Sorry the posting has been light of late. There are reasons for that, and I’ll get to it some other time. But I stumbled across this today and had to share. Barricade Garage is becoming one of my favorite YouTube channels for the humorous yet pointed way they look at modern issues. I think we would all be better off if we could look inward and examine our own ways of thinking and our own flaws before we attempt to tell everyone how to fix their own. That is true self-reliance.
Tag Archives: gardening
Living with self-reliance
Okay, let’s go back and look at the third section of Trudi Griffin’s wiki-How article, How to Be Self Reliant. Last time we talked about managing your money independently. This time we go broad with the following topics:
- Identify and have knowledge of which things you must be responsible for
- Cook your own meals
- Plant a garden
- Master emergency health basics
- Understand basic auto mechanic repair
- Maintain your health
- Know when to visit your doctor
- Live off the grid
The first, knowing what you are responsible for, seems fairly obvious, or should be. Unfortunately we live in a time when people really don’t seem to know. Filing taxes, paying off credit card bills, paying the electric bill–these should be obvious. But whose responsibility is that patch of grass along the side of your house on the other side of the sidewalk from your fence? Do you know how your estate is handled in your state? Do you know where to vote? There is a lot to get to know in any new situation, and for many of them ignorance is no excuse.
When it comes to cooking I may diverge from Griffin a little. I think there’s a difference between not cooking for yourself and not knowing how to cook for yourself. If your priorities and income are such that you want to eat out, that’s not necessarily bad. Griffin cites money savings and better health as benefits, and while I agree on the monetary savings, it’s entirely possible to eat unhealthy at home, too, so perhaps learning about nutrition should be included in this?
Planting a garden within whatever space you have could be rewarding, educational, and cut food costs a little, even if it’s a little window-ledge herb garden in an apartment building or a lemon tree on the patio. Knowing how to keep plants alive and grow them to maturity is always a good skill to have in your self-reliance toolbox.
To Griffin “emergency health basics” includes things like learning CPR, first aid, or helping someone who is choking. It may also include learning basic and emergency treatments for hazards common to your area, like ticks or rattlesnakes, or exposure to poisonous plants. Consider the most common “what-if” scenarios where you live. She also recommends learning any basic medical procedures or operating medical equipment needed for your care or others around you so you can do them yourself in a pinch or even save some money on nursing care.
Knowing how to maintain or repair your car may not be so important if you don’t have one, but if you do, learning to change a tire, examine your engine belts for wear, checking and changing fluids, or other basic maintenance items can save you money and time or help minimize the fallout from otherwise nasty situations. Keep an emergency kit suitable for your area in your car at all times.
I would add to this that learning how to perform basic maintenance around your home is also important. Fixing a leaky faucet, hanging a picture, changing a light bulb, oiling squeaky hinges or other items, rewiring lamps, backing up your computer, installing anti-virus, cleaning a dishwasher, using a garbage disposal, and many other tasks can save you money down the road.
Hopefully we already know what it takes to maintain your health. We should know about regular exercise and a healthy diet. If not, that’s a good place to start. Similarly, avoiding the doctor altogether is not necessarily the best plan, any more than is going to see the doctor for every little ailment. Make sure you schedule regular checkups appropriate to your age group. Be aware of health conditions that run in your family or result from your lifestyle. Learn the warning signs for life-threatening conditions, and what to do about them.
“Living off the grid” is not something I really recommend, and I’m a little surprised Griffin even brings it up. Fortunately she at least recommends starting with a vacation at an off-grid location so you get to experience it temporarily first before you decide. In any case, her advice here of considering growing your own food and exploring alternative energy are just the beginning of adopting that particular lifestyle, so if it interests you, do lots and lots of research first.
I’ll admit that to me this section of the article seems less useful, but perhaps that’s because I was involved in scouting growing up, and had parents that made sure I could handle most all of this before I left home. I don’t do much auto maintenance, it’s true, but I know at least to get my car in for regular maintenance, which had really saved my bacon on many occasions. They’re usually able to spot problems before they happen, which is important when most of your driving time is spent on the freeway. Breakdowns can and will happen in the worst possible places.
