What do you love most about being a bit self sufficient?

[strawberry321]

Hi everyone, just to get to know you all I thought I'd ask what you love most about being self sufficientish? I love being outside more

[baldybloke]

Extending the life of things. So repairing and re using items which I find is really satisfying.

[clare]

where to start?sowing that seed then the feeling you get as you eat the fruit,veg etc.The feeling you get when you lift the lid on the the nest box and there's an egg!when you look on your dinner plate and all is home grown and you sip your wine and it's home brewed and your soap is made by you and the feeling you get when someone says "I like your dress where did you get it?"oh I made it myself.I find friends love homemade gifts especially jam,they feel that the time you spent making a gift means more than the cost.Even our christmas tree is homegrown with a root and comes in every year.The feeling you get when the woodburner is glowing with a pot of homemade soup on the top and a kettle of hot water for the childrens hot water bottles,after you collected and choppped the wood.If I could produce my own electricity I would but one step at a time.........
all these feelings and many more....
Clare

[Thomzo]

Never having to wonder what I'm going to do today!

Got to dash, Christmas presents to make.

Bye

[oldjerry]

For at at least a small % of my life......I'M in control.....

[Dutch Dave]

The understanding of life itself.

Where things come from and where they go. Shop food is anonimous and mostly tasteless it has no "soul".

Homegrown healthy food and home made energy reminds me daily how much energy it takes and how complicated some things are that we usually take for granted. Knowing this it increases in value to me. Making me ( a common man) feel rich for having them.

The independance from failing economies and ever increasing expensive fuels is something that i take great pride in, especially being a father and knowing my family will always have a belly full and a warm house, is something that warms me from the inside out it feels like "a job well done"

[prison break fan]

I'm only a bit ss, but I really love not going to the dreaded supermarket. I have two allotments and they pretty much feed my daughter and I, and we have a wood burning Rayburn which heats the water and the house and cooks the veg. We go 2wooding" most days whilst walking the dog. I would like to get rid of the car but don't think I could manage without it. pbf.

[demi]

Not having to have a proper job so we can concentrate on working for us as a family. I like being a housewife and being with the kids and cooking and preserving our food and being able to go with my husband to 'work' with him on the farm when ever i like or he needs my help. Being self-employed meaning we have the freedom to manage our days as we like and no boss to answer too. And being less reliant on society, reducing our energy bills, having our own water supply ect. With the state of the world economy its safer to be more self-sufficient. Everyone's loosing their jobs and getting into massive debt and we are debt free and make enough to get by and have time to spend together as a family working for our benefit, no one else's. And the pride you feel when you've made something completely your self , that's a grate feeling :)

[grahamhobbs]

Being outside of the consumer society, where you spend half your time working for them only to spend the other half giving them back the money getting crap stuff in return. Being in control of part of your life as oldjerry said, but also being creative and constantly learning new skills, in fact usually very old and almost forgotten skills. Being active, even if the back can ache sometimes, eating well and sharing these pleasures with your friends.

[MKG]

It reminds me of times when I was very young (plus everything that everyone else has said). I lived in a mining village, but it was the norm to have an allotment. People didn't just chuck stuff out and go and get something new - they mended and made do, and there's a certain pride in that as well as good sense. We don't need the allotment because we're lucky enough to have enough land to contain an orchard (every kid's dream when I was one), a large veg. plot, an ornamental garden (OH's jurisdiction), a dog-running area and still enough room to get in all of the associated structures that little boys dream about (my own shed!!!! and about to get another). Oh - and the wooded area which is a bird paradise and the pond which is a frog paradise - I had to walk quite a long way to find that in my youth. Had anyone asked me when I was a young teenager what my idea of heaven was, this would have been it.

To coin a Yorkshire saying, I'm like a pig in s**t, and I love it.

Mike

[boboff]

When I first saw this I thought, F all!

But then I thought as I was spreading some Mulch I got for free, and exchanged some jam and chutney, thats what I like, being able to "barter" your skills and products, even if it's just for friendship.

It's something I suppose!

Generally my family are a bit sniffy about home made stuff, so now they get cheap Tat!

[Ellendra]

It's like when you're a kid, and a grown-up is always helping you or doing something for you because you're "too little", then comes the day when you don't let them help. When you insist on doing it on your own. And so what if it turns out messier than it should be, or takes twice as long, you go around glowing all day because "I did it myself!"

Being self-sufficient means having that satisfaction with every bite of food that you raised, with every outfit you wear that you sewed yourself, with every brick and board that you put up yourself. And so what if the carrots are forked, or if some of the caulking looks like it swallowed a mouse, it's YOURS!

[oldfella]

So much, its hard to know where start so I suppose at the beginning.
Going to let the chickens and geese out in the morning, and then picking a couple of Toms to go with my home smoked bacon and eggs, walking back to the house after peeing on the compost heap.
After breakfast the Dogs takes me for a walk down to the Veg patch, where I potter about for an hour or so, before they take me down the road to test the progress of my neighbours wine, with of course our two other neighbours helping, until the dogs decide its time for me return home, via the patch to collect the salad for lunch.
That's to Wednesday, from there on in it's work, you know, the digging ,weeding, mowing, shovelling muck, watering, sawing, chopping; spraying, looking for the bloody Axe you know you left down by down by the water tank, but find up by the rose trellis, which reminds you that the trellis was supposed to have been fixed 2 weeks ago, by command of her indoors.
I'm lucky, I am old and retired but spent my life working, sometimes at 2 jobs, I have no debts, and my family are provided for; Some would say I am lucky, and of course I am, but if I had lived my life on credit cards, instead of savings, if I had spent my life buying instead of making, if I had spent my life believing that food came out of supermarkets, instead of growing in what some would call dirt, but which I call earth.
This is what we call Self-sufficient, but it is more than that, it is respect and love of nature and enjoying the gifts, and enjoying the skills that each and everyone of us is endowed with whether it is the wine maker, the dress maker, the Jam makers, these are the skills from our past, and I for one am proud to be one Known a TIGHT ARSE

[Chaldeonmenthe]

Well said Oldfella.

I love feeling connected, whether with the process of growing, preparation, animals, whatever. However hippy it sounds, I love knowing that the only hands and energies that have touched many products in my home and body were loving ones.

I love the look on others faces when my 2 year old sees nothing unnatural about peeing on the lemon tree outside, or can explain goat udder care or can identify different seeds instantly by sight. People are genuinely baffled.

I love that my 8 month old son loves to play in and eat dirt. That in itself is so rare among most of the other kids I know.

I love getting up in the morning and my to do list is endless, yet I still am able to plod along and enjoy getting it done.

[yvette]

I like the feeling that I can make do and mend a bit - that a button off, a broken zip or a rip in a garment doesn't have to be a disaster. And that I can make my own clothes from found fabrics or remnants from the market. And I like the fact that I am nit always wanting the latest things - clothes, gadgets etc.
Best of all is the feeling that I am on a learning journey, and that I can do more than I thought I could.