Self Sufficiency - What are we doing?

[glenn kangiser]

Dollar's in the crapper.  Stock market is artificially propped up just waiting for someone to kick the prop out.  Your SS dollars will soon make good toilet paper.  Most of the rest of the world is or will soon be drastically cutting down on taking US dollars.  The printing presses are cranking them out full speed ahead and the rest of the world knows it.  We quit reporting how many are being printed.

Soon we may have to just fend for ourselves. 

What are your plans now that uncle Sam has quit holding your hand, left the country and run off with all the money?

Peter Nap inspired this thread - off grid or going.

What are we doing to improve our future?

[peternap]

I'm looking forward to seeing the responses to this Glenn.
Before anyone starts on the hardware, I'd like to throw in my 0.02 on adjusting to changing times.
There has been a disturbing trend in this country over the years. For lack of a better title, I'll call it the selfish family. My wife and I have always been "WE" or "US"...not her or him.

Money has always been our money not mine or hers. We have faced everything together and each had full voting rights. My wife is also my best friend...sometimes I think she's the only friend i have

I see that same relationship between you and Sassy and in fact...it seems to be a common trait with everyone I know that would rather do things for themselves.

So many married couples now are more like two people living together. The kids get raised by day care and the whole group is dysfunctional.

Our family has to be the basic government in order to be able to function without all the outside support and from that relationship, we can add all the hardware needed to be self sufficient.

End of sermon

[peternap]

Now that Ive gotten the speech out of the way.....

Years ago we looked at what we will need in case of financial problems. There is no reason to go into investments so the basics are food, water, sanitation and heat.

Food is an issue that needs a lot of thought and will be different for everybody. I am a Va Cooperative extension service certified Master Gardner. That is a program set up by the Extension Service to create unpaid agents.

My specialty is composting and organic growing and  intensive growing. I have always had a garden and use no pesticides or manufactured fertilizers. I can and do grow a lot of food in a remarkably small space.

I have also cleared and planted 10 acres in hay. I have an arrangement with one of the local Beef ranchers to trade the hay for beef. He does the bailing and transporting. I just supply the land. It really cuts the food budget to not buy beef every year.

I have 2 acres in Blueberries. Very easy to grow and good trading material. They also make great gifts. I have another 20 acres that I cleared but don't do anything other than scatter Buckwheat in for the turkeys. This can all be used to grow food if needed.

This is all fun for me andisn't part of my living. It will however, play an important part of my retirement (If you want to calll it that)

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Here in WI I am frustrated at how little we can do.  In OK, we raised most of what we ate, with the exception of red meat (which we hardly ever ate because we didn't have it on hand) and milk, and the occasional loaf of store-bought bread.  We had free-range chickens and a large garden.  There were two pecans and apples from a golden delicious apple tree that made good trade items as well as Christmas gifts.  We canned or froze in summer to eat in winter.  Eventually, we'd like to move back to OK, AR, KS, TX, MO or even NM and buy land... preferably OK or MO... and build an off-grid home, or at least a mostly energy independent home, and raise pretty much everything we eat there.

I see more and more people interested in old ways of doing things as they slowly begin to realize that their grandparents weren't crazy, so I'd really like to teach young women how to do for themselves and their families.  When we lived in Oklahoma before, I became friends with two very different young ladies, a young Korean wife and a northern city girl raised in Toronto...  I taught them how to garden without having to water all the time in Oklahoma's hot summers, taught the Korean girl how to bake homemade bread from grain to finished loaf, and we all canned vegetables and pickles together, and through the process I realized that there are people out there who want to learn stuff like that, and a lot more of them that we'd ever think... they just don't have a clue where to begin.  The Korean girl now lives in NJ and is raising two sons, but she's growing a lot of their vegetables in containers on their balcony and baking her own bread.  The other woman is still in OK, and each year she expands her garden a little more to grow a little more of their food in her suburban plot.  I guess there is also a lot for me to learn, but I'd like to share what I do know with others who could benefit from it... maybe provide a modern homesteading class?

[glenn kangiser]

Great start to this thread.

