Sustainable is not only about food. It is also about lifestyle.
Our house is heated by a wood stove. (We only use trees that have fallen in storms or been culled by farmers.) This means that only one area of the house is heated, the rest is just .. well .. cold.
I lay in the bath every night and you would not know there was a pale tired little body in there, the room is ALL steam. Our bed is a mound of blankets. Cats tucked into the corners. Dogs waiting for our feet.
We eat pretty much the same thing with small variations each night. The proteins are free range chicken or their eggs, lean grass fed beef, lavender lamb, or pasture raised pork. The frozen vegetables are almost all gone. The tomatoes and fruit in jars are still holding out. I also eat nuts and seeds, rice and cereals that I cannot grow out here. (Bought at the supermarket once a month – not at all sustainable.) Flour for bread, pizza bases and pasta is bought. I have used all the home grown potatoes, onions, and beans and pumpkins long ago so if it were not for frozen peas (bought from the supermarket) and my enormous stash of tomatoes in jars and my wine (there are vitamins in wine?) we would have scurvy.
The fact is that if I were a sustainably managed vegan or vegetarian (as in growing all my own food) and living out here on the prairie I would be dead. Or at the very least unwell and very thin. We eat plenty of vegetable and egg based meals. But we need to buy most of the vegetable ingredients now. Not sustainable or self sufficient at all. We have a 6 month period when the ground will grow nothing at all. A cold frame will extend the lettuce for a while. But there is very little nutrition in a lettuce. All the greens must be grown in the summer and stored. And a cabbage only lasts so long, same for the onions and the potatoes and pumpkins. So by now I am looking to the supermarket to buy my vitamins, absolutely none of which are grown within hundreds and hundreds of miles of here. Certainly not without the help of a lot of artificial heating. So thank goodness I have a freezer full of protein. Even the milk is bought from another farm until I start milking again. Not self sufficient. Flour, chick peas, legumes, split peas, kidney beans, etc, all bought from the supermarket. Not self sufficient. Flax seeds, buckwheat, rye.. all bought. 
And sustainable does not only apply to food and fires.
My hair is either ‘Just got out of bed’ Debbie Harry or ‘way out of control’ Phyllis Diller. It depends what kind of mad hair products I am making that week.
My animals are not in a heated barn.. horrors! ( gas is certainly not a renewable resource). My friend Misfit told me last night that they saw a doco about a pig farmer who was whining about the cost of propane going sky high so poor fellow had to keep his house at 64 and his pig barn at 69 (because a cold pig is a skinny pig he says) and Sheila who sleeps perfectly calmly in an unheated barn (and you know how cold it gets here) has just been told by the vet that she is indeed a Big (fat) Girl.
I am very lucky if the big room gets above 62. We will not discuss the chill of the bedrooms. But we dress for the winter. I wear winter clothes inside in the winter. Weird!
By the way – The propane shortage is attributed to the corn and soy bean farmers who had a late start in the planting season and so had to artificially dry millions of tons of GM corn/beans (that is in-edible by the way) so there was no propane left for the pig farmers who then ran into a deeply cold winter and then there was even less propane for their Houses. Poor wifey – last on the list. Shock and bloody horror.
There is a rumour around these parts that the gas companies are buying unused propane back from the farmers so they can fill the tanks of the families in the country who rely on gas for their heating. Not us thank goodness. We wear hatties inside and sit close to the fire.
Dawn is coming I must hurry. We can talk about this again another time.
But that is sustainable living. Still want to try it? I do.
Good morning. The vet told me yesterday that Sheila’s wound is deep, messy and stinky but seems to be repairing ok. She has some antibiotics that I can mix into her food anyway. But he did say very kindly that she may be too fat and too old and possibly too lonely (no boar to smell for her to cycle) to get pregnant. Now. Is that a challenge or WHAT!
I hope you have a lovely day. I tried taking her to a boar but that did not work so I am off out looking for a smelly old boar to borrow who she can parade past every day to awaken her hormones so we can proceed with the AI.
Never tell me never.
Love your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
175 responses to “Do you really want to live sustainably – self sufficiently?”
Egoli is gorgeous! And of course there are vitamins in wine – they’re made from fruit (surely!). I agree with you and others on here – small steps here and there, making the effort to be more conscious about where stuff comes from and how we use it wisely. I hope your weather warms up a bit soon – we’ve just got the endless inundation of the rain (since November). It’s very wearing. 🙂
I hope the weather warms up soon too. And i hope this for you too! c
[…] A couple of years ago, I somehow found this interesting blog called thekitchensgarden written by “A girl from New Zealand married to an American fella and living on the prairies. Growing, cooking and eating using sustainable and organic methods. Welcome! I am here most every day” Her name is Celi……. I don’t read everything Celi writes, it’s a bit like a diary – which is fine – but it’s a bit cutesypie for me who prefers reading meatier stuff…. I’m sure you all knowwhat I mean! But Celi is a good writer and photographer, and every now and again she posts something that really catches my attention, and today she has a doozy…Do you really want to live sustainably – self sufficiently? […]
One really wonders how the pioneers ever managed!
As you say, though, I suppose they just got jolly unhealthy.
Died young from the cold i expect and hard hard work, with no running off to the store to buy a lemon… must have been truly hard.. c
Pioneers ate wild game, drank clean water and breathed fresh air. Many had gardens and raised farm animals. They got lot of exercise. Sounds pretty healthy to me.
