The last few years have shown us just how fragile our modern systems are. From COVID and supply chain breakdowns to inflation and rising geopolitical tensions, we’ve seen firsthand the risks of relying too much on external forces that are beyond our control.
With the latest trade war between the U.S. and Canada, Canadians like me are facing economic uncertainty, increased costs, and potential shortages. After the rollercoaster that has been past few years, who knows what else could be next.
Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to take steps toward greater self-sufficiency—not just in Canada, but the world over.
Living a self-sufficient lifestyle doesn’t mean going off-grid or isolating yourself from society. Becoming more self-sufficient means developing the basic skills, knowledge, and resources to provide for yourself and your family no matter what challenges arise. It means taking personal responsibility, becoming less reliant on modern conveniences, and securing greater control over your family’s basic needs.
There are plenty of ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle and a seemingly endless list of things you can do and skills you can learn as you work toward this goal. To distill it down, here are six key steps to help you become more self-sufficient.
Step 1: Take Control of Your Food Security
Food prices are continuing to skyrocket, and grocery stores have faced shortages of everything from baby formula and medicine to toilet paper and eggs over the past few years. Grocery store shelves were emptied during the pandemic, and now the trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada means that we’re likely to see even higher costs and more empty shelves—on both sides of the border.
Instead of being at the mercy of unpredictable supply chains and political spats, take steps to increase your food production and improve your food security at home, in your own kitchen and backyard.
Here are some ways you can take more control of your food security:
Learn how to garden and grow your own food
Even a small garden can supplement your diet and reduce expenses. The more you can grow and produce with your own hands on your own land, the less dependent you’ll be on external sources to provide for you.
You don’t need acres of land to grow a small vegetable garden. No matter what size property you have, you can maximize the amount of food you grow, plant perennials that come back every year, and grow heirloom vegetables that you can save seeds from, making these crops truly sustainable. Even if you live in an apartment, you can grow herbs in a sunny window or grow sprouts on your kitchen counter, or find a community garden plot to grow on. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!
Cook from scratch
Processed foods are not only more expensive but also less nutritious. Keep your pantry well-stocked with staple ingredients like rice, beans, flour, sugar, salt, herbs and spices, oils, vinegars, sauces, and preserved foods, and you’ll always have what you need on hand to whip together a meal from scratch.
Supplement with fresh food from your garden or from local farms, and plan your menu around what’s in season and what you have on hand already to save money and stretch your food.
Learn to preserve food
Canning, dehydrating, and freeze drying allow you to store shelf-stable food long-term. Fermenting helps to preserve and even improve the nutrition content of food, and even simply freezing foods can preserve them for several months.
Learning how to preserve food means that you can preserve your own produce and homegrown food so that it doesn’t go to waste, and preserve local foods while they’re in season and affordable. It also ensures that you have a pantry full of healthy, homegrown food on hand whenever you need it.
Raise livestock
Raising animals for eggs, milk, and meat is a great way to increase your self-sufficiency. If you have enough land to raise cattle or even a dairy cow, you could easily supply your own family with enough meat or milk for the year with plenty to spare! But even on a small-scale, at the very least you should consider adding a few laying hens to your backyard if at all possible.
Quails are another option for even smaller spaces (although their eggs are small too!), and rabbits are are quiet and can be kept in a small area and will readily reproduce, creating a very sustainable meat source! Goats are also a great source of meat and dairy that can be kept on a much smaller property than cows. Plus you’ll get manure for your garden from all of these animals too!
Learn to forage and hunt
Wild foods can supplement your diet and provide resilience. Start by learning to identify some of the edible and medicinal weeds in your own backyard, then learn some of the other edible plants and mushrooms in your area, as well as how to identify and safely harvest them. If you live in an area where hunting and fishing is possible, consider adding one or both of these skills to your repertoire.
Buy local and in season
Support your local farmers and stock up on enough food to preserve and last the year when it’s in season and affordable (and the nutrition content is at its peak). This goes for fruits and veggies of course, but also for meat. While we don’t raise our own meat on our relatively small quarter-acre property, we do purchase half a hog and a quarter-side of beef every fall from a local farm. That fills our freezers and lasts our family of four for the entire year.