But even while I find the first point (Identify and have knowledge of which things you must be responsible for) a little silly (it’s like saying make sure you know about all the things you don’t know about), I find it also somewhat profound. Far too often these sorts of things are learned by accident, in the school of hard knocks. Schools don’t teach the basic life skills they used to, like maintaining and balancing a checking account, or registering your car, etc. Finding out before you start “adulting” just what all is involved will spare you a lot of pain.
But in the end, this is really what self-reliance is all about. It’s figuring out what can go wrong in your life, weighing the costs of dealing with that problem vs. the cost of avoiding it, and planning accordingly. I don’t need to learn how to prepare my house for a hurricane (in Utah!), and the cost of which far outweighs the risk of doing nothing. Learning how to recognize heat stroke and how to treat it, however, may be worth the time and effort.
Much of this no one else can fully prepare you for. You must be self-reliant toward achieving self-reliance.
Garden planning from Mother Earth News
Mother Earth News has an article and a video about planning your garden before the growing year begins. They pack a fair amount information into a 4-minute video, and it’s worth a look. They also plug their garden planning software, which got me all nostalgic for the old Sim Farm game. Supposedly it helps you map out your garden area, plan around shade, ensure proper crop rotation, and helps you know how many plants each area can support. It looks pretty cool, and comes with a 7-day free trial. After that it’s a subscription, cheapest if you sign up for two years.
Have any of you used this or similar software? If so, leave a comment below and let me know what you think of it.
And now, the video:
Be a good neighbor
I read about this situation on the American Preppers Network site. A woman is growing an organic garden in her front yard and has run afoul of her HOA. I know I should be shocked, upset, outraged, etc., but you see, I’m the president of my HOA and have a different perspective.
HOA’s have rules, and everyone is supposed to receive a copy of those rules when they move in. They are responsible for reading and obeying the rules. The HOA is responsible for enforcing them. If you find the rules prohibitive, don’t buy a house there.
Now don’t get me wrong. My HOA is not nearly so restrictive. And I’m in the process of working to change the rules where they are. For example, when our neighborhood was built nearly twenty years ago they had rules against xeriscaping. Times have changed, and I think we need to allow xeric landscaping now.
But in changing the rules I have to consider all the angles. Let’s face it, some xeriscaping can look pretty trashy if not done correctly or maintained well. I don’t want someone saying “Hey, weeds are natural and drought-resistant. I’ll just let my yard go to weeds.” When we do change the rule we have to make a clear, enforceable standard about what we will accept.
I, obviously, am all in favor of self reliance and making your own property produce as much as you can. As HOA president I do my best to be supportive of that. I haven’t clamped down on the people who are keeping chickens, though the CC&Rs clearly forbid it, because they are out of sight, and are not causing a nuisance.
But at the same time, if you live in an HOA it’s your responsibility to know what the rules are and to live by them. If you don’t like the rules then let your HOA know. See if they can be changed. Work with your HOA to find ways to satisfy the rules (screening things with strategic landscaping can go a long way) and still make things work for you.
But in the end, if you can’t, perhaps you should move to someplace more accommodating of your lifestyle. If I were to decide that I needed to raise a few sheep as part of my self reliance program I wouldn’t dream of just getting them and waiting for the HOA to complain. It’s clearly against the rules. I would move someplace where it’s okay.
You see, I’ve seen the other side of things, too. We used to live in a neighborhood where there was no HOA. The duplex across the street was a rental, and the landlord lived in another town and didn’t care. The weeds and grass were seldom less than a foot high, and usually brown. Those weeds would blow seeds into our yard, and it was a constant battle to keep them out.
