What to Do Today to Become Self-Sustaining

 

So, you want to be self-sustaining?  You have dreams of turning your home and yard into a “preppers paradise?”  Or perhaps your goals include purchasing a tract of land and turning it into a homestead?  Whether you have desires to create a self-reliant farm or just want to start down the road of learning how to become more self-sustaining, I have a few tips for you here.  Maybe you were convinced by my previous article on the subject –

Why Everyone Should Learn “Prepping” Skills

Whatever the case, it’s important to realize that it takes dedication to succeed in any of these areas.  Generally speaking, there are 6 major areas to consider being self-sustaining.  Of course, this isn’t all-inclusive, there are many, many things to learn beyond this.  But these 6 are the basics of getting started.  Now I don’t want to scare anyone off.  In fact, my hope is to help everyone achieve some level of sustainability. 

So, let’s look at these 6 areas:

1.       Shelter

2.      Electricity

3.      Water

4.      Meat

5.      Fruits and Vegetables

6.      Staples

When we speak of shelter, there are going to be 2 avenues which I have already touched on.  You either already own property with some type of shelter (a house, a mobile home) on it or you plan to purchase property with either shelter already on it or you plan to place a shelter

there.  The first thing you need to do is figure out how you can live comfortably.  Not how you dream about living.  Yes, we all watch those “Alaska” shows where people thrive in -40 degree winters and 10 feet of snow.  And we all (or those like me) think, “Heck yeah, I can do that.”  Well, it takes a special kind of person to do that.  So, what environment are you capable of living in?  And what the heck does this have to do with the sudden shift away from shelters?  Well, can you live in a canvas tent, or an RV, or a cabin built from free pallets?  Or do you need to build a brick home just like any other brick home in any other subdivision?  The choice is yours.  So, decide on your land and your shelter, then you can move on from there.

Now, the two most difficult items to obtain from the list above are Water and Staples.  Yes, some may disagree, but hear me out.  Unless you have a continuously running water source on your land or you are able to build a water source (i.e., dig a well), you’re not going to have freshwater resources.  So, you need to plan that into your check-off list.  And then, there are Staples.  What do I mean by that?  These are things like Flour, Corn Meal, Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Salt, Spices.  Items we use in everyday cooking that we buy in bulk but are extremely difficult to produce on our own.  I wouldn’t be able to grow coffee on my property.  Or grow cane fields to produce sugar.  Or field of wheat to make flour.  So, we have to think about how to obtain these or substitutes.  And this leads to the next category…Fruits and Vegetables.

So, I was doing a lot of thinking the other day and remarked to my mom, that there are 3 main carbohydrates in the world.  Rice, Flour (Bread and Pasta), and Potatoes.  Wherever you go, different cultures depend largely on one of these three staples as the basis of their diet.  Now, in a situation where we had to “live off the land,” we wouldn’t be growing rice.  Like I stated earlier, I couldn’t grow enough rice or wheat (flour) to support myself.  But we can grow potatoes.  And rather easily too.  Potatoes, and to a lesser extent beans, would be the main carb we could grow to sustain our diet. 

So back to the main point of this article, what can you do today to get started in being self-sustaining?  As I have argued before, start with a small backyard garden.  First, learn what grows well in your area. 

Check out your Agricultural Zone below:

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone

Then, begin to plant fruits and vegetables that you enjoy eating.  Start with easy to care for items that are staples of dishes like tomatoes, bell peppers, and sweet peppers.  And don’t forget the potatoes!  Growing potatoes is easy and a great start to becoming self-sustaining. 

And that leaves us with the next category of Meat!

Yep, good ole’ meat.  I can go on and on about mean and sustainability, but that’s for another article.  The purpose here is to get you started.  For purposes of this article, I’m not referring to hunting or trapping to obtain mean, but becoming self-sustaining, as in a homestead.  And the easiest and most rewarding animal to raise for beginners are chickens.  They are so easy to care for and most municipalities do not have laws against raising a couple chickens in your

backyard.  A decent size coop, fresh food and water, and some hay, and you can raise 2 or 3 chickens right in your own back yard.  Some chickens lay an egg a day, some every other day.  But you are learning how to raise animals and getting the benefit of fresh eggs.  And from time to time, you could butcher one up for dinner if you like.  More on that on another day.  If you are really feeling the call of the homestead, you could also consider raising meat rabbits.  These animals breed well.  Yes, they are cute.  You have to go into it with the mindset that these are for food.

Let There Be Light!

Finally, we arrive at electricity.  You will have to decide how much or how little electricity you can live with (or without).  Just remember, if you want to truly be off-grid, or in a total SHTF situation, there may not be any external electrical resources.  We don’t realize how much we depend on it, until it’s not there.  My suggestion to you is to try and rely on as little electricity as possible from time to time to get an idea of just how much is used.  And it’s not the lights!  Lighting is one of the smaller consumption items.  Think about the things we forget about.  The refrigerator, the deep freezer, the HVAC (Air Conditioning and Heating), the washer and dryer, the TV, the Wi-Fi modem, the aquarium, the stove, the computer, shall I go on?

There are several options out there, solar, wind, water, but only solar is accessible for most people.  So, obviously, it is possible to go totally solar, many are doing it.  It is expensive though.  Do some research on the matter.  Now I said this was about what you can do today, right?  Well, dip your toes into the river of solar power.  Start with solar power packs that have small solar panels that you can use to recharge cell phones and small electrical items. 

Purchase lights like these on Amazon that are cheap, but recharge with small solar panels

and provide a lot of light for many hours:

Get inexpensive solar panels and solar batteries that can charge higher consumption items like fans and computers.  By the way, these and the solar pack and lights I mentioned are great for camping!

Start building your way up to more and more solar power and then spend time using only these items.  This will help you get used to the idea of relying on solar power. 

So, I hope this article was helpful for you.  I want to help individuals understand how to become more self-reliant and take the small steps towards that goal.  I believe that if we start small, we learn invaluable skills and knowledge to help us for when we have to make the big plunge.  That’s all for today, folks, wish you all well and Stay Safe!

#outdoorlife #selfreliance #sustainability #homestead #offgrid