Is self sufficiency sustainability?

[Bubblingbrooks]

Can you e-mail me some links? I'd heard Sally Fallon say cod liver oil for Alzheimer's, but my mom won't take it and can't swallow pills unless they are tiny. She has a stricture in her esophogus.

I could certainly get her to eat coconut oil! I'd make it into chocolates and she'd scarf them down all day! How much should she take?

Blatant hijack. Important stuff. Sorry, Buster.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

I'll actually start a new thread, as there is tons of info, and I have some yummy recipes and ideas!

 

[Buster]

Blatant hijack. Important stuff. Sorry, Buster.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

That's ok. I'm enjoying the entire discussion.

Surprised to find on a forum on self sufficiency (with the subtitle "Living a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle" no less) some people who do not believe self sufficient living is a sustainable lifestyle.

Or people advocating factory farmed canned groceries over homegrown as somehow more sustainable.

Fascinating, really.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Blatant hijack. Important stuff. Sorry, Buster.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

That's ok. I'm enjoying the entire discussion.

Surprised to find on a forum on self sufficiency (with the subtitle "Living a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle" no less) some people who do not believe self sufficient living is a sustainable lifestyle.

Or people advocating factory farmed canned groceries over homegrown as somehow more sustainable.

Fascinating, really.

We all should be taking advantage of todays knowledge and yesteryeard wisdom.
Things would far better for all if we stopped relying on far away places to sustain us.

 

[freemotion]

Buster, wish you'd hang out here a bit more!

 

[me&thegals]

Blatant hijack. Important stuff. Sorry, Buster.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

That's ok. I'm enjoying the entire discussion.

Surprised to find on a forum on self sufficiency (with the subtitle "Living a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle" no less) some people who do not believe self sufficient living is a sustainable lifestyle.

Or people advocating factory farmed canned groceries over homegrown as somehow more sustainable.

Fascinating, really.

I'll have to agree with cmjust and biblio on this one.

Obviously, people on this site prefer to do things for themselves. That doesn't mean that everything we do for ourselves is as efficient and nonwastful as if it were done on a commercial scale. Surely, Buster, you would have to admit that. Even if, as cmjust points out, the only thing being wasted is time. The accumulation of wasted time itself could eventually become unsustainable.

Personally, I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do. Quality of life and enjoyment are high up there on the list. But I do have to admit that I may not always improve the environment in every single choice I make. Mostly I think I do. But not always.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Blatant hijack. Important stuff. Sorry, Buster.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.....

That's ok. I'm enjoying the entire discussion.

Surprised to find on a forum on self sufficiency (with the subtitle "Living a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle" no less) some people who do not believe self sufficient living is a sustainable lifestyle.

Or people advocating factory farmed canned groceries over homegrown as somehow more sustainable.

Fascinating, really.

I'll have to agree with cmjust and biblio on this one.

Obviously, people on this site prefer to do things for themselves. That doesn't mean that everything we do for ourselves is as efficient and nonwastful as if it were done on a commercial scale. Surely, Buster, you would have to admit that. Even if, as cmjust points out, the only thing being wasted is time. The accumulation of wasted time itself could eventually become unsustainable.

Personally, I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do. Quality of life and enjoyment are high up there on the list. But I do have to admit that I may not always improve the environment in every single choice I make. Mostly I think I do. But not always.

Somehow, calling our time put into living this way, wasted, is very sad.

 

[Occamstazer]

Well, I think the satisfaction factor has to be taken into account, so I agree with you somewhat, BB. Even if it could be done more easily or cheaply by someone else, I *like* doing some things with my own hands.
However, there are other things that *would* be a waste of my time, and I can put that energy into more productive endeavors.

I also think that the movement towards self sufficiency is bringing back a sense of closeness and community that has gradually been lost. Even if I can't do something efficiently, perhaps my neighbor can. Capitalism good, Monsanto bad

 

[Farmfresh]

I will be on the sustainable side of the discussion.

When we are practicing SS in addition to reusing our glass jars, saving the planet by not shipping our foods 1,000's of miles before it reaches our table and reducing our trash by reducing the packaging, we also are sustaining the planet and reducing waste in other ways.

For example we keep the soil healthy. Any SSer worth his/her salt is very very careful with their soil. We plant cover crops to reduce erosion and use mulch to prevent evaporation. We compost and spread manure and till in the green manure to enrich and build the soil ever richer. Compare any SSer's dirt with a commercial farm's soil and the difference is obvious. You just can NOT sustain food production on soil that has been pumped full of chemicals.

Also we recycle to the extreme. I pick and prepare my veggies and cook my supper. All of the trimmings from the preparation or over the top veggies go into the pigs (if I had some), the chickens or the compost pile. Any leftovers go to the pigs or chickens to be turned into meat and/or eggs. When I butcher the animals the waste gets buried in the garden to be turned into more veggies. The meat and eggs gets turned into my supper... and on and on we go.

I personally am a VERY lazy gardener. I seldom till my garden at all. I prefer the deep mulch system of laying down newspaper (recycled from non sustainable folks) and piling on leaves, grass clippings etc. Since I mulch SO much I seldom ever need to weed. I basically plant tomatoes, and pick tomatoes, and then can tomatoes.

