Thursday, December 1, 2011 (DF) MANY LEVELS OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY ------ part 1

Input from others with different perspectives often encourages me to look more closely at my own views. A comment to my recent post, "THE NECESSITY OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY IN A SELF-SUSTAINING LIFESTYLE" did just that. In examining my own views on life and goals of self-sufficiency, I realized two very important considerations: That TRUE self-sufficiency, at least for the individual, is near impossible; and there are many levels of self-sufficiency along the way toward that near impossible end. Some of these levels, I have lived at some point in my life, others I have studied and worked toward, and most (if not all) levels are among my goals for the future. Obviously, we would all like to be as independent as possible, so with your indulgence, I would like to share some thoughts and experiences on those many levels.

LEVEL I: Level one, in my opinion, has to start with a mind set. As infants, unable to do anything for ourselves, we learn to expect others to give us what we need to survive, grow, and be comfortable. As we grow, the desire to move freely and do for ourselves also grows, driving us to walk, communicate and reach for what we need. This develops the mind set of "I can do it myself", which is the point at which, as a parent, I had my first twinge of having to let go a bit. And that twinge just got worse from there, but that is another story for another time.

As teenagers or young adults, having developed the mind set and entering the work force, we reach level two.


LEVEL II: Level two is what our society has come to expect and strive for to a great extent. As teenagers, we are expected to at least finish high school (and a college degree is preferred) and then to get a good job (or preferably, a career), thus being able to make enough money to pay the bills, buy a home, raise a family etc. This in itself is truly a tangible level of self-sufficiency, as compared to those who choose to rely on others (family, friends, church, government assistance, etc.), for their needs. Please do not consider that I am passing judgement on anyone for their choices, and it is important to note that many people, through no choice of their own, require assistance for their survival and we should all do our best to help.

With that said, this level of self-sufficiency can provide all the requirements of survival and comfort. It does not, however, give the individual any control over many aspects of life. For example, you have no control of the price, quality or availability of food, fuel, utilities, building materials, services or anything that has to be purchased. More money can get better quality, but only if the product is available in the first place. In short, though we work hard for the money to provide what is needed for ourselves, we still depend on, and are at the mercy of, others.


LEVEL III: Level three is about the point where people start talking about "back to basics". I am very happy with that concept but not so much with the wording. The basics haven't changed, so going back to basics is essentially the same as staying here with the basics. In fact, the basic NEEDS of humanity are still simply water, food, clothing, shelter, warmth, tools, weapons for hunting and defense, and for spiritual and/or psychological well being, interaction with others. What HAS changed is how we fulfill those basics. In my opinion, (and remember, it is just my opinion), it is a matter of resources and how they are used. From this point forward, these basic needs and how they are, and can be, used will be incorporated into the levels as appropriate, so bear with me.

The level three basics include food and water. Chances are, you, (like so many others), do not live in walking distance of your water source. If you are fortunate enough to have a well or spring on your property, that is a good head start, and if it is a well or spring with a hand pump or other people powered means of getting the water, so much the better. Far too many people are using water that is pumped in from such a distance that they don't even know where it really came from or what chemicals it has been treated with. A resource to consider is rain water, which can be captured with guttering from roofs of houses and other buildings and used for watering plants and animals, washing or filtered for drinking. The amount of water that can be captured from an inch of rain falling on the roof of an average sized building is surprising. At just over a half gallon, (.623 gal. per sq. ft. per inch of rain, to be more precise), a building the size of my chicken house and tool shed combo will capture about 94 gallons of water from an inch of rain. The calculations are simple, just multiply the number of square feet of roof surface by .623 to find out how many gallons of water you will have from your roof with one inch of rain.

Food is another necessity that many take for granted. It is convenient to just go to the grocery store and buy what you need. With prices rising, quality declining and the now constant threat of various contamination related illnesses, it doesn't seem so convenient as it once did. Growing your own food is becoming more popular and this is a good step toward this level of self-sufficiency. No, not everyone can plant a huge garden, a field of wheat or corn for bread, and raise livestock for all their meat, milk and eggs, (though that would be REALLY NICE). There are ways (even in an apartment in the city) to raise at least some of your own vegetables, and with a back yard or small acreage, there are endless possibilities.

Though being able to produce all of the food on the table would be ideal, anything you can produce for yourself lowers the levels of dependence on others and is a good step toward self-sufficiency. Remember, it all starts with the mind set, the questioning of where your basic needs come from and how to change that source.

