Grow your own food - Nook and Cranny Garden

Learning to Live a Self-Sufficient Life

Even with advance preparation, the Schulz family found achieving their dream of a self-sufficient life was less about romantic vision and more about learning to live within daily reality.

By Robert Schulz
April/May 2010

Robert and Summer Schulz take their horse-drawn wagon out for a ride. They've built a self-sufficient life on a homestead in southeastern Wisconsin.

PHOTO: JOHN IVANKO

Slideshow

In June 2004, my wife, Summer, and I arrived at the 40 vacant acres of grass and woods we had just purchased, nestled in the hills of southwest Wisconsin. Summer was six months pregnant, and we had our work cut out for us to get a warm shelter built before the cold set in.

We came with high hopes and a solid work ethic. We also brought with us feelings of freedom, concern from our families, and anxiety over what we were about to embark upon. Both of us had been preparing for this step into self-sufficient life since we were teenagers, saving money and learning old-fashioned skills, natural building techniques, and various arts and crafts (including blacksmithing and fiber arts). We worked on conventional and organic farms, learning to live simply within limited means. We also held several intern positions, participated in WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), and spent enough time on other people’s land that we knew we wanted to have our own. As an artist, it had always been my dream to arrive on vacant land and gradually build up my homestead, a lifelong creation.
Our wish list for our dream property included privacy, a quiet road, 20 to 60 acres that were half tillable/half wooded, and, most importantly, a clean spring. Finding all these attributes was not easy, and we looked at more than 40 properties over five months. When we found a parcel that met most of our wishes, our only hesitation was that it was 30 miles from the main social center in the area. In exchange for being so far out, however, we landed amid a thriving Amish community. This was a major attraction for us because we knew people in the community would have rural living skills we could learn. We would also have a direct connection to their horse-drawn lifestyle, and the possibility of borrowing horses and equipment until we got a team of our own.

Making Plans

During the land search process, we started to design the home that we planned to build. It was a small, simple, straw bale structure that I thought I could put up in a couple of months. Well, more than five years later, we’re still putting the finishing touches on the house. One of the best bits of advice came from my older sister, who suggested I start by building the walk-out concrete foundation and putting on a temporary roof for the first winter. That gave us three solid walls, and I then framed the south-facing fourth wall, which is 80 percent windows. We could then start early the following spring and frame out the rest of the house without such pressure. This made it possible for us to get a dwelling built by October (our baby was born Oct. 6). Throughout that first winter, we had the time to design and build the home we wanted, using the materials we wanted, without having to rush or make compromises because of time constraints.

That winter, the plans for our house grew from 800 square feet to 1,380 square feet, as we realized that having personal spaces to focus on our individual passions would be critical for our overall happiness. Summer has her own room, and I have an office. These rooms are meant to be spaces that we can furnish, decorate, and use in ways that are right for us — self-expression within the family.

After more research and conversations with experienced natural builders in the area, we changed our plan from using straw bales for insulation to building our walls with a straw/clay infill packed into formwork. Why? First and foremost, we learned that mixing the clay slip into the straw before packing the walls assists in the deterrence of potential mold growth. The clay within will absorb any moisture from vapor penetration, and slowly release the moisture, keeping the straw from becoming compromised.
The straw/clay approach also makes it possible to use any wall thickness you desire. We decided to go with 12-inch walls because we wouldn’t have a huge house to keep warm and we didn’t want to lose too much interior space. The 12- inch thickness made it easy to frame, too. Another advantage of straw/clay fill is that it makes it easy to create a flush, “non-wonky-looking” wall, which is often tricky for first-time home builders when trying to stack straw bales. To top it off, the subsoil on our land is pure clay, so we had an unlimited source for not only the infill, but for the multiple coats of plaster we put on. Our base coats were a clay/sand/straw mixture, and for the finish coats we added lime to help with permeability (more lime = less permeable). Our finish coats, inside and out, are a lime-clay plaster, which offers a beautiful tannish, off-white color.

All It Takes Is Effort

Summer and I have developed short- and long-term plans for our homestead. We have focused the majority of our first five years on building the infrastructure of our immediate 2 acres, where we dwell and spend most of our time. This includes the house, blacksmith shop, sauna, washhouse, chicken coop, outhouse, a guesthouse (the newest addition), greenhouse, and a 25-acre fenced pasture for our horses and cattle. We’re happy with our progress in the past five years, but there are still things we wish we had or had done differently, such as building a storage shed sooner. Especially during the first years, having dry storage for wood, tools, hay and personal gear would have been extremely helpful. Tarp mania is never much fun. Looking back, we also wish we had installed an electricity source as soon as possible.

