Self sufficiency @ Bogata Suma
Our reasons for living more self sufficient are born out of love for nature, self respect and an urge for living healthy.
For us living (food) self sufficient fits into our values and vision. Sustainability, renewability, independency and love and good care for living beings. It also fits into our wish to incorporate permaculture in all aspects of our life.
We also enjoy our simple way of life. We eat what nature provides so our choices are limited. And that is a GOOD thing!
We love a more natural living, with the cycles of nature. In winter we live inside and take care of our personal insides. In summer we're outside and more open to the world. When the snow melts, we'll be able to pick claytonia and lambs lettuce. When the wild strawberries are ripe, we can exchange our winterclothes for t-shirts. When the apples are falling, the weather gets bad. And when the rose hips are sweet, it will be Christmas soon. (Who needs a calender!)
Towards self sufficiency in 5 years
When we came to live here in 2009, I made a mind map of what I wanted to achieve in 5 years. The paper hung on the wall, fell down a few times, got lost and around christmas 2013 I found it back. Just before the 5th year would start!
It surprised me how much of that mind map we had actually achieved! Almost everything, except brewing our own beer and having goats for their milk & meat.
The different area's where we are pretty self reliant:
- All year round fresh vegetables
- Dried, frozen, fermented & potted vegetables & fruits
- Mushrooms
- Herbs (kitchen herbs and herbal teas, tinctures, syrups & remedies)
- Syrups (elderflower, berries, rosebuds)
- Jams & compotes (from several fruits)
- Wines (dandelion, elderflower, cherry, plum and elderberry)
- kombucha & water kefir
- Apple cider
- Apple vinegar
- Nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts & sweet chestnuts)
- Eggs
- Meat (rabbits, chickens, snails and wild animals)
- Sourdough bread
- Firewood (we cook on fire)
- Animal food (hay and dried vegetables, corn)
- Seeds for the garden
Our neighbors provide us with honey & a pig (Stevo), milk for yoghurt and fresh cheese (Milka) and sheep wool (Marko).
Definitely our favourite book on this subject is John Seymour's "The new complete book of self sufficiency".
But of course we have many sources, like several other books, the internet and our neighbour Anja who also likes to experiment with making wines, jams and herbal salts.
SInce we're becoming more & more experts in self sufficiency, we'd like to share our knowledge about several subjects in autarky.
>> See our list of workshops in self sufficiency