I like the old ways also because they offer a simple solution to get the job done.  I have quite a few old books with methods of the past in them and Google Books is a great place to find old books - out of copyright that have tons of information on old methods.  Too mudh really but everytime you browse through one you will learn something.

My goal here is to be entirely self sufficient hopefully with an excess so I can share freely with others in need.  Currently most are not in dire need but the future looks like more could be.  Homegrown's idea of sharing the knowledge and encouraging others to do likewise is a great way to help our friends and neighbors.

[Sassy]

Peter,  Amen to your "sermon"!     I have a request... could you elaborate in more detail on your gardening secrets?  It seems like this thread would be a good area for more info as we are talking "self-sufficiency"  - BTW, didn't know you are "certified Master Gardener"     now I know who to ask!

Homegrown, how do you plant in the hot Oklahoma sun & not need a whole lot of water?  You mulch a lot, don't you?  Our well doesn't produce a whole lot of water & our garden takes an exorbitant amt...  your homesteading classes would be a great outreach. 

We have a lot of land we could allow for grazing & year-around spring to water the animals - we haven't gotten into our own animals or rather we haven't been successful - too many wild animals around here that are very good at getting into just about anything.  We'll get more chickens eventually, we had ducks, guinea hens & turkeys but only have 2 chickens left.  We had a goat & sheep but something got the goat & the sheep was a Ram & he got pretty onery & untrustworthy - we'd get ewes next time.  This all takes good fences & some way to keep the coyotes, bears, mountain lions, raccoons, skunks, possums, bobcats & foxes out.    

There's a lot more we can do... wish I had more energy!   

We free ranged our chickens & ducks at 1st but they got picked off one by one so had to pen them up.  After a short while, there wasn't a blade of grass left - it was a fairly good sized fenced area for them to run around in - had to cover the top with chicken wire also to keep the owls & hawks out & other myriad animals.  There's a hen house attached to the fenced area.

Was just checking into my retirement...  not great - with the stock market falling like crazy, that big nest egg isn't so big anymore, even though I have most of the money in "safe" gov't bonds      social security - don't know about that & my pension isn't a whole lot either.  Health insurance will be sky high if we have to pay it all ourselves...
How are other people dealing with these issues?

One of our goals is to eventually be debt free.  A good portion of our property is paid for, still have some equipment we are paying on - rental income helps - we are supporting 2 households still - but neither are real expensive - the cabin is off grid & I keep the utilities etc pretty low at the other place in the valley when I'm there.  Once I retire from the job in the valley, we'll be able to move everything up to the cabin (we still have a lot of work to do in the main part of the cabin to make it liveable) & then we can rent that house out.  So.....  we're working on becoming totally self-sufficient... 

[StinkerBell]

I like to recommend a fun website that lends itself to self sufficiency.
www.homesteadingtoday.com

[glenn kangiser]

Thanks Stink, I'll check it out.

Gotta work a bit now.

[Sassy]

Stinkerbell, that's a great forum, just looking it over - lots of good info!  Thanks.   

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Sassy, you guessed it on the garden... I built raised straw-bale beds and there was a lot of OM (mainly composted chicken manure and hay/straw/lawn clippings/kitchen scraps. ) On the tomato bed, before I built the bed, I laid down a soaker hose and left the attachment unburied where I could get to it.  I only used it a little after I first transplanted the tomatoes outdoors, and a little in August when we'd had a really long dry spell.  Inevitably, I'd can a hundred quarts of tomatoes and give tomatoes away and have blisters in my mouth from eating so many of them all summer!  I try to use the long growing season to my advantage by growing as many crops as possible in early spring, fall, and even over winter.  Also, I planted a lot of hot-dry loving plants like eggplants, tomatoes, and okra.  The soaker hose idea worked just fine, and given that I didn't have any money, it was a good solution at the time.  Eventually, I'd like to install drip irrigation that is a little more sophisticated (ie. drips only at the intervals needed for the plant spacing) but that's further down the road.  Instead of growing jalepenos, which take more water, I'd grow  little tiny ornamental peppers (Numex Twilight and a variety my elderly neighbor gave me that we called "Fire Marys") that seemed to live off of air... and besides, it only took a few of those to really heat up a meal!  They also made a really good cranberry-hot pepper sauce I used to can and use for baked chicken.....
    My grandpa always used to be really good about keeping the weeds out of his tomatoes until about July when he'd suddenly let them go and let the weeds grow up all around them... all the neigbors' tomatoes would die off or burn up about the beginning of August, but Grandpa's would be going strong until the first freeze.  He said that the weeds might take up some of the tomatoes' water, but that the tomatoes' roots were deeper and that the weeds provided a light shade that protected the tomatoes... it sounds kind of silly, but it has always worked for me... although I always end up going in and pulling/cutting the weeds before they go to seed. 