For the first four years, we used a gasoline- powered generator, mostly for cutting lumber during the building process. The noise, stink, and multiple trips to town for more fuel were not ideal, not to mention a greater use of fossil fuel. Originally, we weren’t sure we wanted to have electricity at all. Sometimes our ideals can keep us from healthy progress, and we try to create a balance by knowing when it’s OK to compromise. We now have an off-grid, 700-watt solar system that powers our lights (which used to be candles and propane), some minimal kitchen appliances and my blacksmith shop equipment. We have no refrigerator, freezer, clothes dryer, TV, or water heater. We do have a root cellar, clothesline, computer, and wood-fired hot water.

We want to meet face to face or be closely connected to what is involved in the processes of our lives. For example, the day we came to the land, we were able to walk down to the spring and fetch the water we needed. All it took was the effort. When we could afford the expense and were ready for more convenience, we improved our water system by installing a low-cost ram pump (which uses no electricity or fuel), trenching water lines 6 feet deep, and burying an old stainless bulk milk tank uphill for storage. We have gravity-fed water for the house and washhouse, all supplied by the awesome little spring we call Old Faithful. This is one of our greatest signs of independence — free access to clean drinking water.

We heat our water and our home with wood. In the house, we have an old Kitchen Queen wood cookstove and a small propane gas cookstove. We use the Kitchen Queen during the cold season and the gas stove the rest of the year. Getting off of the gas stove would be a huge step toward self-sufficiency, but it would also be a challenge. Our options for taking that step include having an outdoor kitchen (so that we wouldn’t heat ourselves out of the house in summer), cooking more with our little solar cooker, cooking outside over an open fire, and adjusting our diets so that we eat more uncooked foods. We’ll see.

The Next Five Years

Now into our sixth year, we’re looking at what we would like to accomplish in the next five years. We hope to pay off the mortgage. We’re not at the point yet where we make our income from our land. Summer is a massage therapist, and I’m a blacksmith and builder. We both love our professions because they fulfill us creatively, and because we’re able to coordinate our schedules so that our son can stay home with us.

Learning from others has been vital in allowing us to do what we are doing, and now that we’re established, we’re inviting work/study participants to come to our farm and observe what we’re doing. It’s our way of sharing rural skills. We gain friendships, are able to live and work alongside others, and it assists us in the multiple projects we have going. Another way that we have been able to get larger projects done is by having work days. For the past two summers, some good friends and I have teamed up. Together we’ve been able to tackle projects that require more hands, such as putting up new buildings — projects we may have otherwise had to hire labor to complete. Work gets done, and we get to spend time together and become closer to one another.

Farming The Land

Agriculturally, we prefer to do things on a small scale. We have three draft horses (for tillage, haymaking, hauling, and snow plowing), four milking goats, a flock of chickens, and two hogs. We’ve experimented with using the hogs for tillage to rid a future growing space of quack grass, and so far so good. We rotated them in a 16-foot-by-32-foot area, and they effectively rooted it up. After we moved the hogs to another area, we immediately cover-cropped the patch with buckwheat and rye. Over a four-month period, we created a new 5,000-square-foot garden space — and we ultimately got meat and lard as well.

We have gardens that provide the majority of our produce throughout the year, and with a new greenhouse, we’ll be able to grow greens, lettuce, and herbs through the winter. We have a large raspberry patch and have planted fruit trees, but we could have planted more perennials in those first years so that they would have matured by now. We are also able to sell some of what we grow. I have been growing garlic for nine years and have developed a small market for it.

Goals that we hope to accomplish in the next couple of years include getting the gardens, pasture, and fields to optimum fertility and balance, and creating larger crop fields that will allow us to grow animal feed and potentially put in market produce crops. We’d like to create sections in our fencing so we can better employ a rotational grazing scheme. We have plans to build a much-needed barn in the next year to house the animals under one roof. We’d love to create a haymow for hay storage. We’d also like to use the barn as a dance hall and educational building — agriculture, architecture and the arts, in one place.

Creating A Fulfilling Life

In living a rural lifestyle, we feel thoroughly fulfilled in our lives. We work hard each day and celebrate with creativity and good food. We enjoy being close to our friends and becoming stronger as a family. These are all things that take time and effort, and it’s what we want to be doing. In the country, it can seem as though one must compromise the arts and culture of the city. But this is one of the reasons we settled in Vernon County, Wis., where there are numerous social things happening. We feel that if we are seeking more “culture,” we should be there to help create it.
One way we have done this is through the Driftless Folk School, a nonprofit organization that focuses on teaching rural skills. We offer classes in a wide variety of subjects, including organic agriculture and cooking, building and woodworking, arts and crafts, and nature studies. Summer took on the task of organizing a music and dance program for the school, and we put on square and contra dances in a lovely community center in the nearby town of LaFarge. Being involved in this organization allows us to do volunteer service, and it helps strengthen our connections to our broader community.
We are so blessed to be living on our land, in the home we built, doing the things we want to be doing. We are guided by our conscience, supported by our friends and family, and inspired by what’s to come. The struggles we face often bring frustration, but the realization that we can pull through and grow stronger from such experiences has made us eager to take on the next challenge in front of us. With a spirit of innovation and a love for simplicity and living wisely, we wake up each morning with ambition. We hope to inspire others as we have been inspired, and we look to the future with optimism.

