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Self-Sufficiency in Style

 side benefit

Self-sufficiency is not just unrelenting labour

After a lifetime at work in an exciting job self-sufficient living might seem to have nothing to stimulate the mind

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In education and in employment, you generally did the things that you had an aptitude for, the things you liked and the things you were good at.

In a self-sufficient life-style, like it or not, you are going to do things you don't like and do not interest you.

Mechanical responses

First, find the handbook...

That means you will have to keep your brain in gear.

You are going to have to read the handbook, dig out the information, struggle to understand an unfamiliar process - enough to tackle a previously unlearned skill.

You will have to be better organised than you ever were in the office. You will have more lists, more notes and more records.

A thousand things to be checked, a thousand more to be mastered in mind, if not in body.

It can be quite a task to spend the whole day searching for some rare variety of pear that is just the thing, or a spare for the generator.

But there is a bright side.

You are going to come face to face with your ancestors and discover that they were not just ignorant peasants. Well they might have been peasants and illiterate, but they were far from ignorant.

Even, if you are in the Australian Desert, perched on the Great Divide or stuck in windy moor-land, the phrases of long forgotten authors will come to mind and to full explanation. The meadows and lazy rivers of times past will meander through in your mind and make sense for the first time.

The words and speeches of revered or detested political leaders will take on a new fuller meaning.

You will discover your roots in a religious tradition that makes psalms, hymns and scripture come alive.

You will discover in the plants and animals a geography that will take you back to their natural habitat, a world and several centuries away.

Self-sufficiency can be a rite of passage into a new understanding of our world and its intellectual treasures.

Many things that were familiar in sight or sound, but dimly understood will make perfect sense for the first time.

You will quickly grasp the original meaning of many an idiom. The British will be surprised to learn just how many idiomatic expressions they have absorbed from the agriculture of the Great Plains.

There is much to be considered. Was Shakespeare a real countryman?  Did he wield a scythe? Does his language reflect a rural England and his place in it?

As the wagons went west, some words went east.

Parable parallels

The New Testament "I know my sheep and my sheep know me" makes perfect sense to anyone who has ever kept a flock.

Despite their aloof bearing, sheep not only know their shepherd by sight and sound, they know every other member of the family and their allotted task. They know the sound of individual motor cars - and will instantly recognise a strange dog, from a distance even if it looks the same as the farm dog.

Old and New Testaments, many hymns too, have the startling imagery of a self-sufficient life.

The countryside is not a haphazard place. Each man-made feature is where it is for a reason. You cannot fail to begin to understand that the trees to the north offer wind protection and those to the south, shade.

"Perhaps if we put a hedge just there..."

Little is by chance. The road past the farm went to the mill, within distance of a horse drawn cart. The little market towns are exactly spaced, so the furthest farm was able to drive their cattle, sheep or even geese, there and back in a day.

You will see the chickens become active and begin to lay again as the days lengthen. Their metabolism is controlled by light. In fact, length of day is more important than temperature for many crops and animals.

Light layers

The need for frost-free storage, become obvious when you seek to help the potatoes and carrots last through the winter.

The position of the house upon the land and the provision of water all become clear.

So, far from being a dull monotonous grind, self-sufficiency demands some mental agility - more than you might expect too - but it repays its demands in some exciting and unexpected ways. 

Whether you sit in church or read an historical novel, watch the television or sing a hymn, help a child with its homework or follow a hobby; self-sufficiency will be there at your elbow. 

You may well gain a new perspective on life, something denied most people in our troubled busy, busy world.

intellectual exercises

at

 the remarkably  named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.