Taking the steps towards self sufficiency

A delicious weekend brunch, almost all from the garden.

Although this blog is called "Steps Towards Self Sufficiency", I don't always talk enough about how I go about doing it, in my passion for the food I grow and eat. But I think about ways to take further steps in my own life towards self sufficiency every day. So that's what I'd like to write about today.

I loosely follow a permaculture-based approach to the way I organise my life. While permaculture is often viewed as a way to grow food, the movement created by David Holmgren and Bill Mollinson in the 70s is more than that. It's about looking at your lifestyle and environment and trying to arrange things in a way that is effective. About reducing stress, and effort. About working with nature and your surroundings, not against them. About making problems solutions. You can do this, regardless of where you live, regardless of your lifestyle circumstances.

First, pay attention to what you do in your life. Observe the things you normally take for granted. What are the important things to you? What items in your house do you use the most? What do you buy the most of? Now, how can you make those things rather than buy them? This can cover food, clothing, utensils. When I first started my UK veggie garden, I thought that I would like to have a wicker basket with which to place harvested vegetables in. I couldn't find one in the local shops. That was when I realised that I had a willow tree in my backyard and two hands that worked. So I looked up instructions on basket making on the internet and made a basket. Total cost to me, three hours of enjoyable time. We were looking at garden edgings yesterday and decided we'd weave some out of willow rather than buy anything.

Second: keep a diary of your observations. Do you know how many potatoes you eat in a year? How often do you buy garlic? When were your first/last frost dates? It's important to understand the size of the problem before you try to make big changes to your life. I can tell you just how much we eat of most vegetables in a year, because I try to plant to cover that consumption. But remember that your eating habits will change when faced with fresh veg and you're more likely to eat what's available.

What are your time constraints? Do you work full-time? Are you willing to dedicate one hour each day to self-sufficiency? Do you find you have some social obligation in early May every year, which may prevent you from finishing the spring planting? Do you always take a holiday in the summer school holidays, the prime summer vegetable picking time? Will you come home to giant beans and marrows? Plan your planting accordingly.

Third: make changes slowly. I can't emphasize this enough. It's all very well to plant out 200 runner bean seedlings in May, but come the height of summer when all you're doing is weeding, watering, picking and giving away a glut of beans you'll wish you hadn't. Start growing a few veg in pots, or grow one small garden bed of vegetables in the first year. Next year, or later in the summer, when that garden bed is working well, expand it. Add a few more vegetables, try new varieties. That's the fun. Although I grow a variety of vegetables always, I try to make us completely self-sufficient in one new vegetable each year, and then I maintain that self-sufficiency. Last year it was potatoes. This year it's garlic and we'll have a decent number of onions (although not enough to get us through the year). Next year we'll have more artichokes, enough onions to eat year-round, we'll be growing more grain crops and we want to grow peanuts, for fun. Think about the fertility of your soil. Compost. Mulch. Look after the soil and it will look after you.

Don't try to do too much too fast. If it becomes a chore you're not going to enjoy the experience and are less likely to be effective. How much money are you really spending on those home-grown veg? If it's not value for money, it's not sustainable. But on the other hand, don't be afraid to invest. A few hundred pounds or dollars, spent now on fruit trees and other permanant crops, will yield dividends for years and possibly decades to come.

Think about what you eat year-round. Anyone can grow most of their own veg at the height of summer. The real challenge is to have enough of a variety of vegetables year-round to keep you interested, able to eat seasonally, and not tempted to resort to the shops. Conversely, remember that there's something to be said for keeping the local economy going. There are an increasing number of people in my village who sell their gluts sporadically on tables at the end of their driveway, and I make an effort to buy from them whenever I can. If I buy enough, I may put some up to store for winter. I'll be buying cherries from a neighbour this week for just that, because I ate all of mine fresh.

This is a big one: try to plant something, harvest something and eat something out of your garden, at least once a week, every week of the year. I now try to do this every day, and manage to plant/harvest 4-5 days each week. It takes about 1/2 an hour each time.

If you don't own your property, don't let that stop you. I keep most of my fruit trees and shrubs in pots. I've had crops of cherries, blueberries, artichokes, currants, strawberries and soon plums from pot-grown plants this year: many from trees bought last year. I've grown potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, grapes, kiwifruit, even a passionfruit in pots. Growing in pots can be a great way to start slowly, work in restricted space, and they can be moved around the garden to suit.

If you do have restricted space, think vertically. Grow climbers up walls, grow veg in hanging baskets. Plant low-growing plants around the edge of beds with taller veg. But if you take this approach, be mindful of how much sunlight your plants are getting.

Forget about the idea of wasting food. Wasting food only counts if you've bought it from a supermarket. There is no waste in a proper self-sufficient system. Are all those radishes too woody and going to seed? Feed them to the chickens, or put them in the compost. They'll increase the fertility of your soil. Or let some go to seed, and save the seed or let them self-seed. I have self-sown parsnips, parsley, amaranth and kale all over my garden. The only way waste counts is if you're throwing food away in the summer when you could be preserving it for winter and are resorting to buying your food in in winter.

Think about your consumption. Each time you want to buy something, stop to think whether you can make it for yourself. If there is a reason you can't, is this something that can be fixed? Will a little time/patience/training allow you to be able to make your own linens, baskets, garden fencing, what have you? If you can't make it right now, is there some way you can work towards being able to? Do you really need eight different types of cleaning chemicals, when you can do most cleaning with soap, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar? Do you need a plastic bag? Are you buying things for the sake of having them? I barely ever walk into a shop these days, mostly because they offer so few things I want.

There's no one answer to how to move more towards a self-sufficient lifestyle, because everyone's life is different. The best thing you can do is to pay attention to your own rates of consumption and use that as a guide to where gradual changes can be made painlessly. Little changes, made often and maintained, are what build habits and a lifestyle. It's so much more rewarding to use items you've provided for yourself.