Often we are able to put a meal before our guests that is entirely off our own property. They marvel at the succulent full flavoured meat, the amazing veggies and fruit fresh from the garden. Very often they will assist in picking and preparing the veggies straight out of the garden. They often say that this is the life that they want to have, or dream of having. I can however, honestly say that not one of them has yet made the jump from perceived urban security to a rural, grow-your-own lifestyle.

Why not? I think most of them are just too scared. They see what we are doing, and how we are living, but don’t know how to get there. Also they are often in a rut, too used to life in the city and only dream of what they would like to achieve.

Self- sufficiency is a very broad concept and I don’t think that any one person can have a definitive answer as to what it comprises. Some will see it as being able to grow some or all of what you eat on your own ‘patch of heaven’, others will want to include power and maybe fuel requirements, still others will see it as all of the above plus income generation.

My family’s definition of self sufficiency has changed a number of times over the last few years, due to many internal and external factors, as well as our own personal belief system.

What a lot of people don’t realise is the sheer amount of physical effort and planning that goes into our daily life. Without trying to scare you off, there are a lot of things that need to happen to get to a point of self-sufficiency. Not least is the need to feed self and family. With our government’s stance on land redistribution, which often results in productive commercial farms being destroyed, food is going to become more and more expensive. For many years South Africa was a net exporter of food, but last year saw a dramatic reversal of that situation. What better way to get around the hike in food prices than growing your own? It’s not the State’s responsibility to provide for your family, it’s yours and yours alone.

Working smart

My family’s journey to self-sufficiency has taught me that it is extremely important to work smart if you would like to eat the fruits of your labour. Now, before we undertake any new venture, we first research the pros and cons of each decision and based on our needs make what we hope is the best, most informed decision. Normally our decisions are based on cost and labour versus the return we expect. If a venture has a high cost, requires a lot a labour and will likely have a low return, it gets shelved and something else is done in its place. However, on the flipside, there are instances where low cost, low labour and high returns can also be a problem.

One of our first bad decisions was to plant a massive vegetable garden. Living on a plot and not having a veggie garden is like having a yacht and not sailing, it just goes with the territory. We planted almost every type of vegetable seed that our local hardware stocked, and then some.

Three months later we quickly learnt that we needed to process or give away a lot of vegetables very quickly. That year a lot of it went to waste. To our dismay, after the growing season we didn’t have a lot left over for winter. We literally had a few jars of pickled onions, some beetroot and a few bags of carrots in the freezer. So much for self-sustainability!

We have now learnt to stagger our planting and thereby stagger our harvests. In addition we have learnt many new canning, freezing and drying techniques which allow us to capitalise on the time invested in summer for use in winter when we can’t grow many fruits and veggies. My wife in particular loves the idea of not having to dig vegetables out of the garden and then wash and prepare them for every meal, as they are already in the house waiting for her to pull them out of the freezer or drawer.

Start with a veggie garden

The best place to start your journey to self-sufficiency is with a veggie garden, for which you don’t need a large piece of land. I know of people that have ripped up their entire lawn to produce food for their family. My advice to new veggie gardeners is simple: start small with a few easy-to-grow crops and expand every year. Nobody will be able to become 100% self-sufficient in a year. It takes years of practice and lots of trial and error.

When we planted our first veggie garden (in suburbia), I can remember harvesting a few tomatoes, some carrots and radishes and TONS of cucumber. It was not a well-balanced veggie patch and everyone that came to visit was given a bag of cucumbers. People soon stopped visiting… however the point is this: you need to grow into your vegetable garden, trying to go the whole hog at once will only set you up for disappointment and disillusionment.

Now that we live out on a plot, things have changed slightly. After 6 years of plot life we have slowly increased our level of self-sufficiency every year, to a point where we are now able to go months at a time where a good 90% of our food come from our own property.

Plan first

When looking at starting your veggie garden, plan first. What do you enjoy eating? Are you able to freeze or can/bottle your produce? Do you have suitable storage space for root and pumpkin harvests? It’s of no use growing tons of a particular type of veggie if only one member of the family enjoys eating it. Can a vegetable be incorporated into another ‘product’? Freezing whole tomatoes is possible if you are going to cook with them, but more efficient space utilization is possible if you turn them into a chutney or sauce that can be used in a variety of meals. Rather use the space to grow a crop of storable veggies or one that is loved by all.

