How Much Does Self-Sufficiency Cost?

I Refuse to Look

at just how much money I have spent over the past six months on this teensy farming venture I’ve got going in our backyard. Granted, The Wife and The Brother-in-Law built the raised beds with remnants left around the house when we bought it, and all the fruit trees came with the place, but everything else has been bought: chickens, coop and run materials, plants (through barter, most of them), dirt, compost bin (we just received another from a friend), seeds, straw, canning jars and supplies, water bath canner — and soon, an Excalibur food dehydrator.

When Does It Start Paying Off?

We have invested a great deal in the farm this year, what with the chickens and the composting, etc. So we will get eggs soon, and we’ll get our own compost/soil next year. I’m also going to try and save some seeds from our plants this year, so that we won’t have to buy as much next year. The jars we can use over, though the lids we have to buy each time we can. A colleague generously gave me a good, working sewing machine, so that was one less expenditure. And of course, the more produce we grow, the less we have to buy. And the more I can put up in the summer, the less we have to buy in the winter. But combined with the cost of the two classes I will have taken to learn how to sew, I feel as though we are spending more money right now than we are saving. And since our income isn’t increasing (and in fact, is decreasing at the moment), that scares me a bit.

If the point of this is self-sufficiency, with an additional goal of consuming less, I’d say we aren’t even halfway there yet. That’s frustrating, but I guess it’s normal.

The Dervaes family, over at the Path to Freedom blog, do a great job of charting how much they grow and consume, as well as how much they save on water, electricity, gas, etc. Someday, I’ll get there. Actually, I might start trying to create some charts of my own, so that I can see where we have come from. Who knows? Maybe the water bill will go down, or the grocery bill. It would be nice to see some monetary results, as well as the obvious, and joyful physical and psychological ones.