Do you want to be self-sustaining in every area of your life?  Let me tell you how.

Hi, I go by K, and I am an older person who’s been around long enough to see how our quality of life has deteriorated in the US. Processed food is the norm and real food is outrageously expensive. Meat is so heavily brined that by the time it’s cooked it’s half the amount you originally bought.  Vegetables are mostly genetically modified, and heavily sprayed with pesticides.  Electricity, water, and gas continue to go up in price, while your salary can’t keep up due to inflation.  Making it worse is the fragility of the infrastructure delivering these goods and services.  We see in the news rolling blackouts, wildfires, floods, etc all making the infrastructure more vulnerable.  Climate change is only going to make this worse.

I knew I had to do something rather than rely on a system that was going to rob me blind and ruin my health, despite the fact that I’ve never been rich.  I’ve never even made a few bucks over minimum wage.  But I’ve learned how to become more self-sufficient, and how to have a better quality of life that’s no longer dependent on this fragile infrastructure.  

Why is it that up into the 1970s, everybody could afford a home on a modest single income? Looking back to the 1940s, most people had a small garden and raised either chickens or rabbits, and sometimes both.  Coming out of the Depression, they wanted to provide for their own survival needs. Stores were for purchasing items you couldn’t grow yourself, and for purchasing luxury items such as coffee, tea, salt, flour, etc.

Twenty years after I embarked on this project, by keeping the goal central to my activities, I am well on my way to achieving independence.  I have a greenhouse attached to my house serving a dual function: it provides me with vegetables, and the excess heat is vented to the house to save on gas during winter.  I have an outside garden providing me with better quality food than I could buy. My power, water, and heat are provided through solar electricity, rainwater catchment, and a wood stove.

Meat, eggs, and dairy come from the sheep, chickens, and goats on the property.  With my basic needs provided, I cut my hours at work, becoming part-time while increasing my quality of life.

Did I win the lotto to be able to afford this?… No!  Self-sufficiency is being achieved through setting simple goals, realizing them, and moving on to the next goal till it all comes to fruition.

I have partnered with Phoenix to enhance this independence.  If we are capable of realizing this, then anyone who wants to gain some self-sufficiency toward total independence can achieve it, too.