It is true they worked very hard, no fatties in those days. That clean water is a conversation in itself, so many areas cannot get clean water now.. we are one of them actually.. c
We are most definitely not self sufficient or self sustaining, but it’s always good to be mindful of little steps one can take in this direction and you give us all great ideas and inspiration. We both work from home, and never have our thermostat above 61 or 62 in winter and we do wear winter clothes in the house (blankets and cats in bed). But, we don’t have the true extremes of temps that you deal with. We do try and keep our footprint as small as possible in this city. Sheila, old? No way! Picky, that’s all. She just hasn’t found the right man yet!
You are so right in that thinking about how to do it better is the way to go.. extremes or not.. care is what we all can do.. c
i was wondering if a big screen tv in the barn, and some pig porn, would help put sheila in the mood?
it worked for pandas, may have to blindfold tilly so you are not arrested for corrupting a minor
Tilly is noisy too! She would TELL!! c
we were poor,4 of us kids, dad had minimum wage job,we planted #300 of potatoes, mom and sisters canned at least 400 or more quarts of veggies,apples,jelly,piclkes ect,every yr, dryed lots of beans. we milked cow.butchered beef,pork,chickens.only bought little flour, suger, basics,
wish i had known the term sustainable, much classyer than poor, but we never went hungry
Never hungry, but i bet you were a wiry bunch.. all that hard work paid off though, you are one of our most knowledgeable commentors, that mixed in with your dry ironic tone is just wonderful.. I learn so much from you.. c
It’s hard being self sufficient, even when it’s hot! We’ve been trying to achieve this for at least eight years, but never quite make it….. and now it’s 90F plus every day, and there’s no sign of the sub tropical wet season we are supposed to be enjoying…… we catch all our water off our roof and store it in two 5,500 gallon tanks. One’s nearly empty (the garden one) and the other just over 1/3 full. The garden looks like it’s been nuked, and there’s almost nothing left in it to eat now. The goats are as good as out of feed.
We’ve had a few showers today, but the rain drops on the ground don’t even join up. We need at least six inches of rain to combat this incessant heat…..
More on this at http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/do-you-really-want-to-live-sustainably-self-sufficiently/
Oh no. (almost oh dear but that would be too cutsie pie (giggle) ) We are at the mercy of the elements and the elements are seldom kind. Hope you get some rain soon.. c
Amazingly, we got 6.5mm of rain overnight, which put ~1400 litres of water in our tanks… better than nothing, but we need at least 100mm of rain to fill our garden tank – the house tank is not an issue, it never is in fact….
Well i shall put the word out for a bit more then, every evening at about 8pm, for an hour, how wonderful would that be. In Israel they place large smooth rocks at the base of their fruit trees, so the dew rolls round and collects in there. Dry is so hard to manage. c
Okay so Sheila’s fat, aren’t we all, but old?! Is she really too old? I was under the impression that she’s still a bit young! What is the ideal age for breeding?
As far as i can work out the ideal age to breed is a year old then continue to breed from there. Sheila is Two, but have never been bred. Once she starts we will do better but she is old to begin breeding, if that makes any sense.. c
Just fell across your blog, great fun. My wife and I live in the country and have a sourdough bakery. http://apsleycountrybakery.weebly.com
No, not completely self-sustaining but as local as possible. That’s about as close as one can realistically get.
Years ago we lived in north Alberta and had pigs there. No heat and free range. Our favourite sow quite happily wandered around in -40+ with no ill effects.
Keep working.
The best you can do and a health dose of realism is exactly right. I will come over to your blog in case your bakery is close to any of the readers, I LOVE a good bakery.. c
Do they check Body Mass Index (BMI) on pigs like they do on people? 😉 I wouldn’t have thought she’d be too old, but then, everything I know about pigs I learned from you.
breeding a lone pig is evidently more complicated that i thought! c
Sprouting, fermenting and drying fruits and veggies can help increase your vitamin intake through a long winter. A food dryer is easy to build, too. I’d use a mandolin to slice the food, though; when I was drying food, I used a knife and it takes a lot longer. It sounds like you’re on a good track towards self-sufficiency; you may need a root cellar, too (or do you have one?) ~ Linne
Oh yes absolutely, all of the above..my dehydrater is at work as we speak with sweet potato and pumpkin treats for the dogs – I do need to start gathering seed for winter sprouting too.. that would be interesting, now that i think about it, i have a big jar of cilantro seed, that might make a nice sprout.. c
I love the way that your blog is so realistic. No castles in the air; just the reality of what it means to hold a vision. Sustainability is not a stick to beat yourself with, or even a destination; it’s a way of life, the climbing of steps towards a better view. You are doing it, and living it, and with great integrity.
I was wondering if you can buy bottled boar scent, but I see from the comments that you have a much better idea with the boary smelling sacks.
I agree and also i hate rules, so we are as sustainable as we can manage, as self sufficient as we can be using our own guidelines. The climbing of steps and yes life is a journey, not a destination.. such an old saying but a good one.. c
i just used bing search to look for pig breeding scents
there are several available that allegedly will bring a sow into heat.
but what shocked me, was there is a pic of boo and ton ton in the photo section
i dont even have any idea how that connection was made
wow that is pretty wild.. boo and ton and pig scents! Who knew.
Have been lurking and reading your blog for a few months now. I find myself totally enchanted by your writing and your life.
Thank you GA, and i am very glad to see you coming out of your lurkdom.. everyone has something to contribute to a conversation like this.. c