What was the deciding factor(s) to become SS?

[CrealCritter]

I think it would be good to talk about what were the deciding factor that caused you to become self sufficient. Maybe you've always been self sufficient and can share some golden nuggets with use newbies like me.

My way to and I raised our family in small towns we both can not stand cities. The last small town we live in, in NC had a population of 300 I think that included dogs and cats though. This was your typical NC small town. The house was 3500 sq ft built in 1899 and had all the old woodwork, all ceilings and a small coal fire place in every room. I rewired the entire house, redid some of the rooms that still had lath and plaster and installed a centeral heat and air gas pack, duct and the whole 9 yards.

When our kids starting moving out. We had this huge house for two of us. Then the town passed an ordinance of no livestock in city limits (did you know chickens are livestock?). Then the town came in and condemned my well, rendered it inoperberable and hooked us up to city water that we could not drink and charged us by the gallon that we consumed monthly. The city water was bad and we had to buy bottled water to drink. My well water was good tasting and I had it tested - it was good and clean. Then the Mayor who live just two houses up the street started complaining about me running my sawmill out back of my house. The city then passed an ordinance about running sawmills, chainsaws and heavy equipment within city limits and threatened to fine me $2000.00 if I started up my sawmilling again. Needless to say I had enough...

Shortly after the sawmill ordance passed. A wind storm rolled through and knocked over lots of trees in town. I got a call from the Mayor asking me to cut up trees that fell in town to help the town clean up after the storm. I laughed at her and said "why so you can fine me $2000.00? You guys are absolutely crazy. When your the one that needs work it's ok but when I want to work to make a little money it's not ok." Then I basically told her to go F... herself. Mayor or not I don't care who it is - I speak my mind and her and the board pissed me off with their sawmill ordance.

My wife and I just decided that there are too many rules and grew tired of having someone else telling us what we can or can't do... So we moved to the country in southern IL and never looked back. Only regret is we didn't move a lot sooner.

So what's your story? Why did you decide to become self sufficient?

 

[Beekissed]

My folks wanted to become more independent of the grid back in the late 70s, so moved us to a 110 acre piece of land that had been a small farm 75 yrs previously but had no standing structures or fences except one tiny log outbuilding by the time we got there. Dad had spent every penny on the purchase of the land, so we started clearing it and building a simple 2 room log cabin with hand tools alone. That cabin still stands strong this day, as does the one we built a few years after that.

The road back from the hardtop was not passable with vehicles back then, even 4x4s, so everything had to be walked in for almost a mile.

We lived back there, no running water or electricity for 12 yrs...then they finally had electricity run, but still no running water. No solar power, no hydro, etc. Just wood heat, propane refrigeration, water toted from a spring at first, then a well.

I was 10 when that all started, so it left a profound mark on me for the rest of my life. I was working harder than I had ever worked before, walking further to catch the bus and doing without many things I had always taken for granted~like a hot bath in a tub, flush toilets, heat that comes on when you turn a thermostat, water coming from a spigot when you turn a handle, lights that come on when you flip a switch. It was strange but also a little wonderful, though very hard and uncomfortable at times.

Here's a pic of Mom sitting next to that first cabin, built in 3 wks time. We all lived in that small cabin~parents and 5 kids still left at home and older kids coming back to live at home~ for the next 6 yrs until the larger cabin was built. Then I and my brother continued to sleep there a few more years, after other siblings had went to college and the military, and Mom and Dad lived in the larger cabin.

This cabin had thick cardboard flooring over the rough cut boards underneath. Yes, we lived on a cardboard floor. Slept on log built beds, all in the larger room. The lean to portion held a huge wood cookstove on one end and the rest of the kitchen on the other....that wood stove is where Mom did all the canning each summer. Thousands of jars canned each summer over the heat of that stove.

This next pic shows the land some years later after we had built the larger log cabin...you can see the edge of the smaller cabin in the right side of the pic. By then we had cleared the land to a smoothness~it was filled with multiflora rose, junk cars and thousands of old tires when we arrived there...and those were filled with bees, snakes and other filth.

All that was built with a chainsaw and hand tools, no power equipment was used. Six acres mowed with push mowers. Dad finally got an old '48 Case tractor for the brush hogging of the outer fields and paths, but he expected the place to look like a golf course at all times, so lots of use of mowers, weed wackers, sickles and such all through the growing months.

I liked that we could grow big gardens and have our own livestock, hunt for food off the land, etc. and preserve it all in our cellar. It was like having your own grocery store out back. When they called off school due to snows or power outages, we weren't really affected all that much...we used kerosene lamps, heated with wood and had our food stored out back.

