Introduction

SELF-SUFFICIENCY SELDOM MAKES headline news, but it never seems to be very far away as a topic of conversation. Rather like the weather, or the housing market, it is one of those subjects that people enjoy discussing endlessly – perhaps because it offers the chance of making exciting changes to one’s lifestyle. But what does self-sufficiency really mean?

Strictly defined, self-sufficiency is a way of living in which no support or aid of any kind is required from external sources: complete personal independence from the outside world. Yet self-sufficiency as it is understood today has a broader and more forgiving meaning. It is about becoming more independent and resourceful, about being able to do things for ourselves – not everything, but as much as we feel comfortable with. It is a means of taking responsibility for ourselves and taking control of our lives, doing things the way we want them done, and determining the end result. It is a way of securing our future, putting food on the table and looking after ourselves and our families, even when the budget is tight. It is about life skills, about achieving self-reliance and acquiring self-esteem.

Self-sufficiency embraces the concept of sustainable living, and at its heart lies an understanding of and a respect for the rhythms and pulses of the natural world. The closer we live in harmony with the environment, the better it is both for us and for the world around us. As human beings we are all dependent on one another to varying degrees, yet this dependency is not always welcomed because of the loss of freedom that it sometimes entails – we can start to feel that we have no control over our own lives. The more we depend on others, the less control we feel we have. It’s a difficult balance, and a very personal one. Self-sufficiency can be the lever with which to adjust this balance between doing things for ourselves and depending on other people to do them for us.

However, this book is not intended as a definitive guide to self-sufficiency. I have based it on my own ideas and the experience I have gained as I have worked out a lifestyle that suits me. Everyone’s idea of what they want to achieve from self-sufficiency will be different, and so it should be. The intention here is simply to show what self-sufficiency involves, top to bottom, so that anyone can find aspects of it that will complement their own lifestyle or enable them to live in the way they would like to, whether they live in a city apartment, a house with a garden, or a rural smallholding. Along with the other important aspects of sustainable living, I take a look at renewable energy, but this is a topic that is so huge that here I am really only able to scratch the surface. A list of further reading and links to some of the myriad helpful and informative sites on the Internet are provided at the back of the book.

Probably the biggest cause of people’s falling by the wayside in their search for a self-sufficient life is taking on too much too soon. There can be an overwhelming temptation to go hell for leather and try everything at once. This can lead to frustration and disillusionment, and the small successes you should be enjoying become rapidly overshadowed by what seem to be huge, dark failures. Before you know it you have scrapped the whole idea and moved on, with little to show for it but a bad taste in your mouth and a motley collection of plant pots and animal housing. The trick is to take it slowly, bit by bit.

For that reason, it is not a bad idea to start off in one area, and then build on that. There are natural offshoots to every part of self-sufficiency: for example, you might move from baking bread into making butter, and from keeping chickens for eggs into hatching some of those eggs and raising the chicks. As your confidence grows, the pace will naturally pick up and soon self-sufficiency becomes second nature. To begin with, look for a format that will complement your current life. I started with a list like this:

• Set out to make one loaf of bread and one tub of butter a week.

• With the buttermilk make a soft curd cheese (simpler and faster to make than hard cheese).

• Buy a whole chicken and joint it yourself, making up your mind to use every bit of it.

• Start off some indoor herbs on the kitchen windowsill, such as basil, coriander (cilantro), thyme, chives, dill or even chervil.

• Buy a whole fresh fish from the wet fish stall and fillet it yourself.

Try that or a similar formula over the course of a month and see how it feels and how it fits in with your life. There will be some parts you’ll enjoy more than others, some aspects your family will prefer, but the important thing is that you have set yourself reasonable, achievable targets and you have made it fun. Once the month has passed and you feel the foundations have been successfully laid, then you can start being a bit bolder, a little more adventurous. After all, in self-sufficiency, as in any other lifestyle, the more you put in, the more you get out of it. And for the time and effort you do invest, the rewards are tenfold.

Part of being self-sufficient, to however small an extent, is trying to avoid waste. The simple fact is, the more we spend, the more we waste. Recent surveys have estimated that in the UK we throw away on average between a quarter and a third of the food we buy. That’s a staggering amount. Try an experiment. For one month, jot down every food item your family buys. Then next to each item, put a tick if you use it, a cross if you don’t. Now tot up the cost of all the crosses. That’s how much you can instantly save without even thinking about it. And it’s not just food. If you look at lightbulbs left on in empty rooms, televisions left on standby, mobile phones left on recharge, washing you dry in the dryer rather than out on the line, you’ll probably find you can reduce your electricity consumption – and bills – substantially.

Finding the right level in any new lifestyle is all about feeling your way, and self-sufficiency is no different. It’s about learning to recognize what feels right and building on the positives. If you enjoyed baking a loaf of bread, try grinding your own flour. Make jam, and if the jam goes well, spend an autumn afternoon foraging for wild berries to make the next batch. If the berrying goes well, go mushrooming, and so on. Self-sufficiency is the ultimate bolt-on lifestyle, allowing you to do as little or as much as you like. And so you begin to get a sense of momentum, with one thing leading naturally to another.

With a little know-how, a few tricks and some smart ideas, your world takes on a whole new feel. Food is fresher, tastier and healthier. Children have an outlet for their creative urges and at the same time equip themselves with basic life skills. Men and women can rediscover their inner ‘hunter-gatherer’ and become more resourceful, and families cut back their food and utility bills. And although the idea of never setting foot inside a shop or supermarket again might be very appealing, in practice it’s unlikely to happen, because to make jam you need to buy sugar, to make bread you need yeast, to make butter you need cream … Of course, there are ways round this (sourdough bread; a house cow), but you’d need to run a full-time smallholding to get anywhere near achieving it.

It does not matter whether you have virtually unlimited resources or are unemployed, whether your home is a rambling old house in the country or a small apartment in a tower block, or whether you are new to self-sufficiency or an old hand – the feeling of satisfaction at being able to do things for yourself is wonderful, and with even the first few steps into self-sufficiency the benefits are tangible; you will:

• save money;

• become healthier;

• feel a sense of pride in how you live your life;

• involve children in the concept of sustainability;

• help the environment;

• produce less waste;

• enjoy better-tasting, homemade food.

Self-sufficiency satisfies on so many levels. It is frugal living without missing out. It is a form of existence that has evolved over thousands of years, and is still evolving now to embrace new technologies (even the Internet), and this is partly what makes it feel so current and so appealing. In modern as in ancient times, self-sufficiency enables us to live a life that is natural, healthy and economical.

This book guides you on how to achieve that lifestyle by working smarter, not harder. Time is often more precious than gold. That is why planning is essential. For this reason every chapter will run through the resources and equipment needed to tackle the project, and will help you to formulate a plan before you begin and to assess what you do and don’t want to do.

Anyone, whether they have access to a window box, a garden, an allotment or land enough to rear all their own meat year round, will find something exciting and useful in the pages that follow. There are old ideas with a fresh twist and crisp new ones just waiting to be investigated. This is a guide, but it is also a place to come and have fun – a place that inspires with workable, practical and achievable ideas that will make you sit up and think, I can do that.