I will post other levels soon, as well as related posts involving more information on specifics, as there just isn't room in a single post for all the information. I will also be considering your input to help me give you the information you need to follow your own path toward self-sufficiency, so please use the comments to let me know where you are in the journey and any questions you may have.

RANDOM UPDATE

It has been over a week since my last post, and though it has been a busy time, there have not been any earth shattering developments here at HareBrainFarms.  Progress has been made on several long term projects, while maintenance and time with grandkids (the youngest only a couple of weeks old now) have taken up time here on the farm.

With my daughter and son-in-law living 2 hours away, a couple of trips to see them and the grandkids took time and money away from farm projects, but well worth it.  One must have priorities and spending time with my kids and grandkids pretty much tops my list.  I only wish they were closer so I could see them more.

Truck repair and maintenance has also taken a toll on the budget (both time and financial) recently.  The power steering pump has been on its way out for a couple of years and finally bit the dust.  There have also been a couple of tire replacements.  The truck being a necessary item, these things also end up high on the priority list.

On a more productive note, the deep canyon in part of my driveway, left over from the flood over a year ago, has received lots of rocks to fill the void.  Still a lot more work to finish the job but it is progressing.  I will make a post on it when it is finished, with photos and explanations.

Clearing of brush in some of the overgrown areas has been slowly happening, as well as necessary garden work and harvest (such as it is).  Hopefully next year will be a better year for the garden.

Cooking outside can be a hit and miss proposition in regards to the weather, so I have been working toward a shelter for my little cook area.  I recently traded for a portable garage, one of those that consists of a tubing frame with a covering stretched over it that they sell at Harbor Freight.  The cover is pretty worn but the frame is good and can be covered with a big tarp for my purposes, when the cover no longer keeps the rain out.  It has now been taken down and moved to my cook area and will soon be up and functional.  Another post with photos and explanation soon.

All in all, it has been a busy couple of weeks and though nothing significant got finished, several things are in the works.  Always plenty of things on the old to-do-list, but things are gradually being marked of and others added.

Also, I have finished retrieving all of my old posts which had originally been posted on another blog and will begin posting them here.  The first will be a 6 part series on self-sufficiency that I hope you will find informative and enjoyable.

HOME GROWN GRANNY PICKLES

For some reason, cucumbers have always seemed impossible for me to grow in my garden.  Many times over the years I have planted, cultivated, added compost, watered and nurtured to no avail.  They always grew nice vines, put on lovely blooms and even tiny cucumbers before withering away.  This year, I planted a few seeds in a newly cleared area of the garden which had only had a little compost tilled in, and promptly ignored them in favor of other vegetables.

Much to my surprise, this year I have cucumbers.  Not an over abundance of cucumbers since I only planted a few, but enough to make a few pickles.  In my mind, cucumbers equals pickles and pickles equals Granny Pickles.

Granny pickles are the kind my grandmother (dad's mom) made an abundance of every year.  They had to ferment and got better with age.  We never tasted the new batch because the older ones were to be eaten first, and they were the most sour, salty, pucker your eyeballs delicious pickles on earth.  No others could compare.  Over the years, others have used her recipe but it has never been the same.

Now it is my turn! Most days for about the past month there have been enough cucumbers to pack nicely into a quart jar, some days more, some days less and some days none.  I now have almost 30 quarts of pickles in the jar.  My lack of patience being what it is, there is a difficulty with keeping the lid on that first jar, but I have resolved not to test them at least until after the first frost.

As you can see from this small sampling, they don't look too bad.  You may notice that the two quarts on the right (which are among the most recent) are cloudy, but this is a part of the process and disappears later.  The two quarts on the left are the first of the season and the larger and smaller jars are somewhere in between.

This recipe originally came from a pickling company where one of my grandfather's family members worked (we believe, in Minnesota), where they made the pickles which were kept in barrels in the old general stores of the time.  It is a very simple recipe and easily adapts to small or large batches.

RECIPE:  for the brine

3 quarts cold water

1 pint vinegar

1 cup salt

Note:  Though the recipe I have does not specify, I use natural apple cider vinegar and kosher salt (though I believe granny used regular canning salt)

INSTRUCTIONS: 

soak fresh picked cucumbers in cold water overnight

sterilize jars and lids

pack cucumbers tightly in jars

add a sprig or two of dill

add two or three cloves of garlic (for kosher dills)

fill with cold brine

put lid on tight

Another Note:  Put the jars in a cool place, on a surface that will not be harmed by pickle juice.  They will spew a little in the fermenting process.