Our family eats a lot of pasta and tomato-based meals, so one way that we get around the problem of buying tomatoes in winter is to freeze a lot of basic tomato and onion base in summer. We have actually been doing this for the past few weeks and have amassed enough sauce to keep us going till early December!

In tangible terms, it means that we will not need to buy those insipid, flavourless, washed out pale pink things that are offered in place of tomatoes at ridiculous prices in winter. All my wife needs to do is open the freezer and pull out a bag of our own organic tomato sauce to use as the starter for a hearty stew or pasta dish.

With the exception of brinjals, our entire family eats every vegetable we grow in our gardens, with sweet corn and mielies a firm favourite. This year we have only managed 10kg of loose frozen sweet corn, and are still waiting to harvest a trial of traditional open pollinated Lesotho mielies. This will provide the seed stock for a two-acre planting next summer and a few this year for fresh consumption. The two-acre planting will mainly be used as animal feed as well as providing our family with organically grown mielie pap to go with our tomato sauce. We also grow a lot of pumpkin, six or seven different types, from the little Gems all the way through to Mammoth Golds that top about 30kg each. Some are good for storage and others for processing. Each has its own place in my family’s diet and each is treasured for its different flavour and texture.

One point to remember with growing pumpkins is that they need space. If grown too close to each other they will reduce their fruit set. If you want to keep seed for the following year, learn to hand pollinate pumpkins, and save seed from these hand-pollinated, pure varieties for the following year.

Three vegetable gardens

We have three vegetable gardens as well as permanent plantings of asparagus and berries. Why three gardens you might ask? Mainly it’s for labour reasons, as well as being able to ‘fine-tune’ the different gardens with manure and compost. We have one specifically for pumpkins and sweet corn, a second close to the house for common items like tomatoes, lettuce, salad greens and green beans, with a few herb plants in between and then we have a large garden further away that produces the larger harvests like dry beans, beans for freezing, processing tomatoes, corn, potatoes, millet, beetroot, carrots, peanuts, bambarra nuts, onions, peas, peppers, melons etc.

There is a fast-growing interest in heirloom and open pollinated vegetable varieties which taste great and have the unique characteristic of allowing the grower to save seed from year to year. The problem that we have in South Africa, is that we cannot easily and legally import heirloom vegetable seed into our country. (Unless you are prepared to jump through some regulatory hoops). It has taken me about five years to build up a modest collection of heirloom and open-pollinated vegetables, most of them from trading with older, more knowledgeable gardeners who have been saving their own seed from year to year.

We plant heirloom and open-pollinated varieties wherever possible, mainly because we enjoy the romance behind growing and eating a variety that has been lost to most of the world, as well as the ability to save our own seed for the following year. However, where we need fast and large production we will consider certain hybrid varieties to fill this need.

Typically, I used to spend hundreds of rands every year on seed, and very often I had to buy more than one packet of some seed just to satisfy our families requirements. Now we have learned to save seed, we eat what we sow and sow what we eat.

Self-sufficiency is an individual ideal, the worst thing that can happen is someone becoming prescriptive and telling you how you need to do it. Start small and if you enjoy the fruits of your labour then by all means expand, who knows where you will go and what you will do on your journey. Life is for living and living is for the love of it, so do it with all your heart.

Being dependent on rainwater has meant that our awareness and appreciation for water has deepened on a daily basis, magnified by the fact that we are in a deep water crisis. So we decided to first excavate a dam and erect a carport with a large roof catchment area and some water tanks.

Next came the power issue. In order to get Eskom electricity to the farm, we would have to pay for a transformer and all the pipes and earth moving to bring it from a distant neighbour (not to mention the monthly bills and reliability of supply). So we decided to opt for solar power – at about 40% more than the Eskom outlay. Since we had experience of living in a solar-powered home for the last 18 months, we’ve already scaled our power consumption down to a bare minimum. (Although I did once miss my tumble drier so much that I almost cried, I can honestly say that ironing is the biggest waste of time and energy ever invented!)

Our recently installed solar system comprises 8 solar panels and 12 deep cycle batteries with an inverter & regulator and this will power our home, photographic studio and office (we’ll have to see what happens on consecutive rainy days!)

We had initially planned on building our little “eco”-house from hemp after learning about the incredible properties (strong, light, insect resistant, good insulator and quick to grow). Obtaining seed proved fruitless at the time due to legal and political issues, and so we started looking into cob, straw bale, sandbags and finally settled on rammed earth (we could use clay from our dam excavation and had an architect who had built this way before).

