Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency. What does that term mean to you? I’ve decided its meaning changes as you live your life. As toddlers learning to feed ourselves and learning to walk we were taking steps to self-sufficiency but for most of us the first time we thought of ourselves as being self-sufficient was when we moved out of our parents’ homes and began paying our own bills.

The most recent update of my own sense of self-sufficiency is when we learned we could live in our motorhome without being plugged into a park’s utility systems. As long as we start with enough food and water and fuel on board we can now live “off the grid” for five days at a time. Then we need to go to town to restock.

Our daughter, however, has spent much of her life learning true self-sufficiency. She once lived in a house with a windmill and enough solar panels to be able to sell electricity to the local co-op. She learned enough blacksmithing to be able to make basic tools. She learned that if you hang laundry outside in the wintertime it stays hard until all the water evaporates from it. She learned to harvest wool and hair from living animals and spin it into yarn to make clothes. She learned how to sew using a treadle sewing machine. She learned to plant a garden that provides food and how to cook that food. Next month she is going to learn to butcher a rabbit and a chicken and to tan a deer hide. She already knows how to shoot a gun. If our world really does go to hell in a hand basket, she will be more prepared than most of us to survive. Is that what self-sufficiency really means?

TTYL,

Linda