Step 2: Take Control of Your Health
A healthy lifestyle is one of the best ways to increase your independence. You can have all of the supplies, skills, and knowledge to take care of yourself and your loved ones, but if you lack the health and fitness to actually be able to take action, none of the rest of that matters much. You don’t need to be in peak physical condition (although it certainly doesn’t hurt!), but the healthier you are, both physically and mentally, the better off you’ll be and the more empowered you are to take care of yourself and others.
With rising healthcare costs and medical shortages—not to mention the simple fact that improving your health also helps to improve your quality of life—prioritizing your health naturally is always a smart move.
Here are some simple steps and small changes you can make to improve your health:
Eat an organic, whole-food diet
Minimize processed foods and prioritize homegrown, locally sourced options whenever possible. When we eat food in its natural state, unprocessed (or at least, not ultra-processed), our body knows what to do with it and how to process it and use the nutrients.
I abide by the 80/20 rule, where I eat pretty clean and healthy 80% of the time, and allow myself and my kids to eat a little more junk food around 20% of the time, although I still try to make sure the junk food is as high quality as possible, and avoid food dyes and other harmful additives. If you’re interested, here’s what I look for and avoid at the grocery store.
When it comes to choosing organic, it’s not always possible 100% of the time, but I recommend avoiding glyphosate and other harmful chemicals as much as possible. I typically follow the EWG’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen list when deciding when to choose organic and when conventionally grown foods will suffice.
Incorporate fermented foods
Fermented foods are packed with probiotics that support gut health and boost immunity. There’s a growing body of research connecting the health of our guts and our microbiome with our overall health, including both physical and mental health.
By adding things like fermented vegetables and kombucha into our diets, we give our gut flora and our immune system an added boost. You don’t need expensive probiotic supplements either; you can make your own fermented foods at home with minimal ingredients and for very little cost.
Grow and use herbs as medicine
Many common ailments can be treated with herbal remedies. Learn how to grow your own herbs (for both food and medicine), as well as how to make your own herbal medicine like elderberry syrup, echinacea tincture, and fire cider, and you’ll always have your very own natural home pharmacy whenever you need it.
Switch to natural body and household products
Reduce exposure to toxins by making your own cleaning products and personal care products. I clean my entire house with homemade vinegar-based cleaner, baking soda, essential oils, and a few other all-natural products I can count on one hand. You don’t need to buy all of the fancy cleaners—natural or not—in order to keep a clean home.
You can easily keep toxic VOCs and chemicals out of your home and create a clean and healthy environment for you and your family by switching to natural alternatives and learning to make your own.
Step 3: Take Control of Your Finances
Financial independence is a crucial part of self-sufficiency, especially in times of economic uncertainty. Inflation, interest rate hikes, and unstable markets can quickly erode savings and purchasing power. But there are lots of things you can do to protect yourself and create financial security, such as:
Learn to budget
This seems like a no-brainer, because it’s always the first thing you hear when it comes to taking control of your finances. But how many of us actually follow this advice?
If you don’t work off a budget already, or at the very least track your money, and where it’s coming from and going to, this is the first basic step toward greater financial self-sufficiency. I recommend sitting down with your last monthly statement and going through it (with your partner, if you have one), and taking a good look at what you have, what you owe, and where your money is going each month. Then, make a plan for the next month and tell your money where to go. Once you get one month under your belt, the next month will get easier, and so on.
Create multiple streams of income
Diversify your earnings to avoid relying on only one source of income. If you’re reliant on income from a single source (like one partner’s paycheck, or a pension), start exploring other ways to earn extra income on the side. This could be anything from starting a business or a side hustle, to another partner taking on some paid work, renting out space you’re not using, creating online content and monetizing it, selling some of your homegrown/handmade products, offering services to your neighbours and local community, or a myriad of other things you could do to earn extra money.
This is also where having a variety of different skills can come in handy, so you can offer your services of products you make and create in exchange for additional income.
