Self-sufficiency was a bit of a game until poverty hit us between the eyes. Now, with sky-rocketing fuel prices and warnings of a world food crisis, it’s deadly serious.
In late 2005 we fled our two-storeyed home in suburban Auckland, New Zealand, to live in our cottage on the edge of the Kaipara Harbour. There was lots of grand talk about a better life and living lighter on the planet, but the truth is that I was sick of corporate life. I wanted to grow veges and keep chooks.
We got the chooks and planted some vegetables and for a year-and-a-half generally indulged my Thomas-Hardy fantasies.
But we didn’t take it seriously; survival still meant cash. If we didn’t get a crop in, it didn’t matter because there was always food at the store.
Then one day I realised that I had to garden as if our lives depended on it if I wanted it to work. And as our money ran low and it became clear how much harder it is to get well-paid work in rural areas, I started to see how our lives might really depend on our land.
In April 2008 I decided to work out what food we really need and to produce as much of it as we can.
Our resources are limited; one-and-a-bit acres of hilly clay-country and not a lot money. And we still have to devote far too much time to earning a conventional living if we are to pay the bills that relentlessly dog modern life, even in a rural idyll.
On the plus side, we work at home and can usually find an hour or two scattered through the day to tend our land and livestock. And we have land, albeit mortgaged and in need of work.
But our truly big advantage is that we live in a community where it is still normal to produce your own food. Most of our neighbours – even those who don’t farm for a living – make jam and have fruit trees in the garden. And as I write this, I can hear half the village partying at the local pub in celebration of the annual pig hunt.
What follows are the ups and downs of trying to live a little more independently and a little more lightly on the Earth. This is not one of those “year-of” stories, in which the particpants dramatically promise to eat their our own produce or perish. We are not that brave, and my husband and son are not that tolerant.
What we are is an ordinary family doing our best to feed and look after ourselves in a way that was once extremely ordinary.
Welcome to my new life as a peasant.