My grandma had a farm and she had a magical cellar also, so even as a youngster I grew to appreciate that a person could do some hard work and have something others didn't have(by that time WV was JUST getting power and running water up in all the hollers and no way were people wanting to go BACK to living without it...grandma was still on a party line phone system even.)

I was the only kid out of 9 who grew to love that homesteading kind of living. I won't call it self sufficiency, as I feel there is really no such thing and we are all dependent upon God and also upon one another, so it's a misnomer. No one is sufficient unto themselves.

Since then I've tried to live a more sustainable kind of existence, trying to produce food of my own wherever I live, trying to decrease dependence upon the utility grid, etc. After moving all around, I find myself back on that same land(the folks retained 20 acres of it when they sold the place) and I can see that original small cabin from this place...gets more cute with each passing year. I live with my mother so she can continue to live where and how she likes to live, here in another log cabin build, back in the holler still, and close to the land.

We still grow a garden, though a lot smaller than the grand ones we used to put in each year, still forage for food off the land, still preserve most of our foods in a jar, still make our own breads by hand, heat with wood using the same barrel stove kit we purchased back in the 70s, still use an outhouse when necessary, still raise some animals for food, and still have the knowledge that we could go back off grid in a heartbeat and with very little stress on our own sensibilities. We've been there, we've done that and we got that T shirt good and dirty...and we could go back in a heart beat.

Mom, at the age of 80, still up on roofs doing the patching and maintaining.

So...here I am and that's my story. That's our story, my family's move off grid, to living off the land and how it shaped who I am today. To this day, each and every time I turn on the water to take a shower, I thank God for it...for that pure, good water coming from the ease of turning a handle.

 

[treerooted]

I really liked that @Beekissed , you certainly had a less-then-average childhood which I'm sure a couple paragraphs don't quite do it justice. Would love to have you around my place to show me the ropes !

 

[baymule]

My Daddy was the son of a sharecropper. They grew up poor, as a boy, Daddy chopped cotton for 10 cents a day. They grew a garden because if they didn't , the family wouldn't eat. He grew up much like Beekissed, no power, running water or telephone. As a grown man with a family he always raised a garden. My earliest memories are of toddling behind my Daddy in his garden. I absorbed his knowledge by helping him.

My Daddy was organic before organic was cool. When I grew up, there were times that I had a garden and times that I didn't. Sometimes I raised rabbits, quail, chickens. Even when I didn't have a garden, I bought peas, corn, okra and tomatoes and put them up. At various times, I set the table with food I either grew, hunted or fished. Sometimes the only thing store bought was the salt, pepper, tea and sugar.

Before we moved 3 years ago, we lived in a small town 75 miles north of Houston. We lived on a small city lot, just a few blocks from down town. I grew a garden in the front yard, in beds and managed to grow a lot of what we ate. I kept chickens in the back yard and we had fresh eggs and meat. My husband thought I was nuts when I first wanted a garden, but the first tomato made him a huge fan of the garden. He really thought I was off my rocker when I wanted chickens, but the first egg made a convert of him.

The catalyst that really moved us was hurricane Rita that hit Houston 3 weeks after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Houston evacuated. It was a real eye opener to be in the path of thousands of people in a panic.

We moved 160 miles to be close to our daughter and her family, we bought 8 acres. We have a garden, chickens, sheep, ducks and raise feeder pigs. We live in a great neighborhood and share seed, raise group effort pigs, and help each other.

We wanted out of town and out of the Houston area. We wanted land where we could raise our own food. I have chemical sensitivities and I don't want poison on our food. I can, dehydrate and freeze what we grow. We are not self sufficient, we buy electricity, water, internet, satellite TV, fuel for the truck and car, plus many other things. If the economy crashed and those things weren't available or hyper inflation priced them out of reach, then at least we would be in better shape to support ourselves and make sure our daughter, her husband and our precious grand daughters didn't go hungry. In our community there are a few who hunt, a few who garden, and a general feeling of neighbors watching out for each other.

 

[CrealCritter]

Being a electronics engineering grad - I simply could not imagine life without electricity. Although must admit I don't like being dependant on the electric company much at all... It's not that our co-op isn't great it's that I just don't like being dependant on them.

I would eventually like to find property with a stream and build a wooden water wheel to power a generator capable to generate 200 amps 220 volts of single phase alternating current. Somewhere in my desk is a folder with some sketchings and math for the water wheel generator that I drew up many years ago. When my math skills were not so dull, as they are now.

 

[Beekissed]

You'd be surprised how quickly you get used to it and then, when all is quiet inside and out, how quickly you grow to love it. The first thing I notice when the power goes out here is the blessed quiet of the fridge not running.

