Whether you’re roughing it in the woods or living in the city, there are many ways to be self-sufficient. Being self-sufficient means having the knowledge, skills and supplies to take care of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to disconnect from the community — far from it. In fact, cultivating self-reliance will likely help you connect with others better than ever before.
How to Become Self-Reliant
From raising bees to reading books, here are 22 ways to lead a well-rounded, independent lifestyle.
1. Grow a Garden
One of the easiest, most rewarding ways to become self-sufficient is to start growing your own fruits and vegetables. Gardening allows you to eat a diet free of pesticides, reduces the amount of fuel used to transport food, increases the time you spend outside and makes you less reliant on the grocery store.
Plus, if you grow extra produce, you can start selling it at the farmers market or trade with your neighbors. Growing a garden helps you get to know your community better.
2. Prepare Your Own Food
Another crucial step toward self-reliance is properly preparing food. You can start by learning how to harvest fruits and vegetables at the peak of ripeness. Next, you should learn how to wash, chop, cook and serve the food you produced. Butchering your own meat, canning vegetables and dehydrating foods for storage are other excellent skills to pick up.
3. Focus on Fitness
Many people overlook this step, but improving your physical health is one of the most important aspects of self-sufficiency. Being fit allows you to spend more time in the field or workshop, perform harder jobs and better handle emergency situations. Focus on eating a healthy diet and getting consistent exercise to improve your well-being.
4. Learn to Build a Fire
Whether you’re camping, entertaining guests or trying to keep warm during a power outage, knowing how to build a fire is a valuable skill. It could even save your life!
Plus, nothing quite compares to growing your own food and cooking it over a fire pit. Knowing you truly prepared a meal every step of the way is a great source of pride — and the smoky flavor is just another bonus.
5. Make Your Own Soap and Shampoo
Most toiletries from the store come in packaging that’s very hard to recycle. Why not skip the plastic altogether and make your own soap and shampoo? You can even make them smell exactly the way you like.
You can find countless shampoo recipes online that use common ingredients like olive oil, vanilla, molasses and apple cider vinegar. Many use castile soap as a base. For natural DIY soap, you’ll need to buy a mold and combine various oils, fats, lye, natural dyes and scents.
6. Hunt and Fish
Learning to catch your own game is valuable for many reasons. First and foremost, it helps you put food on the table, a benchmark of self-sufficiency.
Hunting and fishing are also important conservation tools — by harvesting invasive or overpopulated species, you help restore balance to the surrounding ecosystem. In many areas, for example, people have eliminated predators like wolves and mountain lions, so it’s crucial to have a deer-hunting season to keep deer populations from exploding.
Hunting and fishing also force you to notice your surroundings on a much deeper level, paying attention to the weather, the direction of the wind and the wildlife in your area.
Finally, these skills teach you the true value of meat, giving you a new appreciation for just how difficult and involved it is to eat an animal. One study found that even though meat consumption is at an all-time high, up to 41% of American children thought bacon, hot dogs and hamburgers came from plants, highlighting a strong need for better food-based education. Hunting and fishing can be crucial learning experiences.
7. Forage for Edible Plants
When you spend more time outdoors, you’ll likely start to notice individual plants and learn to visually distinguish them. Knowing which ones are edible — and which ones are edible only once, as they say — can enrich your diet. It will also help you appreciate the abundance of natural resources around you.
You can incorporate wild greens into salads, stir-fries or vegetable platters. Eat wild berries raw, turn them into smoothies, add them to yogurt or make popsicles.
8. Raise Bees
Bees provide wax, honey and pollination services for your garden. Beekeeping, also known as apiculture, also helps bolster bee populations outside the hive.
If you keep enough bees, you can start selling honey at the farmers market or make your own beeswax candles, lotion and soap. You can also use beeswax to seal jars when making canned preserves.
9. Raise Poultry
Birds supply meat, eggs and manure you can use for fertilizer. They’re smaller and easier to manage than cattle, making them better for first-time farmers or people with less space.
Consider raising chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys or quail to become more self-sufficient. There are pros and cons to each:
- Chickens: Many breeds produce hundreds of large eggs per year, though they stop laying heavily after around two years. Some meat breeds were bred to have large frames and fast growth, meaning you must harvest them young to avoid health issues. Most bantam breeds can fly very well, but standard-sized breeds usually cannot fly far.
- Ducks: Duck eggs have more calories and fat than chicken eggs, making them great for baking. Ducks can also fly well and are typically very messy.
- Geese: Geese are herbivores and will readily eat grass. The highest producers lay only a few dozen eggs per year, usually in the spring, but they provide excellent meat.
- Turkeys: Raising meat turkeys is a self-sufficient way to stock your Thanksgiving table. The largest, fastest-growing breed is the broad-breasted white, which becomes so large that you must butcher it after just a few months to prevent health problems. This is the breed you eat if you buy turkey at the store. Heritage breeds grow more slowly, but they are healthier and have more flavorful meat.
