April 6, 2025
Day 1,283 of the Adventure
A good friend used to tell me, "If it's going to be, it's up to me!" If you knew my friend Tony, you'd know that if I heard this once, I've heard it over a thousand times. After all of that, the idea of it set in pretty deeply. In a way, it's something that formed the basis for two opposing forces in my life. That of trying to start and run businesses successfully on the one hand. The other was that of establishing a self-sufficient lifestyle. In some ways, they oppose each other by one being that of creating income, the other being that of conserving income. I embrace both. The older I get, the more I see the value in both. The older I get, the more I realize that my energy and temperament was better directed to business when I was younger. Although that entrepreneurial spirit still burns brightly in me. Nowadays though, the self-sufficient flame is easier to keep alive. Meaning that when I look to personal economics, I'm better built for understanding the principles of creating abundance through frugal living now, than perhaps I was before.
This abundance manifests itself in the lowering of costs as we implement cost saving principles and practices in our lives. One of the most obvious is that of raising and growing food. In the quote on this page, I used the concept of a lowly tomato seed. "A tomato seed costs 19 cents. A tomato plant will produce 20-30 pounds of tomatoes, worth about $45. Growing your own vegetables is like printing money!" The truth in this statement can feel a little vague if you've never harvested literally hundreds of pounds of tomatoes throughout the course of a growing season. Multiply that out by the corn, beans, peas, radishes, lettuce, okra (yes, okra is a thing) cucumbers, squash, watermelon and dozens of other varieties of veggies. Add to that, fruits, herbs, nuts, berries and even foraged items such as mushrooms and other wild edibles. Our woods produce "Chicken of the Woods" mushrooms in such abundance that we cannot consume them all ourselves. Freeze dried COW is an often gifted item to friends and family who also appreciate its delicate flavor and compatibility with so many recipes calling for mushrooms. No, the raising and growing and gathering of fruits and vegetables will not lower your food bill to zero. In our household, it all but eliminates the cost of purchasing those items. Those who choose to also raise livestock, whether large or small, reduce their costs of food consumption as well. Our meat freezer inventory involves harvesting wild game as well as stocking up on fish and seafood items. We typically harvest 2-3 deer and will occasionally purchase a quarter or half beef from local farmers. Did these practices all come to fruition overnight? No, but you could say they began overnight.
Beginning this lifestyle choice is something that starts with a decision. It grows incrementally as far as your imagination or determination can allow or encourage it. It will grow to take in things like energy as well. Knowing virtually nothing about solar energy production, it only took a modest interest in it to begin the learning curve. My personal education with solar started with a small 2000 watt inverter, a small charge controller, a roll-up, flexible solar collector panel and a few wires. The total cost, if purchased new, would have been less than $350. Mine was 2nd hand and was passed on to me for nothing. It provided my first glimpse into the world of electricity by sun! While small, I still remember the impact of seeing lights come on as energy was drawn from a battery which had been charged by the sun. We have steadily grown our solar plant from that little experimental system, to a 12,000 watt inverter/charger, 5,000 watts of solar panel collection capacity and 16 large storage batteries containing roughly 4,000 amp-hours worth of capacity. What does that all mean? It means we can fairly easily run our entire place with solar alone if we manage the usage properly. As of the writing of this article, we still have a grid connection, but our solar provides roughly 80 percent of our power, cutting our electrical costs to a fraction of what it once was. The added side benefit is that during local power outages, we've functioned entirely off of battery power with no disruption of service at all.
Yes, there's a cost into this type of life. One that usually requires some up-front investment of time and material. The best part is that none of it requires an "All-In" approach from the beginning. It's all something that can be built up over the course of time. It requires that "one-time" inspiration and decision. Then an on-going commitment to changing your economic future forever. As the process develops, you find yourself, essentially, printing money as you become less and less dependent upon the economic forces that would love to hold you in a head-lock of dependence. It's certainly worth giving some thought to as world and national economics bear down on us little people more and more with no real solutions in sight. We fight back by taking more control over our personal destiny and beat the system the best we can by choosing independence over economic dependence.
Carry On
Adventure Quote: “Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” ―
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