Self-Sufficiency... until the power goes out!
I am so proud at how self-sufficient my husband and I have become the last few years. We grow the majority of our own veggies and herbs and have a budding orchard in progress that will provide us fruit and berries. I barter goods and services with friends and neighbours… which I absolutely love doing! We raise pigs and chickens, forage for wild mushrooms, berries and other edible forest goodies and hunt and fish to fill the freezers.
There’s also a quiet kind of pride that comes from looking around and realizing that your pantry is full of things you grew, raised, preserved, or traded for. It feels like resilience. It feels like freedom.
There’s a rhythm to this life… seasonal, grounded, real.
Until the power goes out…
Just last week, our power went out for almost 20 hours and wow… what a reminder that almost everything you do in everyday life… involves the use of electricity. Self-sufficiency only goes so far as the outlet I guess :(
As the outage ran past 12 hours, all I could think of was all of our preserved food in the freezers, fridge full of aging cheese and the temperature controlled cold room and what an incredible loss it would be if the power went out for days. So much time and hard work goes in to all that growing, harvesting and processing!
Also with no power…
the water pump doesn’t work and we risk running out of clean, fresh water for the farm animals
I can’t flush the toilet
most of the big tools in the barn can’t run… therefore the hubs thought he should hang out with me!
I couldn’t even listen to the radio!
I couldn't grind my beans for coffee (let’s be serious … this was the biggest tragedy)!
I almost died of stickiness from not being able to run the fan for half of my sleepless night
I was in the middle of making yogurt, but it was in the instapot which of course needs to be plugged in
I had my freeze dryer and my dehydrator also running at the time of this long power outage so a bit of a loss there as well
Thankfully, I have a gas stove and could boil some water and had a BBQ to cook my dinner that night.
I thought I was more than capable of not being plugged in to wi-fi and the internet… but even that proved challenging as my books, silly puzzle games and other offline computer work still needed either internet or powered up devices. We no longer have a landline so we need power for our cell phones. I don’t have an electric car, but the thought of being stranded in an emergency crossed my mind and I felt I would be kinda SOL if I did only own electric vehicles.
The only thing I didn’t have to worry about was the fact that my piggies and honey bees were protected from predators because their fence is on a solar battery charger!
My supposedly self-sufficient lifestyle started to look a whole lot more plugged in than I’d realized.
Time for some reflection and deep breaths…
After fretting endlessly about my thawing freezers and the game of cheese jeopardy that was playing out, I ended up finding a fair amount of enjoyment with the absolute QUIET! Nothing humming, whirring or beeping… just the songbirds outside who’s batteries never seem to run out!
It was humbling. And sobering. And, in some strange way, kind of beautiful.
Because self-sufficiency, I realized, isn’t about perfection. It’s not about being completely cut off or having every scenario nailed down. It’s about flexibility. About being able to pivot when your best-laid plans come undone. About paying attention to where you’re still dependent… and getting curious about how to shift that, even just a little.
When the lights eventually came back on, I felt determined. Grateful, too… for the wake-up call and the chance to rework the gaps I hadn’t seen before.
This life we’ve chosen… rooted in the land, in reciprocity, in learning… isn’t about being invincible. It’s about being in relationship. With the earth. With my community. With the systems I rely on. And, most importantly, with the truth.
And the truth is, I’m self-sufficient… until I’m not.
But every bump in the road is making me more prepared.
More aware.
More connected.
And that, I think, is the real kind of resilience I’m after.
Much Love,