Though often inconvenient to not have a phone, oh, the peace of never hearing that jarring sound in the home, that rude summons. To this day I HATE answering a phone and a knock on the door....when we lived off grid and back a holler where few could travel, we never had a knock on the door. We could hear any arrivals for some time before they arrived and were waiting to greet them.

A person soon gets used to that particular luxury~peace and quiet.

 

[treerooted]

To be fair I hate answering the phone and knocks on the door too...

 

[milkmansdaughter]

Great thread!

I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin on 3 acres in the country, a mile across the field from my dad's parents. We had a house and three acres connected to a farm owned by family friends. Lots and lots of farmland all around us. Most of the farms were small dairy farms (most with 50 cows or less.)
My mom knew nothing about farming, little about canning, gardening, or country life in general. But my dad's parents were farmers, and grandpa was also the first milkman in the area. They had 15 kids (grandma had 4 sets of twins!). Grandma always had a huge garden, and canned everything. She made her own bread, and meat came from the farm (very much like Bee described). When my dad and his brother came home after WWII they bought the family farm and the milk route and grandma and grandpa retired to a new house built on part of their land. My uncle had spent the entire war in the Pacific theater, and one Wisconsin winter was all it took for him to sell his share and leave Wisconsin for good to live in California. So dad and my uncle sold the farm to a cousin, and dad kept the milk route. He'd go from one small farm to the next and pick up the milk, and then bring it to the plant to be processed into milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, etc... The property we lived on had a big barn, several outbuildings, a silo, and acres and acres and acres of land to explore. I grew up helping on area farms, bailing hay for cash or meals, and riding all over the area in that milk truck. I'm one of 8.
When we were kids, we'd take care of our lawn and garden, and then go help grandma with hers. (Grandpa died when I was 8). We always brought extras to neighbors or mom or grandma canned it. Over the years we had rabbits, chickens, pigs, dogs, a goat... We all worked for cash and had a "pickle patch" we were responsible for to make money. We'd bring them to a very tiny canning factory. We babysat, baled hay, worked on farms, worked on the milk route.. when I was around 6, dad and mom and two other couples (both related to dad) bought a cabin together in northern Wisconsin. This was heated by wood only although it did have electricity. We had an outhouse that was used most if the time. We spent a lot of time up at the "cabin" fishing, swimming, and enjoying a simpler life in the woods on a small lake. I spent as much time outside as possible, and the cabin especially became myall-time favorite spot.

When we got married, my husband and I were both in the military. 30 years later, with 4 kids almost all out of the house (the last with major medical issues), many many moves, separations, and my husband's multiple deployments, we wanted a place of our own. He wanted a shop and area to do woodworking and wanted to raise bees. And he wanted to be away from people and the ability to make his own choices. And I wanted some of what I had growing up: TIME spent together, good food, our own berries, food, nuts, and meat. Most of all I wanted a place of our own to call home. A place where grandkids can come year after year, and their growth is measured on a post. Where the work is harder at times, but it's shared by family. Where the days aren't measured by someone else's time clock and wallet. Sooo here we are... Not self sufficient, (totally relying on God's grace!) but we could be quite independent if needed...

 

[sumi]

I love reading everyone's stories! Thank you all for sharing them. Me, as long as I could remember I wanted to live on a farm, grow vegetables and keep animals. I was obsessed, growing a few veggies in the back garden, or wherever I could, growing up in a nice neighbourhood in the middle of a big town, while longing to be out there… I got a weekend job in my teens, helping out on a dairy farm, milking cows, taking care of calfs. To this day the smell of cow manure makes me smile! I lived for those weekends.

Years later I met my (now ex) husband and went to stay with him on his small farm. I had a huge garden, pigs, sheep and lots of chickens. He had some cows, but we didn't milk them, or do anything with them really. I learned to grow different things, some butchering skills, a lot about chickens, baking bread and cooking jams and a little canning…

Fast forward to where I am now, back in a village, I've been blessed with a big backyard where I can grow stuff and keep my chickens, but my dream is to be back on a farm again sooner rather than later and to keep animals again.

 

[CrealCritter]

You'd be surprised how quickly you get used to it and then, when all is quiet inside and out, how quickly you grow to love it. The first thing I notice when the power goes out here is the blessed quiet of the fridge not running.

Though often inconvenient to not have a phone, oh, the peace of never hearing that jarring sound in the home, that rude summons. To this day I HATE answering a phone and a knock on the door....when we lived off grid and back a holler where few could travel, we never had a knock on the door. We could hear any arrivals for some time before they arrived and were waiting to greet them.

A person soon gets used to that particular luxury~peace and quiet.

I was born in between a hill and a holler <--- seriously I was and with no birth certificate either. When I got old enough to work and pay taxes @ the ripe old age of 12 - it was a pain in the behind getting a social security card. But i have a birth certificate now.