The Forgotten Art of Self Sufficiency
Ever since moving down to the South-West of England three years ago I have wanted to get into home farming. This is something I have always wanted to do, but living in London didn't exactly make that goal accessible.1 Now that I'm actually in my own home in a part of the country I've always wanted to go back to,2 farming is something I can finally get my teeth into.
Today, I spent the day giddily walking around a garden centre my partner decided to introduce me to. All their plants come directly from their own nursery and everything else is sold at purchase price (nearest dammit) making the entire experience a much cheaper one compared to most garden centres. We walked away with far more than what we came for, but at far lesser cost, which is great but also extremely dangerous! I could easily spend my entire payslip there.
It wasn't until the journey home that I started thinking about the act of home farming and how that has become a sort of 'lost art', so to speak. I know it has had a bit of a resurgence lately, what with the price of basic food goods skyrocketing, but I'm talking about every-day necessity based self sufficiency. Human history is a blip on the time-map of this planet, and in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that long ago we greatly relied on the land we owned to keep us alive. Now that pretty much everything is so immediately accessible, that need has all but died.
Now don't misunderstand me, our advancement as a species certainly has its positives. Medicine, for one, is getting more and more advanced with every year that passes, and we have eradicated entire illnesses from the population (except for those anti-vax folks that decided to make measles a thing again, but that's its own issue…). At the same time, however, we have become the creators of our own downfall.
It is noticeable that what a lot of people appear to be struggling with lately is a deep and severe loneliness, and I can't help but to think that the sense of community that we once used to have through the act of things like farming has been killed off by these very advancements. Accessibility is wonderful, but it seems it can also be incredibly isolating. I am no angel in this, of course. My first adventure into the workplace was at a popular supermarket, which I worked at for just shy of ten years. Throughout those ten years, I met so many people from so many different walks of life as customers especially when assigned to work check-outs. Now that I am out of that place and in a quiet office role, those interactions have dropped off a cliff and are pretty much non-existent. This is, of course, further perpetuated by the fact that I am now one of those people who do most of my shopping online. It is convenient, incredibly so, but soulless.
Despite this convenience and how much I appreciate it, I (perhaps hypocritically) admit that I yearn for connection and community that cannot be provided by it. It is not a life that I have lived, but I mourn for the days where a town, village, or even street actually knew each-other and cared about its neighbours. You need a hammer for something but don't actually have one? No problem, Steve three doors down is more than happy to lend you his. Baking something but you've realised you've ran out of sugar? Michelle has some, and she would love to help you! After all, you did give her that huge punnet of tomatoes in the summer. The tomatoes that you grow to share, even though you can't stand them yourself.
I suppose this post is more about mourning the idea of community than it is about self sufficiency, but I can't help believe there is a strong correlation between the two. Things have become too easy, which has created a form of laziness, which voids collaboration, and in turn kills community.
When I make my first harvest I will be sharing it with my neighbours, and I think you should too.