Official Poll: What is your motivation to be more self-sufficient?

[Wannabefree]

I'm frugal, always have been. I couldn't narrow it down. It's mostly just a way of life here. However, I NEVER set out to do anything specifically to "save the environment" from whatever.....and especially not global warming..it's 12 degrees here right now. My part of the globe could use a little warming!!!

 

[Denim Deb]

Same here.

 

[desertcat]

I like knowing where my food comes from and what is (or isn't) in it. When I was little, my sister & I used to play 'pioneer woman'. She outgrew it, and I grew into it! Loved it when DH looked at the last few grocery lists and realized that they were 95% nonfood

 

[baymule]

I want to know that my food is not drenched with glyphosate or 2-4-D or what ever the "safe" poison of the week is. My Daddy always had a garden, my earliest memories are of toddling behind him in his garden. I have gardened off and on through my life and picked it back up about 8 years ago. There is nothing that compare with fresh vegetables, raised without chemicals or pesticides. A small investment in a pack of seeds or a 6-pack of plants brings large rewards, both in food and satisfaction that I am feeding my family with good food.

I can, freeze and dehydrate the extra and I buy what I don't have room to grow. I pick blueberries and blackberries for yummy cobblers all winter. Friends give me figs and pears which I turn into jam and preserves, and give them jars of each in a "thank you". My pantry is packed with gleaming jars.........ok......maybe a little dusty. I have Food-Saver bags of dehydrated vegetables. I have stored beans, rice, wheat, quinoa and sugar in quantity that would feed us for awhile.

We live in hurricane country and when we take a hard hit, the power can be off for weeks. I can walk in the darkness to where I keep a box of kitchen matches and down below in the cabinet, I can lay hands on a kerosene glass lantern. We have a generator for the freezer, but finding gas for it can be an ordeal in and of itself. A bar-b-cue pit cooks what we need to eat when power is off. We have warning when a hurricane is coming, so I bake brownies (need comfort food lol ) I store water in every available pot, plus in big plastic trashcans with lids.

I would hate to pay the bill for the fresh vegetables I grow. There is no way we could eat as healthy as we do if we had to buy it all. I cannot fathom why anybody with a bit of a yard does not grow a garden. Lazy, I guess.

Even thought we are in the center of our small town, I have chickens in the backyard. BYC-RIGHT??? The hens provide us with fresh eggs and the old hens are good in the soup pot. I am contemplating ordering some Pekin ducks to raise for the freezer. DH used to think I was nuts, now when I voice "I'm thinking about......" he just grins. He's a good sport and piles in to help me in whatever madness I have concocted.

 

[Marianne]

Hi Everyone, it's been forever since I have been here, so plenty of catching up for me.
I voted the way I did for pretty much the same reasons everyone else listed, except I added environment, too. We're semi vegetarian and like others here, no spraying, etc. that equals organic and better food.
Oh yeah, we never have had much money but we live much better here on the farm with less money.

 

[Nifty]

Hey @Marianne, great to see you here! Also, good point about environment / spraying.

 

[Denim Deb]

Hey, Marianne! Good to see you back!

 

[Puck-Puck]

I would have checked off all of the reasons, though the order keeps changing over time. I live in a very small community, a long way from a supermarket, and at a nearly two-hour drive, the less I go in to town, the better. The local store doesn't have much quantity or variety of "fresh" produce, so it only makes sense to grow and forage for my own (organic) produce. I saw a video on how commercial chickens live...got my own chickens. Moved to a larger property...got goats for milk. My ventures have to at least carry their own costs, if not actually make a little money as well. I live better for less money than I did in town, and even though it takes a lot of time to learn to do things, I like learning to do new things and developing new skills. It's also kinda cool when people ask for pointers! It's not as though there are a whole lot of jobs available here, so learning to live with minimal external employment is a good thing. I also have vague hopes of starting some sort of local industry that isn't tourism, and which promotes food security. I sense a general decline in standards of living and expectations of government that in my youth I was taught to take for granted, and don't want to be caught with my pants down should things really go south during my lifetime.

I know this sounds like a lot of me-me, I-I, but I do live alone...and this is a "self" sufficiency forum, isn't it?

 

[pepper48_98]

I have been an animal person all my life and as a youngster we would get the 4-H chickens and raise them to eat. We would go to the farms and pick veggies, can or freeze them.

I bought 5 acres 20 years ago and my goal was to grow all my food and without any chemicals. A great idea but the wife has never been on board. So, now, I just have a small garden but do try and raise all the meat.

 

[WendyJ]

I do it for all of those reasons to one degree or another, but my top
2 were knowing what is in the food I'm eating and being prepared as much as possible. As for reasons why, it is everything from being creative, to hearing about the so-called food that comes from places like China, to seeing the people after hurricane Sandy or the ice storms in Toronto complaining that things weren't fixed right away (I don't include Katrina, feel there were other issues involved there); my motto is if you aren't prepared to stay you need to be ready to go, and accept with gratitude whatever help you are offered.