The How and Why of Self Reliance

Goat keeping is rewarding. Keeping goats is fun. Very basic information for new and prospective small scale goat stewards. Goats are one of the most common animals kept in an effort to increase one’s self reliance.  There are many books about goats to be had, but most of them miss the mark on the whole.  [...]

Herbs, generally speaking, are any plant lacking a permanent woody stem commonly used in food or traditional medicine.  Many you can grow yourself quite easily, and most will increase your self reliance if only by drastically reducing your food budget.  Growing and drying herbs is a pretty simple proposition and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at [...]

Extricating yourself from the grid is entirely possible, and it may become very much more desirable as the months go by.  There is no reason to believe that energy prices will go down, and every reason to believe they will go up, putting even more strain on already stretched budgets.  Regardless of how the economy [...]

Skills for self reliance are not just concrete skills like learning how to bake your own bread, bank a fire to keep overnight, grow your own food and put it by.  Some of the skills that engender self reliance are entirely abstract.  One of the underlying skills that most self reliant people seem to have [...]

Since “more” is a relative term, one must assess how much there is before trying to figure out how to increase it.  If your goal is to become more self reliant, you must come to grips with how self reliant you currently are.  So let’s start with the aspects of self reliance we’ve already gone [...]