Everyone remembers watching the hapless couple on The Good Life trying to live a self-sustained life. It mostly seemed to consist of a vegetable garden and a goat, and a few other things that annoyed the neighbours. But can it really be done? Can you try to create your own food, energy, and other commodities for yourself instead of buying them in? If you worry about where your purchases come from, the ultimate way to alleviate your fears is to produce everything yourself. If you want to stop being so reliant on businesses to support your lifestyle, here are some ways you can become more self-sufficient.
Grow Fruit and Vegetables
If you have a garden, the first place to start is with a vegetable garden. Start researching what you can grow in your area and in which seasons. Many plants aren’t difficult to maintain, and the more space you have, the more food you can grow. Fruit can be a little harder than vegetables to produce if you don’t have space for trees, but you could also try ground-dwelling fruits like strawberries or melons. If you don’t have a garden, you could try applying for an allotment.
Preserve Your Food
Once you start growing your own food, you can find ways to make it last you all year round. Instead of eating everything right away (or perhaps selling or giving away the surplus) you can, freeze, can and store what you grow. Turn fruits into jams, relishes, and pickles, pack up potatoes and freeze raspberries.
Move to a Smallholding and Own Animals
It’s probably not the best idea to have a goat in your garden, but owning animals isn’t out of the question. Many people have chicken coops in their backyard, but if you want a bigger space you could consider living on a smallholding. These miniature farms will give you enough room to look at farm sheds for dairy-producing animals and perhaps keep some birds for eggs too. You could also have the space for renewable energy supplies, such as solar panels and wind turbines.
Get Off the Grid
If you can live somewhere you can produce your own electricity, you could get off the National Grid and look after yourself. This can be quite a tough thing to do, as wind and solar energy, or perhaps hydroelectricity aren’t always reliable for supplying a whole house. It’s essential to have a backup supply, in case your primary sources fail.
Make Your Own Goods
Food isn’t the only thing that you can make yourself. Although you might have to buy some things to create things with, you can check that they’re ethically made. You can produce clothes using new material and by recycling the ones you already have. Cleaning products are another thing that it’s easy for you to make, and they’ll be better for the environment. You can reuse and recycle what you already have to repurpose everything instead of throwing it away.
Becoming entirely self-sustainable can take a long time, but it is possible to begin slowly to support yourself more. Start by making a few simple changes to your lifestyle, and you could soon be living the good life.
