu on what you already have on hand, or what is on sale that week. Keep extra meals in your freezer for those nights when you just don't have it in you to cook that night.

Learn how to do things yourself. It cost less to buy power tools than it does to pay some one to do the job for you. Sure, there's a learning curve. But, I'll take the occasional mistake made during the learning curve over the never ending expense of never learning a skill and always paying some one else to do it for me. Become a scavenger. A trip to my Town Mall (aka town dump) can be a shopping experience for me. Thermopane windows and doors, wood for building projects, truck loads of wood chips.

Gardening: Feed your soil, and it will feed you. Permanent mulch will save on work, fertilizer, water. Grow what you like to eat and learn how to process it. Grow heirloom varieties and save the seeds. Even hybrid seed is worth saving. It may not breed true, but on the other hand, you might get some pleasant surprises: Case in point: One year, I saved seed from very large buttercup squash bought at a neighborhood veggie stand. Planted those seeds the next season along with my favorite: Red Kuri. The buttercups harvested from the saved seeds weighed up to 22#! I saved seeds THAT year. The following year, I harvested a lot of 22# bright orange-red buttercup squash.

Barter: Trade produce, chickens, chicks, eggs for the bounty from your friends and neighbors. Even when I give my stuff away, folks "give back".

Home made laundry detergent: I can make a years worth of detergent for less than $5.00. And it is IMO better in quality than what I would buy.

Hatch your own chicks, build your own incubator!

Every dollar not spent brings you closer to being self sufficient.

And of primary importance: Place God at the top of your priority list. Realize that it all belongs to Him in the first place. Give from what you have, and He will bless the remainder above and beyond what you can imagine.

Some wonderful ideas! Yes God definitely should be the priority

Spend less than you earn. Think long and hard about every purchase. Answer this question: Is this item a need, or a want. Prioritize. When you do buy, buy quality. Learn to delay gratification. Make the meal away from home a rarity, not a regular occurrence. First financial goal is to become debt free.

Grow a garden. Don't have much land? Start small. Even an apartment dweller can have a mini garden with land lord's blessing. Hay bale or container gardening can be done as long as you have adequate sun light.

Don't be big meat eaters. It's surprising how little meat it takes to "make a meal". The less processed food you use in your diet, the healthier the diet should be and the less it will cost you. Even such things as starting with a pound of dried kidney beans instead of cans of kidney beans when you make a pot of chili.

Shop the sales, and base your weekly menu on what you already have on hand, or what is on sale that week. Keep extra meals in your freezer for those nights when you just don't have it in you to cook that night.

Learn how to do things yourself. It cost less to buy power tools than it does to pay some one to do the job for you. Sure, there's a learning curve. But, I'll take the occasional mistake made during the learning curve over the never ending expense of never learning a skill and always paying some one else to do it for me. Become a scavenger. A trip to my Town Mall (aka town dump) can be a shopping experience for me. Thermopane windows and doors, wood for building projects, truck loads of wood chips.

Gardening: Feed your soil, and it will feed you. Permanent mulch will save on work, fertilizer, water. Grow what you like to eat and learn how to process it. Grow heirloom varieties and save the seeds. Even hybrid seed is worth saving. It may not breed true, but on the other hand, you might get some pleasant surprises: Case in point: One year, I saved seed from very large buttercup squash bought at a neighborhood veggie stand. Planted those seeds the next season along with my favorite: Red Kuri. The buttercups harvested from the saved seeds weighed up to 22#! I saved seeds THAT year. The following year, I harvested a lot of 22# bright orange-red buttercup squash.

Barter: Trade produce, chickens, chicks, eggs for the bounty from your friends and neighbors. Even when I give my stuff away, folks "give back".

Home made laundry detergent: I can make a years worth of detergent for less than $5.00. And it is IMO better in quality than what I would buy.

Hatch your own chicks, build your own incubator!

Every dollar not spent brings you closer to being self sufficient.

And of primary importance: Place God at the top of your priority list. Realize that it all belongs to Him in the first place. Give from what you have, and He will bless the remainder above and beyond what you can imagine.

So true our lives are in God’s capable hands.

Yes! He is in control ofit all, and our top priority!

 

[Minutiae Manor]

my story is nothing special to start with., watched a video on factory farmed food and did an environment class for school, got me thinking, hey i want to produce my own food. so i tried, raised 40 meat chickens to butcher age and had 30 egg layers and going out into the wild to get some food.

turns out i hate butchering domestic animals and hated the thought of killing any more birds so i sold 15 or 16 egg layers and after butchering the first batch of meat birds no one in my family really enjoyed the killing part. so it was then focus on the garden (which we have had for longer then i have been alive). so it produces a lot of veggies (lots of potatoes) which keeps us find for half of the year in most veggies (still have to buy the odd one)

so that got me thinking about meat, i love meat but hate factory farmed meat, don't like raising it from birth to death so that left me one option, to hunt,fish and trap for it. so the adventure began. i broke down each method a bit on how/what to acquire and food amounts.

fishing: not a big fish eater, like my burbot, walleye,pike, perch and smoked trout and that is about it. can catch some but i don't eat enough to feed myself or family with fish so its more just catch and release, keep one or two for a meal and am happy. (most areas i fish are very clean)

hunting: i like wild meat, so am going to be trying to hunt more, can get a white tail each year and quite a few ducks and geese (in fact there is no limit for snow geese where i live just 20 birds a day no limit in the freezer) so that can provide a lot of good eating. (plus a black bear a year as well still debating on eating one of them yet.)

trapping: really only two fur bearing animals i can eat/get, muskrat and beaver both which i have been told are really good eating (have not had either want to trap some to try).

