Group Sufficiency - My version of Self Sufficiency

[hotwired]

I really envy all of you who are growing their own food and living off the grid. Unfortunately I live on a little under 6 acres in a highly populated area. I only have room for a 45 x 60 foot vegetable garden imageshack.us/a/img203/6624/raisedbeds2.jpg , and a very large strawberry patch with 3500 plants imageshack.us/a/img232/5947/sb12t.jpg . I do have a greenhouse imageshack.us/a/img695/6125/267eh.jpg and a couple of hoop-houses imageshack.us/a/img842/1226/276qn.jpg , but a family can't live of strawberries and a few vegetables.

I'm big into bartering for what I call "group sufficiency", since self sufficiency really isn't possible for most of us nowadays. I grow about 1200 pounds of strawberries each year, as well as blueberries, and barter for fruits, veggies, and meats that I don't grow. I trade vacuum sealed whole frozen strawberries for bushels of peaches, apples, potatoes, and onions. I trade for weekly eggs, chickens, pork, and other organic products. I recently traded 12 pounds of strawberries for 6 free-range fryers, which I cooked, stripped, vacuum sealed, and froze the meat, then pressure cooked the carcasses to make stock. It was a long night but I ended up with 17 quarts of Chicken stock. imageshack.us/a/img43/5865/p1010305xp.jpg While I was at it I made Chicken Soup and canned half pints for my 93-year old mother imageshack.us/a/img843/3755/p1010310o.jpg . At least I'll know she's
eating healthy. This barter system works for me. I've cut my food bills by 60%.

I'm trying to take it to the next step by cutting energy costs. I am a retired engineer and a bit of a jury-rigger. I designed and built a pellet boiler made from a 275 gallon oil tank with the end of a hotwater tank as a fire box. I incorporated a stainless augur for feeding the pellets and installed a pump to circulate the heated fluid. We installed Buick Radiators and box fans for heat radiators. My friend heats his barn with it and I have my boiler heating my greenhouse. He raises corn for feed, so I designed and built him a grinder-press for converting the cobs to pellets for fuel. He now sells corncob pellets and in return I get all the free pellets I need. I'm building a second boiler for the house and hopefully can cut my winter heat bills drastically.

The point is that Bartering is an extremely viable way of being more self sufficient or "Group-sufficient. Find one thing that you can do well or are able to grow extremely well, and barter with others for those things you can't do or don't want to do. Barter-partners are easy to find - just visit your local farmer's market. That's where most of my deals were struck.

Hotwired NY 5b
www.hotwiredgardens.com

[bertiefox]

I'm sure you are 100% right because nobody tried to live with individual 'self sufficiency' throughout human history. They had to cooperate in fairly large groups to till the areas of land needed for survival, and to share facilities and manpower for harvesting, threshing, milling and so on. The most depressing thing I find today is that very few people are interested in sharing and being 'group sufficient'. For example, we bought a fairly expensive log splitter and I wanted to share it with friends, but instead they bought one of THEIR own too, as they didn't want to run the risk that it wouldn't be available at exactly the time they wanted to use it. We all do this over and over again with hefty and expensive cultivators, honey extractors, and so on and on. Bartering makes a great deal of sense and our best barter is to exchange a small meadow we don't need with a local farmer who uses it graze his cattle and for a hay crop. He gives us bales of straw and a small trailer load of wheat for our chickens in exchange. Definitely the way to go!

[synergy]

I enjoyed your website very much Hotwired. There are some pdf's on doing things from amking noodles to polyhouses if anyone has not yet checked out the website link.

You are very well on your way to having lots of food to barter. I am going to prune the bases of my blueberry bushes and start new bushes this early spring . I lost my strawberry beds to weeds big time and need to completely kill off the weeds with black poly and start all over again .

[steev]

Bertiefox, you're right on the money! This whole "I'm a totally self-sufficient individual" thing is utterly at odds with human development, since we got past the hunter-gatherer stage. I won't even start on the ramifications of the materials and supplies that make the "self-sufficiency" delusion plausible. The only thing in which such loons are self-sufficient is their capacity for self-delusion.

[oxbowfarm]

I think its a great delusion, I got started on this whole crazy enterprise when I read "The Guide to Self Sufficiency" by John Seymour. I still love that book, short on actual how-to but great for firing the imagination. I figure if someone is striving for self sufficiency they will make a great addition to a resilient community when the shit hits the fan. Beats watching zombie movies, do they make anything but zombie movies anymore?

[MikeH]

Toby Hemenway does a good job of poking huge holes in the self-sufficiency mantra: www.patternliteracy.com/107-the-myth-of-self-reliance

I especially like this: Self reliance fails to grow social capital, a truly regenerative resource that can only increase by being used. Why would I not want to connect to my community in every way that I can? If we don’t help fill our community’s needs, there’s more chance that our neighbors will shop at big-box stores. An unexamined belief in self reliance is a destructive myth that hands opportunity to those who are taking our community away from us.

[steev]

Sounds like we differ on our definition of self-sufficiency; I think we see multiple levels of it, from personal to community.

I've never seen "Day of the Dead"; not on my bucket list.

[oxbowfarm]

Don't get me wrong, I think resilient communities are the only thing that makes any sense, I just don't see the harm in the self sufficiency concept. You start out with that goal and you find yourself making the community connections almost as a matter of course. At least in my experience.

[bunkie]

great site hotwired! you have a really nice setup there in your greenhouse. instead of mirrors, we have used tinfoil if need be. got to go back and checkout the rest of your links!

[Deleted]

I thought of small livestock and high protein food staples, like beans and nuts, do not believe that we could have the same quality of life if we had to do everything ourselves.

www.shtfplan.com/emergency-preparedness/a-true-survival-story-taking-their-possessions-and-some-seeds-they-had-retreated-ever-deeper-into-the-forest_02022013

One of the lessons I learned is that you would have to produce in bulk, if it was going to last beyond a short growing season, and especially if you were going to have enough to share. To do it well, you would really have to devote every waking hour to it.

[MikeH]

Feb 3, 2013 11:50:11 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

Don't get me wrong, I think resilient communities are the only thing that makes any sense, I just don't see the harm in the self sufficiency concept. You start out with that goal and you find yourself making the community connections almost as a matter of course. At least in my experience.

I think the idea of finding a niche where you have a skill, a talent, an interest, a passion like growing strawberries is a good idea. Sure anyone can grow strawberries but not as well as someone with a knack. That person will figure out how to do it better, easier, cheaper, juicier, sweeter.

There a lot of folks here with niches and knacks. And those that involve food will always be in demand.

[hotwired]

Feb 8, 2013 13:37:46 GMT -5 MikeH said:

I think the idea of finding a niche where you have a skill, a talent, an interest, a passion is a good idea.

Mike, speaking of self sufficiency, you have some of the nicest Walleye fishing in the Northeast at Rice Lake. I'd have my freezer full of Walleye and Perch, and be fertilizing my garden with the Carp if I lived up that way. I've fished Rice Lake and caught some nice ones.

[castanea]

Feb 3, 2013 0:06:19 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

I think its a great delusion, I got started on this whole crazy enterprise when I read "The Guide to Self Sufficiency" by John Seymour. I still love that book, short on actual how-to but great for firing the imagination. I figure if someone is striving for self sufficiency they will make a great addition to a resilient community when the shit hits the fan. Beats watching zombie movies, do they make anything but zombie movies anymore?

Yeah, they also make vampire movies.

[steev]

Apparently, reality sucks (pun intended), at least in terms of cheap entertainment.

[castanea]

I am so tired of vampires and zombies and werewolves. Doesn't anyone have an original thought anymore?