Being self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-sustaining – in other words doing it by yourself – turns out not to be quite as simple as that. I’ve been reading up on the concept as it applies to growing and/or raising your own food and I’m struck by the fact that although our pioneering foremothers may have managed to do it all themselves, in the 21st century most of us require some help. That’s not a bad thing, mind you (and I suspect I personally might need more than a little help as we get ready to start our hobby farm endeavor) and frankly I’m a bit relieved to find out that even the back to the basics movement has its share of helpers and short cuts.
If you plan to start a hobby farm and produce many of the things you currently buy at the grocery store, it’s probably a good idea to put these things on your shopping list because I’ll wager they aren’t already in your kitchen:
For dealing with the fruits and veggies from your garden:
• food dehydrator (for drying fruits – range in price from $40 to over $500)
• pressure canner (these can range in price from a low (small, simple variety) of around $70 to over $400)
If you have dairy creatures and plan to make yogurt or cheese:
• cheese press (you can make these yourself if handy, otherwise expect to pay between $40 and $150)
• rennet (enzymes used in cheese production)
• yogurt culture
For bread:
• sourdough starter
Planning on brewing your own beer:
• Hydrometer (an instrument used to measure the specific gravity (or relative density) of liquids)
• Pre-hopped malt extract
With all of these at the very least you’ll be able to serve up a hearty ploughman’s lunch – bread, cheese, pickles and beer!
If you have a yen to try any of these yourself, I recommend the book “The Homesteading Handbook” by Abigail Gehring. It covers all these topics and much more (building a chicken coop, a wind turbine and a self-composting toilet, natural pest control and how to make candles and soap, for instance) and is filled with beautiful color photographs and illustrations.
Homesteading books are big in my library, and I work in a small community that’s sort of rural, yet very close to Ann Arbor. It’s a “thing” here I guess.
So you’re not alone! I’ve been enjoying reading Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, which is about one woman’s quest to make everything from cheese to pancetta. Well-written and easy to read – I like it because I can dip in and read a chapter here and there. Nice bedtime browsing book.
A friend once made fun of me for wanting to be “self sufficient” and know how to say, use a hammer. His argument was along the lines of “how can you be self sufficient if you aren’t growing your own wheat for bread.” Whatever, there are lines to be drawn for everything.
As for drying fruit, there is a lower tech way to dry fruit that works well in hot dry parts of the world where you now live, or during the peak of Indiana’s summers: cut the fruit _very_ thin, and lay onto an old t-shirt you don’t ever want to wear again, and leave in the sun for a few days. The key is for the fruit to be thinly sliced, and that it get a lot of sunlight per day (>8 hours). Also, make sure the t-shirt is cotton, so that it can help absorb some of the juice. I dry my spices this way by putting them on a baking sheet on my south facing porch. Also, pickles cure faster if they are left in the hot sun for a few weeks.
Yeah, agreed, you don’t need to buy sourdough starter. Also mozzarella can be made without a press. Yogurt you don’t need a culture for… just use a cup of yogurt and use it to seed the new batch and always keep a cup for the next batch.
I have fruit trees and I have to say the dehydrator vs. the oven is much much better. I prefer to dehydrate rather than can because even low-sugar canning uses way more sugar than I like.
I’m not sure if the book you are reading is a good one. The one that I got the most from was The Urban Homestead:
http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition/dp/1934170100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336409762&sr=8-1&tag=wp-amazon-boxcarkids-20
Our pioneering foremothers didn’t just do it themselves either — they arrived there on the prairie with that covered wagon just packed with the 19th-century equivalents of what you are looking at. Even in the 16th century, when people also wrote how-to books extolling the virtues of the self-sufficient household, nobody was really as self-sufficient as they made out (speaking from under my historian hat, here ; -)). If they had had blogs then, somebody would have been writing “I’m supposed to make my own cloth but first I have to invest in a bloody spinning wheel, which costs the earth!”
You can get a free sourdough starter here:
http://carlsfriends.net/source.html
A cheese press isn’t actually necessary, cheese curds without pressing taste just fine, your kids might even prefer them to pressed cheese!
http://gnowfglins.com/2012/01/11/fresh-cheddar-cheese-curds/
A pressure canner might be best avoided. Natural fermentation is cheaper and healthier too. You can pick up mason jars cheaply at garage sales.
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Fermentation-Flavor-Nutrition-Live-Culture/dp/1931498237?tag=wp-amazon-boxcarkids-20
Here’s a toast to groovy farm life!