- Quail: Quail eggs are so tiny that preparing them is a hassle, but many people consider them a delicacy. Quail can fly extremely well and must live in an enclosed space with a roof. Many people raise them for meat rather than eggs.
10. Raise Livestock
If you have proper fencing, enough feed and ample space, a great way to become self-reliant is to raise larger animals. You can procure your own meat, wool and milk by keeping livestock. Consider starting with smaller animals — like sheep or goats — if you don’t have much experience. You can even raise rabbits for meat or Angora hair.
11. Collect Rainwater
Want to get off the grid? Set up a rainwater harvesting system to source your own water. Depending on where you live, rain might be one of your most abundant, literally untapped resources.
A rainwater collection system usually consists of a large tank, filtration system and tubes to pipe the water into your home. Some systems also feature a solar-powered pump.
12. Start a Compost Pile
Composting is very useful if you have a garden. When you turn your food scraps, lawn clippings and animal waste into compost, you save them from giving off greenhouse gas in a landfill for years to come. Plus, you get nutrient-rich fertilizer for your plants in return.
13. Create a Worm Bin
A worm farm is a composting system that contains earthworms or soldier fly larvae. The worms or grubs devour leftover food, feathers, hair, grass, manure and more. They turn your waste into compost, leachate and more worms — a valuable protein source for animals. In fact, you can use a worm or larva bin to turn poultry poop into poultry food!
14. Purchase With Purpose
Making unnecessary purchases can thwart your plans to be self-sufficient, especially if you’re living in a small space or working with a tight budget. Before buying something, ask yourself — will it really enrich your life? Will it make things easier, make you happier or provide a crucial service in an emergency? If not, reconsider why you want the item.
Maybe you didn’t want it until you saw an ad. In that case, it likely isn’t filling a genuine need, but rather came from someone else’s desire to sell you something. You don’t have to become an austere minimalist, but be discerning about your purchases. This mindset will help you focus on the things that matter most.
15. Go off the Energy Grid
One of the most self-sufficient choices you can make is to generate your own energy. Being disconnected from the main power grid allows you to keep the lights on during a power outage in the city. If you combine solar panels with a battery, you can store solar energy for use at night or during overcast days.
It’s also a good idea to keep a backup generator if you’re connected to the main grid. Then, you can generate your own energy and keep the lights, refrigerator and heat going while you wait for the power to come back on.
16. Make Cheese and Butter
If you’re keeping dairy goats or cows, why not learn to churn your own butter or make cheese? You can do it the old-fashioned way or use a blender or food processor to speed the process up. Then, you can use your butter and cheese for homemade recipes. Just be sure to pasteurize the milk first to kill any harmful bacteria.
17. Spin Yarn
Are you keeping sheep, goats or rabbits for their wool? Turn it into yarn on a spinning wheel. Spinning wheels can be pricey, so you might want to borrow one unless you’re fully invested in making yarn on a regular basis. Once you’ve made the yarn, learn to knit or crochet to make clothes, potholders and blankets.
18. Learn Basic Repair Techniques
Do you know what to do if your sink is clogged? How about if your car pops a tire on the way to work? Take time to learn how to make common repairs.
To become more self-sufficient, consider learning some basic plumbing, woodworking and sewing techniques. Other practical skills to master include repairing drywall, jumpstarting a vehicle, turning off the water main and resetting a circuit breaker.
19. Manage Your Money
Money management is one of the most crucial aspects of self-reliance. At best, it’s unwise to embark on expensive projects without a safety net to fall back on. At worst, you won’t be able to start at all. Becoming debt free, investing your money and creating a savings account for emergencies is the foundation for independence.
20. Make Animal Feed
Want to be truly self-sufficient? Consider feeding your animals from your own land rather than relying on animal feed. Only undertake this step if you have enough resources to feed your animals because it’s better to buy feed at the store than let your animals go hungry.
Some ways to feed your animals include getting leftover food from restaurants, collecting grass and branches when doing yard work, harvesting grass for winter storage and letting your animals free-range. You can even try renting out your goats or sheep to neighbors who have overgrown yards. Many people are happy to let livestock clear their land the natural way.
21. Learn to Barter and Trade
If you spend time at the farmers market or sell your goods at the store, developing better negotiating skills can go a long way. You might be able to get a better price for your squash or secure a discount on okra during a particularly fruitful year.
Trading is a great way to live a self-sufficient life without having to grow everything yourself. For example, if you keep chickens, make friends with a neighbor who keeps bees and trade your extra eggs for their honey.
22. Always Keep Reading
Continually growing your skills is an important part of being self-reliant. Books are a great way to start learning about unfamiliar topics or advance your existing knowledge. Satisfy your curiosity and grow your self-sufficiency with a quick trip to the library.
Living a Self-Sufficient Life
Most people won’t do everything on this list, but you don’t have to. Instead, think of it as a guide to help you become a more well-rounded, self-sufficient person in whichever areas appeal to you the most.
In fact, you might be more successful if you master one skill, like raising goats, rather than trying to be a jack of all trades. Follow your passions and see where they take you — at the very least, you’ll always learn something new.
[Note: This was a guest post.]
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