Rammed earth walls involve pounding thin layers of clay (to which a small amount of cement has been added) into a form work. Walls are very strong, have excellent thermal mass qualities (which help to keep temperatures comfortable), harden almost immediately and have a beautiful smooth finish which requires no painting or maintenance. This we would combine with timber frame construction using local, sustainable timber. Just when our plans were ready to be submitted to council, the credit crunch hit and the bank revoked our finance!

With no financial source to build with, I started contemplating building with tyres (rammed with soil), discarded shipping containers and recycled materials. We managed to regain our flexi-bond, but the container idea has stuck, and so we started our “eco”-house with a single container: internally clad with 3 layers of insulation and dry walling and with a magnificent roof deck ideal for star-gazing. The doors and windows are all reclaimed or recycled and hunting them down has been a real adventure!

The septic tank at our rented house “exploded” once again – leaving us with no toilet over the Christmas season. This has made me seriously reconsider building anything resembling a septic tank. Flushing precious water down the toilet at a time of severe drought also seems like a terrible waste and the commercial dry toilets looked pretty grim at first glance (though many of my views are changing rapidly!).

A biogas digester seems like such an elegant solution – using black water from the toilet, composting materials and cow dung to generate gas for cooking and refrigeration. My investigations have led me to discover many riddles in the biogas digester mystery, however.

Though many companies advertise the availability of biogas digesters, my enquiries have been unsuccessful. The units imported from India seem to cause problems with cracking (!) and the local ones will only be available in a few months.

Whether we will be able to generate enough waste to actually generate a useful amount of gas is also open for debate and then there is the issue of appliances having to be fitted with special methane nozzles which makes it impractical to switch to LP gas when our supply runs low or is unpredictable. The investigation continues…

After months of bureaucratic dealings to get our house plans approved, we got news that our office rental contract would not be renewed and so our plans changed yet again. Rather than a house, we now had to erect an office within 2 months over the December holidays!

With no time for ramming walls, we quickly bought another container and started a small timber structure with a one-man-show builder. When he needed some extra hands to help him lift the wall panels, we decided to have a “wall-raising” party and invited some friends to an Amish-type gathering of neighbourly love.

What a privilege to have our walls imbued with good intentions! We should be moving into the office in a few weeks and then we will finally be on the land.

Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed living off the grid. I had to stop to think about that for a while. I can now answer that it’s hard and relentless at times, but very rewarding at the end of the day. Could the same not be said about life? I do miss my hot baths sometimes, though!

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Khula Dhamma Community

Location? What made you choose the location?

Eastern Cape, between East London and the Kei river, 8km inland. When the land chose us we didn’t fully appreciate how ideal the climate is for growing a wide variety of food all year-round. We can also harvest an abundance of sun & wind energy. We are close enough to the sea for frequent beach trips, but far enough not to be too threatened by rising sea-levels (but who really knows what will happen!) When was the community formed? 2003 with three adults.

How many members?
Do you have any particular beliefs in common?

We are now five adult members and three little ones (and one on the way). We also have four adults and two children who are long-term visitors (with possible interest to join). Our community was founded with strong roots in Vipassana meditation.

While many of us have since come to embrace other teachings and personal explorations, we adhere that the practice of mindfulness or “presence” is core to our ongoing harmony. Living in community is in and of itself a powerful spiritual practice if it is approached as such. Open and ongoing talking circles are an essential tool to stay connected and attuned.

What were the “founding principles”, the purpose in forming the community? The founding principles were to live in a place that is far from pollution and the frenetic city-life. To create a place where we could live peacefully and grow spiritually through meditation and communal living. Understanding that our food quality has become severely compromised and adulterated for the sake of quantity, we realised that true health can only come from growing our own food.

Last, and most importantly, we wanted to create a natural, magical, supportive and stimulating environment for children to grow up in. We feel that what has been socially accepted as the “normal” way of raising and educating children lies at the heart of humanity’s troubles.

Is your community self-sufficient?
Do any members work in “normal” jobs outside the community to support it?

Financially our community is not self-sufficient. All members are either working in nearby villages or living off savings. Our project of building an Ecovillage Training Centre (Home Of Providence & Ecoliving- HOPE) will, among many other things, create a variety of livelihood opportunities for resident members. Other livelihoods that are currently developing are: honey and propolis production, a tree nursery and heirloom vegetable seed production.

