But before I got the coffee jar down I rethinked it and remembered why I was doing it. What was I hoping for?
I want to be more or less, OK more, self sufficient in food. I'd like to NEVER! have to go to a shop, factory, elsewhere, to buy food. I don't think that is really possible as a longterm thing though, at least not without changing
This little exercise is showing me what I need to do if I am serious about getting more self sefficient though.
I know I need some coffee bushes. I will need milk and husband didn't say no this morning when I asked about getting a goat or 2. I will need to grow wheat so I can have flour. People do that so that shouldn't be too hard. A daughter grows lentils and chickpeas so I should be able to do that too.
The BIG thing is animals as food. If husband is home he will do the roosters for us. Son brings out meat sometimes but that's not us producing it ourselves so probably shouldn't count. Sometimes he'll get me some rabbits but not often enough so I will need to ask more often. We could raise meat rabbits but husband would need to be agreeable to doing the killing and cleaning...I will need to learn how to cook and catch the marron if I wanted to eat them more often. And I think we need an aquaponics system so we can have fish on tap, so to speak.
Self Sufficiency in food is someththing that would take a lot of time and a LOT of hard work. I have the time...In all honesty though I don't think that I am willing to put in the hard yards to get what I want. So maybe I don't really want it as much as I think I do...
For now I will stick to my 3 days, maybe, I am rethinking that too...and make sure that I get more stuff planted and learn about growing wheat on a small scale.
Off to have a lemon balm tea...
I could clean fish under one circumstance, maybe dress a hen--if my children were starving or would starve. Eggs would have to be my protein source now since I am relieved of the burden of my children starving. I always worried about that!
ReplyDeleteNone of us can be totally self-sufficient in food production as long as we depend on seeds, gasoline, and machinery from someone else. I know this is not where you are trying to be.
Do you or would you count yourself as self-sufficient if you traded for what you could not produce or do yourself? For example: If you raised hens and someone else killed them for a portion of the hens, would you count that as self-sufficient? If you traded your tomatoes for someone else's cleaned fish, would you count that as self-sufficient? Just curious.
Raising a coffee and wheat crop sufficient for your needs would really be difficult, I think. I forgot how much land you have, but what would small scale be to you?
This experiment/challenge of yours is interesting.
Barb i think you have been doing a wonderful job i really do , and is it really achivable to be self sufficent/ i think it could be if bartering was appart of it , i think we all want a more simple life style and live of the land as much as we can ....but hey i love my coffee lol and i dont think we can even grow coffee bushes in Tasmania ..so i will have to unfortunly get mine from the supermarket!!!
ReplyDeleteBlessings Heidi :-)
I don't know if anyone can be fully self sufficient and I don't think we are meant to go it alone. Bartering has been around for ages and perhaps that's what our society needs more of. I think that it's wonderful that you are giving it a go and my hat goes off to you for trying if only for a few days. I though I'd be able to give it a try to eat only what we produce but couldn't even make it through one day. Oh well!
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