Self-Sustainability

When the pandemic began, stores closed down. Everything that we knew and grew accustomed to, came to a screeching halt. That's when I decided I wanted to be self-sustaining. Not only for me, but my husband and kids as well.

My husband and I started a garden, almost immediately. It brought me so much joy to water our plants and see them grow. The feeling of picking vegetables out of your own garden that you grew yourself is a different feeling. There's no additives or preservatives. They're not wrapped in plastic and served to you at a store. You're not getting the same corn that someone else is getting across the country. This is corn we grew and maintained ourselves.

From tomatoes to rosemary, we grew everything our small garden could handle. Vegetables and herbs galore. It started us on a track to be self-sufficient.

I learned how to make bread from scratch - no more store bought bread. I can make it in a few hours, and we can have homemade bread or rolls for dinner. We can make our own butter and if we ever got the chance to have chickens, we'd be able to have eggs, too.

We still need some ingredients such as baking powder, baking soda, yeast, flour. Since we're trying not to rely on the store as much, we do buy a few cans or cartons of these products every time we go, that way we eventually won't have to go anymore. If I could figure out how to make these things by hand, I would have already.

My father-in-law owns a honey company and loves to tend to his bees in his own backyard. We've dabbled in that as well and being able to have your own honey that never goes bad is also very exciting. It's a natural sugar, helps allergies, sickness and some wounds, as well as a nice additive to your coffee or tea.

I also learned how to bake from scratch. Apple pies to blueberry lemon loaf. It's incredibly rewarding to make something yourself and be able to have that knowledge, which I'm incredibly grateful to have.

All of this has kicked off the idea of us moving to somewhere with land, where we can have a garden the size of our current house. We want to grow our own trees, have animals that we tend to and a well for our own water.

I know how to sew, so making clothes for us is not an issue and I enjoy doing it if I ever have free time. We make our own candles and soaps from time to time, and if we needed to, we'd have that knowledge if we had to do it one day.

We're currently working on figuring out how to can jams, pickle vegetables ourselves, as well as preserving meats. Those are the harder ones to learn but we're very excited to be moving on to these self-sustaining tasks.

Being self-sustaining is something I've always wanted to do. I've never wanted to depend on a store or someone else somewhere in the world for the things I have. I love being able to go out to our garden and make dinner from fresh vegetables, adding in herbs that we've grown. It's amazing and it is a privilege to be able to do this, and I'm not bad at it if I do say so myself.

Providing for my family in self-sustaining ways is a dream come true and I would love to continue it for as long as I can. When we're able to get our own land, we'll find more ways to not rely on the outside world. Until then, I'm very happy with what we have in place now.