[Sassy]

We don't get rain for 4 months at least during the summer - Glenn measured the ground temperature on the roof & it got to 134 degrees - our nights stay around 75-80 for 3 months & there isn't any humidity in the air at all...   we'll have to increase our mulching, hopefully that will cut down on some of the watering.  We grow through the winter also - so basically have year round garden. 

[StinkerBell]

Sassy,

My name is StinkerBell over there too!





I have no originality.....lol

[Sassy]

So you're Stinkerbell CP,  Nethog's Bible study & Homesteading - gee, you are quite the conservationist! 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Stink, I do the same thing...I couldn't remember who I was if I had to change names every time I switched forums (not that I have a lot of forums I visit anymore... too busy.)

[peternap]

Overall, it's a pretty good site. A LOT of the people have no idea what color the sky is though. I finally blew up at one and quit going there!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I forgot one other thing we do... we homeschool our kids and teach them to think for themselves instead of regurgitating whatever a public school teacher gives them.

[glenn kangiser]

I forgot one other thing we do... we homeschool our kids and teach them to think for themselves instead of regurgitating whatever a public school teacher gives them.

I like not only what you are doing but your reason for doing it.

[MountainDon]

Self sufficiency becomes a little more of a problem when your home is in the suburbs and in the desert. Home has solar PV power augmenting the electrical demand though.

There would be the possibility of growing food in the backyard, but it's more difficult this being desert.

The mountains aren't suitable for growing much in the way of food; too short a growing season for a lot of stuff. There is an abundance of Elk and Deer though, and at last look an abundance of reloading supplies in the shop. Also Bear up there, though I've never ate one. Lots of turkey, too.

I do have skills and talents to trade with others though if things went really down the crapper.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

And Don, I'm sure there are edible wild plants hanging around up there, too... something I've always loved learning about and would like to learn more... does it get wet enough in your mountains for things like morel mushrooms?  Yum.  I remember finding some in high school when we were out plant collecting and taking them back to the chemistry lab to saute them over the bunson burners!!

[MountainDon]

It gets rainy in August. All sorts of mushrooms pop up all over. See some here...
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=1427.msg33769#msg33769
I love mushrooms but it seems it is too difficult to tell some of the safe ones from the nasty... I wonder if what squirrels eat is any indication? We watched squirrels having a feast on some.

[glenn kangiser]

I bought a couple books on mushrooms and just got a mailer from a mushroom company I inquired at a year or two ago.  I also haven't taken the time to learn which are the bad ones yet.  I read somewhere it seems that what the animals eat is not always an indicator of what we can eat.

Don, just having the knowledge of how to survive if the need be is a great part of self sufficiency.

[MountainDon]

I read somewhere it seems that what the animals eat is not always an indicator of what we can eat.

I figured as much. I think I'd just shoot the squirrel if it came to being that hungry.

...just having the knowledge of how to survive if the need be is a great part of self sufficiency.

Yep... I don't loose sleep worrying about what I'd do.

[StinkerBell]

MD,

Maybe Hydroponics is the way to go for you?

[glenn kangiser]

That is a good idea, Stink.  Hydroponics is pretty easy to do.  I should set mine up again and do a tutorial as I do it.  Since we have a year round garden outside here I haven't done it yet, but I could have a wider winter variety if I did.

[MountainDon]

Maybe Hydroponics is the way to go for you?

Hydroponics!! I'd forgotten all about that process.

I had a small hydroponics setup in my apartment back in the 70's. I grew tomatoes and peppers.

A friend down the hall grew some special "herbs"  in one as well.