Self Sufficient

I want to begin by talking about living SS as possible. To some people that means off the grid completely, to other it means something different. My approach to living SS is to live my life by hunting, fishing, growing, gathering, bartering, re-using materials and being paid to provide services/products.

As I start my blog from today, I have some things to catch you up on so that you better understand my approach to living a SS lifestyle.

I decided that planning/staging the changes I was going to make would have to be done over a five year period. Than with time things have changed, so now I am in the beginning of what should be year four of that plan.

The first year was spent on cleaning up the land, making the house livable, and layout of the garden, hedge rows and orchard. Than I started working the soil so that I could plant in it as it was clay in the beginning. I also tore down the old steps that were rotting and put up a new stairway leading to the house as well as built my own lamp post.


The second year was spent on more cleaning up of the property, working the soil, planting my first garden here, and working on property drainage. I also needed to build a bridge over a ravine where the over flow of my pond goes. The wood came from my property which had been sawed and stored by the last owner, my out building which is 34 by 34 feet was also built using wood from my land.




The third year I planted and harvested a wonderful garden, and photos below show how the soil looked in the beginning of last year. Also shown is my 1956 tractor with a 48" box tiller. I had planted a green crop of winter rye and tilled it in. I had been adding organic materials to the soil over the last 3 years so that it was usable to grow in. It was a lot of work, although the tomato blight wipe out my maters, the wet raining summer killed off most of my squash, I was still able to harvest food which I froze or canned for use in the winter.


I hunted year before last, I harvest a huge white tail doe which I canned because she was so tough. I also hunted this past season again harvesting several deer as well as killing inland game birds and fishing.

Getting back to living SS has been nothing less than a lot of hard work with huge rewards in many aspects. I know that the way I was raised on the farm has a lot to do with who I am today. I plan to cover more about me in "Who am I?" post on my blog, which I will share photos and share more about me.

Living SS isn't always a choice, its also a lifestyle by which some people live. My goal is in no way to mock or suggest that living SS is a poor way to live, but I choose to live at a certain level of SS because of the work/benefit of it.

I hope you will join me on my journey that has already started.