Invest in tangible assets
Silver, gold, land, and infrastructure will hold value over time. Paper money unfortunately does not, as we’ve seen with inflation in recent years. Likewise, while the stock market or cryptocurrencies have made people big rich and fast, they’ve also caused more people to lose everything, and while I am not a financial advisor, I am personally a little weary about investing money into intangible things at this current time.
I want things I can touch and hold in my hand; things that provide real value, protect my investment, and even provide bartering power if needed. This includes things like food and basic necessities, especially if they have a long shelf life. I also consider things like my pressure canner, freeze dryer, and even my soil and seed collection to be good tangible investments because I can use them to grow and preserve food year after year, which provides security and sustainability that does not need to be outsourced.
Invest in skills
Investing in skills is most important, because while you may not always have access to “stuff,” having a variety of helpful skills under your belt is something that can’t be taken away. Even if the worst happened and you lost everything, knowing how to “grow stuff, build stuff, and fix stuff” (in the words of Joel Salatin), will go a long way to helping you take care of yourself, and also equips you with barter-able skills you can exchange for money or essential goods and services if needed.
Practice home economics
“Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without” is a good motto to live by. How can you stretch a dollar by making the most of what you already have?
Learn how to cook, preserve, mend, and be a good steward of your resources, and you’ll naturally save more money. As the saying goes, “a penny saved is a penny earned!”
Avoid debt
Financial freedom means not being tied down by loans and high-interest payments. While some debt is all but unavoidable in modern society, it’s a good idea to pay off any existing debts (especially credit cards and consumer debt), and live within your means in an effort to avoid future debt.
My husband and I followed the Dave Ramsey method when we were first working on getting out of debt, which I highly recommend. His book, The Total Money Makeover, was a game-changer for us, as it has been for so many others. Nowadays we put most of our expenses on a joint credit card that we pay off in full each month, so we never owe interest, but we enjoy getting cash back at the end of the year. This is a great approach if you’re disciplined about your spending, but using cash (as in the Dave Ramsey method) is a good way to stay on budget if you find swiping your credit card too tempting.
Step 4: Prepare Your Home
Stocking up on essential supplies ensures your family can weather any situation, from natural disasters to economic crises. While all of the things listed in this blog post will also help you to become more prepared for an emergency, there are some specific things you should make sure you stock up on or have in place at home, just in case. Here are some things to consider:
Learn the six areas of preparedness (and stock emergency supplies)
Food, water, shelter, security, sanitation, and first aid are the main things you need to consider when it comes to being prepared. I recommend keeping enough food and water on hand for at least one week—longer is better.
Likewise, make sure you have a way to keep warm and clean if the power goes out, respond to basic first aid issues if you can’t get to a doctor or hospital right away, and secure your home from intruders.
Learn more about the six areas of emergency preparedness here.
Keep a physical library of books and information
We’ve all become accustomed to “Googling” whatever we want to know, but if the power ever does go out, or even if the internet just goes down, you’ll want to have important information on hand in printed form. Here’s a list of the books I keep in my own preparedness library, and that I recommend you do too!
Create a bug-out bag and evacuation plan
While we would all rather stay in our homes, certain emergencies might mean that we need to evacuate. Natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes have the potential to force us from our homes. Be prepared to leave quickly if necessary by having a bug out bag packed with all the essentials. Here’s what I keep packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Step 5: Broaden Your Skills
The more skills you have, the more you’re able to provide for your own needs, and the less dependent you are on others. Learning practical, hands-on skills increases your resilience and adaptability. Consider adding the following new skills to your repertoire, or expanding on the skills you already have:
Become your own handyman
Learning how to build things, fix things, and do your own basic home repairs yourself will save you money and increase your independence. From simple things like how to locate your main electric panel and water shut-off to how to fix a doorknob, repair a leaky roof, or build a chicken coop, the more you can do on your own, the less reliant you’ll be on the outside world, and on having to “call a guy” (who may or may not show up and finish the work properly in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable amount of money).
