The sad truth is that earning a living and true self-sufficiency are mutually incompatible.
Fortunately, it isn't necessary to join a commune either,
or build a house in the woods
Few such ventures survived. Most either moved back into mainstream jobs. A few stayed on their little plots of land and developed rural businesses.
None of these people became truly self-sufficient in the long term.
Most believed that they could raise a family on a smallholding by selling their surplus produce. Few succeeded, and those that did had to become rural businesses to do so.
A rural business, however interesting and profitable is not true self-sufficiency.
The truth is that you can’t make self-sufficiency pay in the same way as you would a normal nine to five job.
Neither is it possible to take on a part-time job to balance the books.
Self-sufficiency is a full-time way of life, demanding full attention, both mentally and physically. It is incompatible with many of the demands and pressures of conventional society.
Neither can it be lived on the edge of poverty.
We all need money to pay taxes, if nothing else. So self-sufficient smallholding cannot be lived remote from the realities of a money-based society.
In a way, only a rich man can be self-sufficient…but we are all rich in dreams, in skills, in ideas and ambitions. Most of us are also richer than we might think in purely financial terms.
At some stages in our life, an increasing number of us do have enough of a financial surplus to contemplate a self-sufficient life.
The reader is invited to join a journey into our dreams, but with feet firmly on the ground and based on common-sense.
The writer hopes to show you that your dreams are not quite as unrealisable as you may have thought.