Many of my jars I acquired second hand. I spend only a few evenings each year in time to can enough tomato products to last us a year. They are canned in glass and so do not contain leached chemicals that will make my family sick. A can of commercially prepared tomatoes (the same size as my jars) costs well over a $1.00. I grew the tomatoes from a few pennies worth of seeds that were raised in a recycled drinking cup. All of my garden mulch was free. Plus I saved MORE time and money as well as fossil fuel by planting and picking and canning tomatoes instead of working out at a gym. I'd say I am pretty darned efficient (with my arthritis I have to be) AND this whole game is very sustainable.

 

[Beekissed]

I think the terms "self-sufficient" and "efficient" have entirely different meanings and I don't know where the question of "is living self-sufficiently/sustainably efficient?" got into the discussion?

Of course, it would seem, at first glance that a commercial agriculture system and canneries could produce food more efficiently. That is their design...efficiently producing low-cost, but alas, low quality, foods in mass quantities. What in the world does that have to do with self-sufficiency or self-sustainability in regards to the ecological impact?

Do you believe that by living a self sufficient lifestyle, you are living a more ecologically sustainable one?

In other words, if you raise your own food and produce your own energy and make your own soap, etc., are you therefore making less of an impact on the planet than if you purchased those items?

Yes, without any shadow of any doubt I am living with less of an ecological footprint on this world than if I were the average, consumer driven citizen.

I am driving less times to the store...and buying less items that would have been trucked in=using less fuel.

I recycle and repurpose many items, thus reducing the need for those items to be placed in the dump or the need for me to buy more things. Again...less fuel, less waste.

I am producing less waste items by recycling my glass canning jars, the plastic jugs I reuse over and over for my homemade laundry detergent..for years I have used the same three jugs.

I am not even mowing my lawn any longer...I use sheep! Even the sheep shear themselves(shed their wool), thus saving me the electric used to shear them. They will reproduce and provide more meat and the only thing they consume is the grass I would have had to cut anyway. This saves me fuel costs and mower repair, not to mention keeps these emissions out of the ozone.

My chickens reproduce themselves when allowed to do so, they forage for much of their own foods, they produce high protein supplements to my dog's diets , thus recycling their food wastes into nutrition for another creature on my property. They provide meat, eggs, fertilizer (without the chemical residue from being fed medicine and other chemicals) and aeration of my lawn, not to mention pest control~this means I don't use chemicals to control pests or commercial lawn treatments to improve my soils/grass.

By carefully limiting my energy usage in the home as much as possible, I am again decreasing the drain on the Earth's resources.

By eating a more nutritious and healthy diet grown without additives and harmful chemicals, not to mention not being packaged in nonbiodegradable packaging, and using physical effort to produce these foods, I am cutting my health care costs to practically nothing. I haven't been to a doctor for years and neither have my children.

How in the world could such a lifestyle be less self-sustaining to the ecosystem than the lifestyle of those who regularly buy a $.36 can of beans produced in the most ecologically destructive method possible? Not sure I'm understanding that take on things.....

 

[me&thegals]

That's ok. I'm enjoying the entire discussion.

Surprised to find on a forum on self sufficiency (with the subtitle "Living a more Self Sufficient & Sustainable Lifestyle" no less) some people who do not believe self sufficient living is a sustainable lifestyle.

Or people advocating factory farmed canned groceries over homegrown as somehow more sustainable.

Fascinating, really.

I'll have to agree with cmjust and biblio on this one.

Obviously, people on this site prefer to do things for themselves. That doesn't mean that everything we do for ourselves is as efficient and nonwastful as if it were done on a commercial scale. Surely, Buster, you would have to admit that. Even if, as cmjust points out, the only thing being wasted is time. The accumulation of wasted time itself could eventually become unsustainable.

Personally, I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do. Quality of life and enjoyment are high up there on the list. But I do have to admit that I may not always improve the environment in every single choice I make. Mostly I think I do. But not always.

Somehow, calling our time put into living this way, wasted, is very sad.

Well, BB, you don't know me so I'm going to not take offense.

You wouldn't know that I make my own butter, yogurt, bread. Can, freeze or dry most of the fruits and veggies we eat in a year. Process my own chicken and turkeys. Raise hens for eggs. Raise bees for honey. Make soap and balm with the wax. Blah, blah, blah. We heat with wood exclusively, forage in the woods and area for mushrooms, berries and asparagus. Blah, blah.

So, I am NOT saying that time spent doing this is wasted. I am saying that because I am Jane of all trades, master of few, I definitely spend (maybe I shouldn't have said "waste") more time doing all these things than people who specialize in each individual thing.

I will NEVER (unless terribly disabled) go back from this lifestyle. I love it, believe in it, get joy and peace from it and truly, wholly cherish it. But, that does not mean that other people could not do it faster, use less energy and do it more efficiently than I.

That's all I was sayin'.

One small example is that I feed our chicks with bagged feed. I assume huge commercial outfits get it shipped in and dumped without packaging. I don't know all the pieces of the equation, but at least in that case I am probably using more plastic then they.

Yes, I'm making my own soap. But it makes me ill how many containers of oils I send to recycling now. So, I don't have the packaging for the soap itself, but I guarantee I am using more oil packaging than huge manufacturers who get their oils in enormous, reusable drums.


As for beekissed's first question: Anything that is inefficient (time, energy or resources) is not sustainable over the long term.