As I've mentioned before, I'm feeling the pull towards living self-reliantly more lately, as I've been out in the garden more. But I also start thinking about sustainability, because I think self-reliance is about more than my family not going hungry. When I think about living self-reliantly, I think about our family working to meet more of our needs on our own. And not only that, but improving the resources we have to work with. Or at least not depleting resources so quickly.
So for instance, we eat a lot of canned tomatoes. Currently, I buy them at the store. Which means they were factory farmed using methods which deplete the soil and use a lot of fossil fuels. The cans are recyclable, but recycling still takes energy and is not perfect, which is why it's the "last resort" in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" hierarchy. But I could can my own tomatoes. I could buy heaps of tomatoes from the local farmer who is not certified organic but uses sustainable farming methods and can them at home in glass jars that can be reused many times, or if I'm feeling really ambitious, I can try to grow the tomatoes myself in my back yard. I still get a year's supply of canned tomatoes, but (presumably) with a smaller footprint and less waste, since I would be composting what I didn't use and not using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
So these are the kinds of things I think about when I think about how we should go about living more self-reliantly. And I tend to get bogged down in it. Say I figure we should have a year's supply of hair care products. I could stockpile plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. But that reminds me of how much plastic is being used just so my family can wash their hair. And I know it's, like, super cool to hate plastic, but I think there is a very good reason to avoid it. A few very good reasons. I think it has its place, and I'm glad for the medical and technological advances that have been possible because of it, but I feel like a bit of a tool when I'm rinsing out and recycling yet another plastic bottle of hair elixir. So what do we do? Switch to baking soda and vinegar? Except... those still come in packages. Paper for the soda, but plastic for the vinegar. Maybe we would be using less plastic, especially since I would likely use the vinegar bottle for storing water (if I were feeling ambitious and all emergency preparednessy), but it's still plastic. So... I could make my own vinegar? I suppose. I mean, people do that. I would just need something to ferment into wine and then make vinegar from it. But considering I barely have enough lettuce for a salad for one person out in the garden, I'm not sure that relying on my gardening skills for our hair care products is going to work out.
But that's how I get bogged down. I feel like I can't change part of something without following the logic behind the change to the very end.
I try to use the church's guidelines for preparedness and self-reliance to guide me here. And that tends to come back to living within your means, small and simple changes that lead to progress, doing as much as you can on your own, having a garden, and building your community. Now, that last one may not be so obvious, but I think it follows from other principles.
I feel kind of silly going on about this when so many other have, much more eloquently, and with more real-life success. I've been reading Unstuffed and getting inspired not only by what she does to avoid generating waste, but also by her herbal knowledge and wildcrafting ways. I've also read Ghost Town Farm (by "read," I mean I started back at the oldest post and worked my way to the beginning, though I did skip the ones about local activities). I am just amazed by what she's done. The animals in the back yard and the gardening are awesome, of course, but I've been really intrigued by her dumpster diving. They managed to feed two pigs (and there is a reason they're called 'pigs') out of dumpsters. A large portion of their other animal food has come from dumpsters, as well. And they also get household items -- she posted once about breaking her rolling pin, and then finding one not long after in a dumpster (a store had dumped excess merchandise).
And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who mulls over the things I get bogged down on. D and I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a couple of years ago. There is a lot of talk in there about eating local, sustaining your local economy, etc. And I get why it's a good thing. But bananas a cheap and my kids will eat them. When M begs for tomato sandwiches in the winter, how do you say no to a kid asking for healthy food? One of the stores we shop at always has lots of reduced produce, and I thought, I can rationalize buying it, because it will just be thrown out if I don't buy it, right? And then I came across this post in Unstuffed.
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