Down the street lived a man who kept his Vegas-style Christmas light display up and turned on year-round. Down the other way was a house where they hung a 6-foot inflatable pterodactyl from a tree branch hanging over the road. The last time I drove through the old neighborhood I saw they had also added a metal rocket as tall as the house to the front yard.
Certainly there are worse neighborhoods, but when people see that sort of thing they can be hesitant to move in. Would-be sellers have to drop their asking price to entice someone to buy, and the lower it goes the more likely the buyer will also be someone who doesn’t care about how their own property looks. Pretty soon property values in the entire neighborhood are dropping.
Yes, I’m probably venting a bit here. The attitudes expressed in the comments on the APN site were rather frustrating, and decidedly anti-HOA. I know some HOAs are over the top. But as the volunteer president of an HOA who continually feels caught between the “let it all rot” crowd and the “not one inch out of line” crowd, I see a definite need for balance–and for some external pressures to put in at least a minimal effort to keep one’s place looking acceptable.
So go ahead and use your land to the fullest, but please be aware of the rules and do your best to operate within them. You never know when you’ll need your neighbors. It’s best to be a good neighbor yourself. If more people would be, we wouldn’t need HOAs.
Survival gardening
Our local garden columnist recently recommended a new book by writer, gardener, and scientist Carol Deppe, entitled “The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times”. I have not had a chance to read this book yet (its a bit more than I can afford both money- and time-wise right now), but the review raises some rather interesting points.
The book makes mention of five specific crops needed for health and survival: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs. These foods are not included in the current “super-food” craze, but there is a reason they are considered staples. You can eat quite well for quite a long time on just these foods.
More importantly, the book discusses how to collect and use seeds, as it won’t be easy to obtain new seeds during a long-term period of economic instability. Most seeds used today are hybrids, and will not likely continue to breed true under uncontrolled garden conditions. Any experienced gardener knows that seeds will only keep reliably for a few years, so new sources of seeds are necessary for long-term sustainability. The book covers other survival contingencies as well, such as what foods store well in the absence of refrigeration.
I plan to get a copy of this book someday, as it sounds like a good source of information and should give one lots to think about. In the mean time, has anyone else out there read this book? Would you be willing to do a guest post book review on it? Contact me in the comments or by email at thom@thomstratton.com.
Drip watering systems – another take
Adventures in Self Reliance has an in-depth post about installing a drip watering system. I’ve often considered this, but have never gotten to it. It seems like it would make so much more sense than even our hand-watering.
Deck project update
The deck removal/garden bed project is pretty much complete. After clearing away the decking we dug up the area. I quickly found that someone had devoted a great deal of concrete to making…I don’t know what. Every few feet I’d dig up another inverted gumdrop of concrete that served no purpose I could ascertain other than to annoy me. I now have the world’s largest concrete gumdrop collection!
The lot, when cleared, looked much like this:
In digging up the area, too, I came to realize this was not going to be choice garden soil. Much of it hadn’t seen water in years, and was little better than packed clay. I spread what compost I could get from our composters over the area and dug it in. It still looked rather rough and clumpy, but I started putting in dividers and marking out pathways before the final attempt to condition the soil a bit better.
Today, while I had my father-in-law still here to help (thanks, Dad!) I went to the home improvement store and bought 21 bags of compost. Two-thirds of it actually went around various trees in our yard, but the rest got spread over the new garden area. The kids joined in, and were actually rather helpful. It’s amazing how quickly five rakes can smooth out a garden.
Of course all we’d really done to this point is just cover over the clumpy, clay-ish soil. Next we dug it all in. Amazingly enough, it worked! The dirt smoothed right out! It’s still not perfect, and I’ll be surprised if anything grows all that well in it this year, but it’s a start. We’ve got leftover seeds we can use, so it won’t be that costly to see what we can get to grow. If it does well, every bit will help.
I’m glad the project is finally done–well, except for getting rid of the rest of the scrap wood and the concrete gumdrop collection. There are plenty of other things I can focus on now, like thinning the peaches.