I am not one for killing my own meat either..... I just have egg layers, but we do have venison from this hunting season!

 

[sumi]

I went the more self-sufficient route out of interest in producing my and my family's food and just got hooked There are few things more satisfying than being able to put food on the table that you grew/raised yourself.

@Minutiae Manor (and others) BYC has a self sufficiency "sister forum", SufficientSelf.com, that has some wonderful info and members on it. Not nearly as busy as this one, but a great place to hang out nonetheless. You're more than welcome to come join us there.

 

[Minutiae Manor]

We bought 13 acres in the woods on a river in May of this year. We have a woodstove in our cabin for heat. I started a vegetable garden and flower garden. I planted blueberries and blackberries. I built a coop for 2 breeds of chickens( divided coop) and a hoop coop for guineas. We are having a goat shed built for Nigerian Dwarf goats. And i am going to either build or buy a greenhouse. I have a pair of pet rabbits but considering buying meat rabbits. There is lots of game here, bears, rabbits, deer, turkey and quail. Oh geese and ducks at the river at times as well. View attachment 1202607 View attachment 1202608

What a great property! We have been considering Nigerian dwarf goats.

 

[Minutiae Manor]

I went the more self-sufficient route out of interest in producing my and my family's food and just got hooked There are few things more satisfying than being able to put food on the table that you grew/raised yourself.

@Minutiae Manor (and others) BYC has a self sufficiency "sister forum", SufficientSelf.com, that has some wonderful info and members on it. Not nearly as busy as this one, but a great place to hang out nonetheless. You're more than welcome to come join us there.

Thank you very much!

 

[Sunshine Flock]

Here's a fun one, folks.

I stopped buying toilet paper about three years ago. The husband was thrilled.

Research the toilet paper industry. Even Seventh Generation toilet paper leaves a carbon footprint, and you could be wiping your tush with recycled paper that contains BPA from heat transfer cash register receipts.

And then there's the cost savings.

My preference was to make my own wipers from organic cloth, but it's pricey and I couldn't find anything that seemed suitable. So I bought a couple packages of men's handkerchiefs on Amazon (yep, not the most eco-wise choice out there), boiled them on the stovetop to help outgas the toxic chemical bleaching, which then entered our breathing space (an outdoor rocket stove is the works), and now we have a huge stack of reusable cloths.

We don't do anything fancy with used ones. They get tossed under the sink in a container without a lid. No smell whatsoever, not at all gross like you'd think. And once or twice a month I wash them in hot water and hang them to dry.

No clothes dryer, too.

And we don't purchase paper towels or nose wipers. It's all cloth on our homestead. It's not a true homestead, I should add. We're heading in that direction, slowly but surely.

 

[rjohns39]

That's a great idea!

I think everyone starts with Jam, when learning to can. I quickly found myself buried in jam, some really good and some horrible... But when I sat down to think about what I would use in a year and when, I had no real idea. The spreadsheet helped me figure it out.

For those things that I bought in a box, we'd decide if it was something that we were willing to make from scratch or if the convenience was just too important. For those in the latter category, we've learned how to make them from scratch ahead of time and store on the shelf in vacuum jars. I also keep a few meals in a jar on the shelf too.

Somethings, we just can't achieve with any reliability. Bread and All Purpose flour is simply too hard to do with a home mill. So we buy those in bulk along with sugar, spices, etc. It takes some footwork and some internet shopping to find good pricing. Back to the spreadsheet... For those things I had to buy, I put them in a separate tab, and put the price from different sources until I found the source I wanted to use. There are restaurant supply houses that are open to the public (GFS is one). Many, but not all things are cheaper there. But I would keep my spreadsheet with me, when I shopped to see if that really is a good deal.

I went the more self-sufficient route out of interest in producing my and my family's food and just got hooked There are few things more satisfying than being able to put food on the table that you grew/raised yourself.

@Minutiae Manor (and others) BYC has a self sufficiency "sister forum", SufficientSelf.com, that has some wonderful info and members on it. Not nearly as busy as this one, but a great place to hang out nonetheless. You're more than welcome to come join us there.

Sumi, I went the same route... Real fun around the farm is to identify everything that came from either this farm or a local farm as you look at dinner.

 

[lazy gardener]

I like it when I cook supper, and the meal simply falls into place. Tonight I made spaghetti. Pulled the meat/sausage sauce out of the freezer. Cooked the pasta, opened a jar of green beans, and a jar of apple sauce. Every time I pull a yummy meal together, I can claim bragging rights: this meal was brought to you by our garden, our freezer, and my hard work. Tonight was a "2 jar night!"

 

[CapricornFarm]

that spot looks amazing,

super cool that you have turkeys, we are just getting the odd turkey in Saskatchewan (there protected so no hunting them) but what type of quail do you have there and we also have no quail where i live.

seems like a lot of good eating from nature/game there

They are Bob white quail i believe. The turkeys are very wary. I am trying to plant vegetation to encourage the wildlife.

 

[henless]

Home made laundry detergent: I can make a years worth of detergent for less than $5.00. And it is IMO better in quality than what I would buy.

LG ~ What recipe do you use for your laundry detergent? I would love to give it a try.