One of our goals each year is to decrease our dependency on others by increasing our skills and resources. In the city, it was convenient to pay for services and products. Living remotely, we learn to do many things ourselves or do without. I evaluate aspects of our life on a continuum from dependent to independent:
- Dependent on others
- Self-reliant
- Self-sufficient
- Self-sustaining
Given recent news reports of coronavirus and the economy, tornadoes, wildfires, and power outages, perhaps readers are applying this sort of rubric to their situations, too.
a) DEPENDENT – I judge us as dependent on items and skills/services we have to BUY ONCE A YEAR or more often. These include ANY rapidly depleted products made of petroleum (fuel, plastic) metal, glass, and paper (toilet paper!!!). We are also dependent for foods we enjoy but cannot grow, like tropical spices, coffee, citrus. Finally, we rely on skilled service providers occasionally, too, for skilled construction, machine repair, taxidermy.
b) SELF-RELIANT – This simply means things we do ourselves, whether it is baking bread or cutting down trees or canning food. For example, I buy green coffee beans and roast them. This category overlaps with the next.
c) SELF-SUFFICIENT – I define this as having the skills and products or resources on hand that will LAST 1 to 8 or 9 YEARS, before requiring replacement/renewal. These include our wind turbine, stored food (both homemade and purchased), annual foods that I grow from seed, most electric and gas tools, chickens, honeybees. (Hens lay for 3 years before aging out, and some years our honeybees overwinter but others they all die). A low cost of living is helpful to self-sufficiency, too.
d) SELF-SUSTAINING – This is the “gold standard” of independence. It encompasses products and resources on hand that can conceivably last FOREVER, or at least a DECADE without outside servicing or replenishment. Examples for us include our well and lake, accessible timber for fuel and construction, perennial fruit, herbs, and vegetables (both wild and planted/domesticated for food and home remedies), solar panels, many hand tools, and some long-lasting gas and electric tools. I also include black bear meat and the rabbits that we raise for their meat, fertilizer, and fur, since a buck and two does produce as many rabbits as we want, at a frequency and time of year that we can choose (by when we mate them). Sadly, the lake is not a self–sustaining food source. Voracious pike eliminated the prior tasty fish and are now eating each other to such an extent that the fish are vastly depleted in both number and size. To access other fish in nearby creeks, we need to maintain trails through the woods, which we have neglected.
DECREASING DEPENDENCE
Over the years, it has been something of a game for me to shave off a number of products we used to buy. In many cases, this saves money. In others, it increases our sense of competency. For example, I finally taught myself…