The Fragility of Self-Reliance

For me self-sufficiency is a myth, as to play a full role in modern life - wear decent clothes, enjoy the benefits of any electronic device, use the most effective medicines etc - we rely on wider society. What many people mean by self-sufficiency is growing most of their own food, better expressed as self-reliance. We are happy to grow a small percentage of our own food: we have hens for eggs, and an allotment that provides a large proportion of our vegetables from say June to mid-October, plus beds in the garden for herbs and additional veg, especially salads. But we are far from self-reliant and certainly not self-sufficient.

The dangers of such a path have been emphasized this year by what has happened to our fruit harvest. The combination of a dry spring and horribly wet summer and early autumn, with frequent damaging winds, has left us with barely a fruit on our two cooking apple trees, nothing on the eater, nothing on the cherry, nothing on the pear. The cobnut bushes produced a less than exciting 100g of shelled fruit, made into pesto and long gone already. If we had chosen a true peasant existence we would be done for.