HOME PAGE

Self-Sufficiency in Style 

 pure self-sufficiency

 

  Growing food or money?

 There is one very important difference between smallholding and self-sufficiency.

A difference that is far from obvious.

Smallholding normally implies growing crops and raising animals for sale. At best, it is an attempt to run a business.

Self-sufficiency implies growing crops and raising animals to feed and supply your own family.

The difference really matters.
The fact that the two quite different activities are often confused, sometimes disastrously, probably arises from the fact that people who start businesses and people who go self-sufficient, are often one and the same.

Both attract fiercely independent individualists who value their financial independence: creative minds who chaff at uniformity and wriggle to be free of authority.

Many have two dreams in their mind: their own business and self-sufficiency.

Alas, it is all too beguiling to try to combine the two....

"grow our own food and sell any surplus."

Stubborn individualists, both.

 Unhappy heroes.

 It is time to be a little blunt, at the risk of causing offence to some of the agricultural heroes; the small farmers and small-holders of Britain and elsewhere.

It is the only way to get the point across.

Small scale agricultural production might be heroic, but it is not a business

 At best it is a failing business. Losing money hand over fist in a modern uncomprehending and uncaring world.
A businessman or woman owning their own business is almost certainly motivated by the freedom to make their own decisions.

That deep human need satisfied, if they are to be successful, they transfer their attention to the bottom line - money, and keep it firmly there.

They move from one activity to another solely on the basis that they feel it will become more or less profitable.

No competent or capable business creator or owner could possibly feel that either smallholding or small farming offered anything other than financial blood, sweat and tears.

The heroes of small scale farming are either hopeless at business or, more often the case, they like the life style and are unwilling to change.

In love with a lifestyle.

 

Forget it!

So, forget the idea of selling the surplus. It does not work.

To sell the produce, you need to spend more extra money than you can possibly make.

Instead, concentrate on keeping your costs right down by feeding and supplying your own family as part of an interesting and rewarding life.

If there is still a financial gap, use other, more reliable, means of bringing in the extra cash.

Having been so rude about the business acumen of small farmers and smallholders, it is now necessary to change the picture

... in respect of some of them.
The reality is that many apparently small farmers and smallholders have long ceased to be anything of the kind.

Some became astute conventional businesses using their existing assets in a different way.

  • outbuildings have became holiday accommodation. Thus making good use of the current attractive rural environment and some ease of planning permission usually only open to farmers.
     
  • a farm shop has been opened. Using an attractive sales situation to sell produce often not produced on the farm.

It is good business to redeploy existing assets, thus capitalising on a privileged position.

They may retain their identity as a "farmer" for social and business reasons, but that merely hides a different reality.

All trading has to be learned - usually the hard way.

 The writer can hear his aspiring self-sufficiency fanatic immediately seeing the possibilities.

Alas, most do not have under utilised outbuildings in a scenic location, let alone the wherewithal to convert them to holiday apartments

...or a convenient site alongside a busy road on which to site the farm shop. Or indeed a lifetime's connection with the local worthies likely to allow the development.

...or perhaps there is a Tescos, complete with cheap petrol and special offers, half a mile down the road.

Anyway, like most farmers, the aspiring businessman or woman probably does not possess the expertise to buy produce in and resell at a profit.

An inexperienced buyer would pay more than the supermarket's sale price for most commodities.

Sending livestock to a mart once a fortnight has nothing to do with trading either.

Trading has to be learned. It does not come with mother's milk

..and before the complaints come in, the writer does not consider himself a particularly good trader. He merely knows his own limitations and inexperience in some areas of business.

So what's the answer to a financial gap?

It would be very unlikely to close from the sale of any surplus.

Do what many small farmers and smallholders do.

Go get a job, part-time, casual, anytime. Anything compatible with pure self-sufficiency will do, but not something that will compete with and eventually destroy your ambitions.

There is another possibility. Do what the writer did.

Put your self-sufficiency ambitions onto the back burner. Make a career either as an employee or as an entrepreneur, perhaps as both in succession.

That way, your third age may well be a time of pure self-sufficiency, free of financial worry and risk.

Not the most popular advice, one suspects.

Deferred self-sufficiency, might well allow leaving the job market now,

and real Self-Sufficiency, in considerable style, later.

 The writer still has the hunch that the very people who dream of a self-sufficient life are also those with the drive and originality to make a success of starting and running their own businesses.

Now, to let you into a little secret, well it's a big secret actually!

Self-Sufficiency in Style, although genuine enough, was actually conceived as a bit of fun and the chance to learn how to make and manage a website.

Its apparent success has always both pleased and surprised the writer, but the original dream of something else has never been lost, indeed it is rather stronger.

As the writer has to cut back a bit on the physical side of feeding himself and Mrs P, there is time to do something else.

Very soon, we will be launching a new website: "Starting and Running your own Business."

It is easy to see who will be the first readers. People who fight to make their dreams come true.

...looking into the future

- at the sometimes secretive Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.

May,2005

 

HOME PAGE