I’ve just woken up to The Thomas Jefferson Hour on the clock radio, set to KMRE, a lovely station I love for it’s simplicity. On the show, recorded in Bismark, a farmer portrays Thomas Jefferson in interviews, expounding upon Jeffersons agrarian values. I also value living close to the earth in this way, taking account of the earth’s economy in all actions, to the point of forgetting the money economy. I suppose those values are the point of this blog: how do we attempt to live those values now, in the city, removed from the farm. For the record, Nick and I attempted to start a community farm and eco-village a few months ago, but the interest was not such to get the project off the ground. The heart of that project and of the radio show this morning was self-sufficiency; we also try to make it the heart of our lives.

First, why is it important to us to sustain ourselves? While working on projects for the last weeks, I’ve listened to a lot of radio shows, mostly on NPR, and its filled with the words “financial crisis”, oh god, oh god! Honestly, we’ve not been affected by this at all (although we haven’t yet looked at our bond fund statements), but it does bring up the issue: Our economy is centered on mostly non-existant money (watch Zeittgeist Addendum for more on this–it’s a fabulously shocking show). With the economy’s instability, as well as the growing scarcity of the oil upon which modern life is built (or one’s desire not to use that oil), comes the distant but real possibility that the American system for creation and distribution of products will fail. I ‘normal’ American produces nearly nothing of his or her own use, purchasing everything from TVs to packaged food to Chinese-made, poorly machine knitted T-shirts and other clothes (the cheapness of clothing is my particular issue), all of these products causing exploitation an many points of their creation. If this system fails and there are no cans of tomatoes or fresh foods or bakery bread, if Target doesn’t sell clothes and shoes and laundry soap, if one cannot run a car, it seems everyone would starve.

Of course, systems always have the posibility of failing, and we cannot constantly live our lives in the fear that they will. However, my self-sufficiency is not founded on that fear, but rather a belief in the importance of creating for oneself, of relying on oneself at least for something greater than the earning of money. I want to produce something real.

So, then, how are we self-sufficient. Firstly, what we do not do: As I said, we live in the city, in a poorly-made apartment, lacking any land, so we do not grow our food (except for the pots and pots of failed tomatoes–it was far, far too cold in our little balcony). We don’t create our electricity, although it is certainly our goal for the future. Instead, we have reduced our use of electricity and oil and we purchase our food from directly from the farmer. So I am able to create our meals from raw ingredients. I also create our soaps and laundry soaps, knit and (I’m learning to) sew our clothes. I don’t weave the cloth, but I do spin the yarn. Nick bakes our bread, and together we have lovely journies by bicycle. This is a very limited list of accomplishment. To see the full possibilities, pick up a copy of John Seymour’s Self-Sufficiency book. The point is, though, that some of the things, we create for ourselves. We are not completely reliant on the American distribution system, and we’ve been able to eliminate many opportunities for exploitation of ourselves and others from our life. By doing these things, we feel less like slaves to wages and consuming and more like real humans with an undeniable connection to the earth and the life around us, as well as to each other. Our motivation for this blog is to show how we accomplish those things, and a few of the many, many possibilities for other people, ways in which you can become more self-sufficient without needing to (although it would be wonderful) go back to the land.