With a spirit of innovation and a love for living wisely, we wake up each morning with ambition.

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You can view more photos of the Schulz homestead in the Image Gallery and at cu.MotherEarthNews.com.
 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/learning-to-live-self-sufficient-life-zmaz10amzraw.aspx?PageId=1

Butchering hogs

Butchering hogs 

This is for my buddy who needs to get out there and butcher that hog but had some kind of excuse about why he couldn't look up the instructions. You know of whom I speak...

How to - the best step by step guide ever. (And mighty popular on the pinterest if I may say so)
WARNING: new people and folks willing to make that risky click... I am not kidding this link is to an extremely graphic how to butcher post. Blood, guts, headless hogs layin' there in the snow. Do not click it if you are going to burst into tears.

Then here is the 2011 "What really happened" post. MORE PICTURES of a glorious tale of butchering victory. Guts n everything. Don't click if you can't handle it.

2012 was just as awesome... but this time we did a late summer/early fall butchering where we learned that summer hog butchering sucks. But it works.  This was the second hog.

Remember that we butchered early in the year in 2013....we did not have summer hogs for a fall harvest. This is day one of two and this could also be my best disclaimer yet. Plus I got to use the phrase, "... the dogs and I would rush in and I would sledge that pig with the axe." Glorious. What a day! Kai was so brave - her first real hog harvest.

And just to show off... my favorite self portrait yet. Mine enemy was slain. 

There wasn't much reporting of the actual doin's for hog #4...other than that pig got out and we found him in the dog yard. Zander gave him a good woofing and peed in its general direction.

So there you have it, friend, get out there and get that hog butchered.

Happy Friday everyone!

Posted by Ohiofarmgirl at 6:00 AM

Self-reliance is a mindset A woman's opinion By Dorothy Ainsworth
Issue #94 • July/August, 2005

