My interest in self-sufficiency originally began when I realized, in my early twenties, that my spirit was not suited for any sort of regular, 9-to-5 career. I deemed myself first and foremost a creator; but as far as the art world was concerned, I understood already at a very young age that it was corrupt: my mother, also an artist, referred to herself as a “prostitute” for the art world. A fate I wished to avoid. And so, I decided that I must figure out how to live without money, also because I took to heart the Matthew 6:24 passage: “ye cannot serve both God and mammon”, as well as what Kierkegaard said: “There is an either/or: either God or…the rest in indifferent”. There were, in addition, my ecological concerns of wanting to do as little harm as possible to the earth and thus, live locally, attempting to the best of my ability not to contribute to land fills and other forms of pollution by way of my own consumption.
Therefore, I would have to learn how to grow all my own food, make my own clothes, chop my own firewood, carve my own wooden spoons, and spin my own dental floss. Electricity would obviously have to be strictly avoided, as well as cars, washing machines, computers, mobile telephones, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and remote-control carrot-dicers. In summary, I was compelled to re-invent the wheel. Some young men who worked on one of my farms in Norway, studied all manner of survival skills at Tom Brown’s Tracker School back in my homeland, taught me how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, so that I would never have to spend another penny on matches ever again.
I was also determined to be self-sufficient in obtaining salt, which, my husband Ole jested, we’d scrape off our draft-horses’ back…but some things were easier to be self-sufficient in than others; however, I managed to learn a myriad of skills and as a result produced much of what my household required in various departments. Here is a partial list of my accomplishments:
Spinning of my sheep’s wool
Vegetable-dying of home-spun yarn
Processing and spinning of my home-grown flax
Darning/mending
Knitting
Hand-sewing
Needle-looping
Weaving
Felting
Hand-milking -goats and jersey cows
Cheese-making
Butter-churning
Basket-making – birch root and birch bark
Beekeeping
Candle-making
Soap making (using our own pig fat/goat milk)
Canning
Dehydrating
Lacto-fermentation
Gardening
Root cellaring
Wild food foraging
Grain growing and processing
Hay-Making
Handwashing of diapers and clothes in an Amish washing “machine”
Heating, cooking, and baking with wood from our forest
Sourdough baking
Salting and smoking of meats and fish
Next week Jenny will tell us more about both her and her husband’s self-sufficiency skills- and what products can be produced by these accomplishments!