Here’s a list of essential tools to keep on hand to help with any job.
Bake sourdough bread, preserve food, and cook from scratch
Knowing how to prepare your own food from scratch is a quintessential homesteading skill. If you rely on Door Dash and microwave dinners, it’s time to change that now. Anybody with a kitchen can prepare at least some of their own food from scratch even if you can’t grow a ton of it yet.
Learn survival basics
Fire-starting, changing a tire, and CPR could be lifesaving. Invest time and money (in the case of a CPR/First Aid class) and learn as many of these essential skills as possible.
Become a Jack of All Trades
The more you know, the more control you have over your life. From growing and preparing food to building and fixing things to making your own soap—and maybe even your own clothes!—the more you know how to do, and the more practice you have at actually doing it, the better position you’ll be in to handle whatever life throws at you.
Step 6: Build Community
Self-sufficiency doesn’t mean going it alone. In fact, one of the most powerful things you can do is build strong relationships with others. No one is an island, and a strong support network can provide knowledge, resources, and encouragement. Here are some practical solutions and easy ways to build community, both close to home and with likeminded people from all over the place:
Get to know your neighbours
Your neighbours are literally the closest to you in physical proximity, and in the case of an emergency, they will likely be the ones you will rely on and share information and essential items, etc. with first. So many people don’t even know their neighbours nowadays.
Take the time to introduce yourself if you haven’t yet, establish relationships with those who live closest to you, and maybe even start gifting your neighbours some veggies from your garden, or a loaf of sourdough bread, etc. If possible, do a little bartering and trading even. The more those relationships are established and those systems are already set in place, the easier it is if and when you need to rely on one another.
Build relationships with local farmers and food producers
I’ve been standing on my soapbox for years talking about the importance of supporting small farms and local food producers in good times and bad. While it can be tempting to shop at Walmart, Costco, and Amazon in order to save money, if we don’t support small local farms, they won’t be there when we really need them.
Establishing a positive relationship with your local farmers also means they’re more likely to help you out in a time of need. Not to mention, you’ll be supporting your local economy and helping to secure local food security and keep your fellow community members in business.
Join community organizations and groups
Find and join local groups or classes where you can connect with supportive, likeminded people in your area. Maybe this is a church group or a class at your local community center, or a local volunteer group (I love connecting with out local gleaning organization in the summer months, as I connect with amazing people, contribute to my community’s food security, and take home free food!). The more local connections you can make, and the stronger the relationships you build, the better.
Invest in relationships with family and friends
Whether your family and friends live close by or far away, it’s important to invest in your relationships. We have been so systematically divided over the past few years, and that has made us all worse off. United we stand, divided we fall.
Even if your family members hold different political beliefs or whatever else has pitted us against one another these past few years, do your best to look past that and rise above the pettiness and realize that we are stronger together, and that by maintaining strong bonds with our closest kin, we support our own physical and emotional needs and form a stronger alliance against the all powerful elites who only benefit from keeping us divided.
Engage with online mentors and communities
Digital connections can provide invaluable advice and encouragement. So many homesteaders and folks on this self-sufficiency journey struggle to find people in their real lives who understand and support what they’re doing. It can feel lonely and isolating at times, and connecting with others online who are on a similar path, and who support you on your own journey can be incredibly encouraging.
The Time to Act Is Now
With inflation, global instability, and supply chain uncertainties, self-sufficiency is no longer just a nice hobby—it’s a necessity that everyone should be thinking more about and working toward in whatever capacity they can.
You don’t have to do it all at once, but start today. There are so many different things you can do to become more self-sufficient (as outlined above). The more you do now, the more secure and prepared you’ll be for whatever comes next.
These six steps are just the beginning. Building a self-sufficient lifestyle isn’t about making one big change—it’s about taking consistent, intentional steps toward greater independence. But you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’re just starting out and are looking to increase your self-sufficiency, whether you live on multiple acres in the country or an apartment in the city, I’ve put together a free resource that will help you to homestead wherever you are. Click here to download the free guide and start living a more self-sufficient life!
0 Comments