Self-reliance is a mindset. If you have it, you are on your way to independence. If you don't, it would be in your best interest to develop it. It requires a conscious effort of replacing an "I need help" attitude to an "I can do it myself" attitude.
I was lucky; I acquired it at an early age by default. I grew up in a large family with no money for anything but the barest necessities. If we wanted something extra, we had to work at an outside job to get it. We didn't resent that reality; it was a given. There was no sense of "entitlement" in our family. We were raised with the philosophy that nobody owed us anything.
An example of the self-reliant mindset already in place at 5 years old is illustrated by my first day of school. I got on the bus with my brothers and sisters and felt happy and proud that I was all grown up and on my way to school—until my older sister left me off at my classroom and disappeared. I loved the learning part that day, but it was over-shadowed by being worried sick about how I was going to find my way home (5 miles away). It never occurred to me that I could actually ask for help to find the right bus at the end of the day. I truly believed it was solely up to me to figure it out, and if I didn't, I would be spending the night in the dark parking lot.
The sense of abandonment I felt was seared into my brain and probably contributed to the life-long desire for security I still have. But strangely enough, I handled my problem that day by exhausting all options possible before crying for help. I did manage to get on the right bus and I remembered feeling really good about finding it "all by myself!"
Therein lies the silver-lining of self-reliance. When you achieve even a modicum of it, you feel really good about yourself.
There are degrees of self-reliance, and even a little bit is better than none, but let's assume your goal is "extreme self-reliance", like mine was: Move to a small town, buy 5-10 acres in the country, build a house, have your own water supply and septic system, and possibly be off the grid for your electricity. Have a few chickens, assorted dogs and cats, and a nice garden. Work at a job you like (ideal) or one you don't like (survival), and simplify your life to the point that you can spend every extra cent for developing your property.
I still drive an old truck, buy my clothes at Goodwill, eat plain healthful food, and don't give a hoot about what anybody thinks. That's another mindset to achieve—freedom from the shackles of convention. When you become a landowner and you start actually achieving your goals in tiny steps, and you can visualize the end result, all of a sudden it really doesn't matter if your hair is messed up and you have dried caulk under your fingernails. You'll be on a roll. You'll have more important things on your mind, like survival.
Obviously there are some personal requirements for becoming self-reliant: You have to want it badly, and you'll have to be in pretty good shape. You'll end up in excellent shape, but you should be fairly healthy to begin with. It helps to dream big and visualize what you want because that's what keeps you going, but focusing your energy on the task at hand is what makes it happen. Have a plan and a list of priorities and start transforming wishful thinking into labor.
You are smarter and more capable than you think. You can't learn if you don't try. If a task looks daunting, get started anyway. Take it one tiny step at a time. Dream big but take baby steps. Write down a plan. List your priorities. Number them. Start in. You want to design your own house? Go downtown and buy graph paper and a ruler. Go to the library or magazine rack and look at house plans. Ideas will snowball. The mind does funny things when you give it a problem. It keeps on working overtime. In fact, you can't shut it off. It's important to get started with something tangible. Make a model. You'll see there's no big mystery to putting a house together. The sum total always looks bigger than the parts...but a house is just one board put up at a time. My house was one log at a time.
To achieve self-sufficiency, you have to delay gratification. The only instant satisfaction you're likely to get for a while will come in tiny increments like hammering a nail in straight and cutting right on the line with the saw.
Each little job is an end in itself, but a stepping stone to the next level. You'll be living in the moment, but working like hell for the future. Some of those moments won't be happy, but they'll always be meaningful. Real happiness is found in the everyday struggles and the little peak experiences you can glean out of them. Hsun-Tzu said: "If there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement." I don't know who in the heck Hsun-Tzu was or even how to pronounce his name, but he was a wise man. Progress happens in tiny increments. And when you are the one doing the work, each little accomplishment is a big deal.
Sometimes you have to do what doesn't come naturally.
People who read my articles and see the house I built call me a "Gutsy Lady." That couldn't be further from the truth. I'm actually quite wimpy and hesitant to try new things, but if I want something passionately enough, my drive over-rides my fear. Years ago I raced motorcycles because we had a motorcycle shop and my husband wanted me and the kids involved. I am not by nature an aggressive competitive female and I was terrified at first, but so motivated to please my husband that I donned my leathers and "skidshoe" every weekend and actually got good enough to win some flat-track races, even against men. I'm telling you this story just in case you are a woman who can't even imagine doing something like that. I couldn't either, until I tried.
I had been raised with traditional 1950's values where the woman is the caregiver....she makes dinner, makes the kids, and makes her husband happy. That's all fine if you aren't sacrificing your very soul to do it. My marriage turned out to be so one-sided that I eventually had to get out.
If I could break free to develop my potential and become self-reliant, anybody can. At 30 I was a divorced woman with two kids to support on waitress earnings and no child support. And I was a "girlie-girl" and a "fraidy cat" to boot. But there was one thing I was never afraid of— work, hard tortuous work! I believed fervently that I could create what I wanted by myself, within realistic financial and physical capabilities, and I didn't care how long it took. I didn't get started until I was 38, and now, 24 years later, I'm still working at it.
No one is confident about everything, certainly not me. I learned by mistakes and failures (Darn! I cut that board ½" too short!). I had YEARS of "oops" and "darns!" I learned that if you can accept your mistakes, it will free you up to take more risks. Trying until you get it right is how most people learn things. Perfectionism = procrastination and paralysis. You have to cut yourself some slack (just don't cut yourself!) A job done reasonably well is good enough!
Every time you are confronted with a new task that requires learning a new skill, hit the books! That's how I learned everything I know, by reading and practicing.
Even if you have money, do it yourself. The actor, Harrison Ford, repairs his own fences and makes furniture in his shop. There's a reason for this. It's profoundly satisfying. There is no shortcut to get that feeling, and no substitute for it.
If you do have plenty of money, and can hire everything done, and buy all the goods and supplies needed to survive in your home and possibly your custom-made bomb shelter, remember this old saying: "The real measure of a person's character isn't how well he or she does in bad times, but how well he or she keeps striving in good times."
If you are lucky enough to have a wonderful mate, you can still become incredibly self-reliant if you make a conscious effort to do so. To this day I tend to let a man take over if there's one around. It's biology and conditioning. It's also nice to have "man-power." Men are a lot stronger. But if you find yourself single and alone you can manage anyway.
My niece is a single mom who sent me an email recently telling how she moved a washer and dryer up some steps and into her house all by herself. She said: "When you don't have might, you tend to use your wits!" She proved there is more than one way to solve a problem.
Self-reliance is learned. It's a process of acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to enable you to take calculated risks and achieve your goals even if you don't have a partner. When you have tools and know how to use them, everything seems possible! And, you know what? It IS!
Learn more about Dorothy and/or contact her at her website www.dorothyainsworth.com
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ainsworth94.html