Now the waiting begins!  If they turn out like the ones Granny made, it will be more than worth the wait.  As always, thank you and I look forward to your questions and comments.

VEGETABLE GARGENING FOR SELF SUFFICIENCY

Self-sufficiency is a very complex and involved subject, and implies that one can actually survive and even live well without other people.  I somewhat disagree, but that is the subject for another day (or perhaps many other days).  In terms of food, however, one can go a long way toward the goal of eliminating others from the process, and a vegetable garden is a good place to start.

Vegetable gardening can be as complex or as simple as one chooses.  You can spend thousands of dollars having truck loads of soil hauled in and mixed to perfection, and thousands more on just the right tools and power equipment.  You can spend another small fortune ordering just the right seeds.  Irrigation systems can be as elaborate and expensive as you choose, and tall fences to keep critters out.  OR you can go to the other extreme, digging up a small patch of dirt with a sharp rock and plant seeds saved from something you enjoyed last season, and carrying water to it in any vessel at hand.  The choice is yours.

Obviously, the more complex your garden, the more other people are involved and the more expensive your vegetables, while the extreme of simple, takes others out of the picture altogether and doesn't cost anything.  I recommend something in between, for example, metal tools such as shovels and hoes come in handy and for people who can't use a shovel that much, a garden tiller can make it all possible.  Open pollinated, heirloom seeds are available for a price, though I try to save a many of my own as possible.

Whatever level you choose, anything you grow in your garden is something you don't have to buy, and there is the added benefit of knowing how it was grown.  You are in control of what kind of fertilizer is used (compost is my preference), what pest control is used and whether or not it is GMO.  You also know how fresh it is.

Removing other people from your food production is possible, however, the forces of nature and other factors cannot be removed and do not always cooperate.  My garden this year is a prime example.  As you can see, my garden is a bit overrun with grass, and you can also see that my one row of okra (which should have been three rows) has a gap in the middle.

Believe it or not, my entire garden was tilled up several times through the winter, with compost tilled in each time.  By planting time, I was ready to plant everything on time and in fine style.  The weather had other plans.  Potatoes and onions were planted early and were up right on schedule, after the normal time of our last freeze.  Normal being the key thought here.  The potatoes froze back and regrew three times before it stopped freezing.  For this reason, everything else was late.  Ok, everything else that got planted was late.

After planting, carrots, beets, okra and cucumbers, it came a flood, not only damaging most of the things already planted but delaying further planting.  The cucumbers were not damaged as they were on higher, rockier ground, and the potatoes grew beautiful vegetation.  It continued to rain just enough to keep the ground too muddy to walk across, much less cultivate or plant, pretty much through the entire month of June.

Water standing in the garden killed part of the okra, thus the gap.  It also killed all the carrots and beets.  The potatoes, with their beautiful tops, were not making any potatoes, as I discovered when it was time to harvest them.  Tomatoes, planted far too late, haven't done much either though I hope they will revive enough for a fall crop.

Meanwhile, the combination of rain, loose fertile soil and warm weather made it perfect for growing grass and weeds which have been growing faster than I can keep it cut with a scythe (I have been feeding it to the goats).  Each time it dried out enough to till, I would fire up the tiller and till a few passes, before the next rain.  Then the tiller broke down, so I am back to using a shovel and hoe until I can get time to fix it.

On a more positive note, the cucumbers are actually producing.  I have never been able to grow cucumbers before, but this time I am actually making pickles (over 20 quarts so far) from my grandmother's recipe.  As you can see, there are only a few vines but they are producing enough for a quart of pickles almost every day, with enough left for fresh eating.

The okra is producing enough for fresh eating and to share with family, though not enough to store for winter.  I was so hoping for at least a few jars of pickled okra, but the season is not over yet.

Also, there is still time for a fall garden.  Though I don't normally plant for fall earlier than the first week in August, I planted a row of green beans among the grass a couple of weeks ago.  I planted them in mud and they have had plenty of rain since.  Certainly not normal for this time of year where I live.

There is also hope for the squash which is blooming now, and hopefully the ground will dry enough to plant more and have a fall harvest (though we are having rain as I type).

As you can see, it is not always a good growing season, so it's not a bad plan to store enough for a couple of years when the harvest permits.  Speaking strictly for myself, the good years are more than worth the not so good ones.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to any questions or comments.