In which ways is your community self-sufficient?
In which ways is it not?

There is still much room for growth around self-sufficiency. Our aim is to become completely self-sufficient apart from, perhaps, producing all our own clothing. We are already self-sufficient in terms of our water and energy requirements.

We currently grow 90% of the vegetables and about 10% of the fruits we eat. This spring we will be planting many fruit trees. One Elder couple will be establishing a “mini-farm” which will contribute enormously to our food supply, especially in terms of the community’s grain and pulse requirements.

What were the greatest challenges in forming/creating your community?

It was quite a challenge to be so few members for so long. But life here has always been full of learning and fulfillment.

What are the greatest ongoing challenges to keeping your community going?

Our current challenge is to manage our rapid growth. Where personal dynamics seem to be the biggest challenge for most communities we feel fortunate that our spiritual practice and commitment to honest communication have really helped us to remain free from any conflict worth mentioning.

Are there any things you would have done differently, looking back?

The garden. It teaches us so much. It was interesting that after about three years of living here we came across a very informative book (Creating A Life Together, by Diana Leafe Christian) on starting a community or an ecovillage. It was nice to read that so much of what was mentioned and advised affirmed what we were already intuitively practicing.

Could you share any information about what your community hopes to achieve?

Buckminster Fuller said “You never change anything by fighting the existing. To change something, build a new model and make the existing obsolete.” We are becoming a living solution to the severely imbalanced and disconnected way of life that has grown out of the “developing” world. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the global political-social-economic structure is verging on collapse. To not take radical measures to prepare for this is to deny it.

Ultimately, though, we feel that while it’s important and fun to explore practical solutions towards living in harmony with Nature, this cosmic crescendo that is upon us is all about launching humanity into a radical transformation of consciousness.

The type of ecovillage or eco-community we are creating is a space that explores and facilitates all aspects of that shift.

Are you accepting new members?
Requirements for eligibility?

To insure mutual compatibility we choose to go with a 6-12 month “integration period” for us to get to know each other. Entering into community is essentially akin to entering into marriage. The people joining will help raise our children and shape our common dream.

We hope to attract people of all races and ages who are skilled, hard-working, enthusiastic, committed and always open to growing, learning, sharing and evolving. Like I mentioned before, managing our growth is currently our biggest challenge. For now, we seem to be managing fine, however, I think we’re now at a point where we need to settle and give time and energy to getting to know the people who have taken the brave leap to join us.

Do you welcome/allow interested visitors?
Do you offer any courses?

We still allow people who are genuinely interested in joining or forming their own community to come for a short visit (3-7 days) so we can meet and they can get a feel for the place and people. Those interested in visiting can browse our website for more information or send us a letter. Currently we are not yet offering any courses, but this will change as we start building our Learning Centre.

What are the best ways to contact you?

The best way to contact is via email: info@khuladhamma.org or write to Khula Dhamma Community, PO Box 1 Haga Haga 5272

Is there anything you would like to share with our readers?
Any tips for creating an intentional community?

Firstly, I would like to say that the answers I have provided are my own. While they attempt to reflect the common ideas of the community, there may be different views held by some individuals. In terms of advice on forming/founding an intentional community I would recommend to start off with a small core group of friends who know each other well and share a common dream. Then spend ample time developing your vision and methodology together. Have lots of talking circles. If you keep working on your communication and on your individual spiritual growth then the most important work of forming a community will be well underway.

Other than that, you can contact and visit existing communities and read everything you can find about starting an intentional community.

AumFarm Eco-Community

Location?
What made you choose the location?

Waterberg, Limpopo. The area was chosen for its remoteness, distance from major cities and general inhabitant profile.

When was the community formed?

October, 2004

How many members?
Do you have any particular beliefs in common?

Currently three men, two women and one young adult (male, 16) – no particular philosophy/spiritual belief system. We are open minded and respect most views. Some community members follow the Shaumbra Way and others are students of Rudolf Steiner’s and Bio-Dynamics.

What were the “founding principles”, the purpose in forming the community?

Self -sufficiency and preparation for when cities and urban groupings are no longer viable entities. With the way things are going in the world with runaway prices, cost of fuel and housing, the founder members wished to start a community where costs, workload and the joy of living could be shared, long term, among people with a similar desire.

Is your community self-sufficient?
Do any members work in “normal” jobs outside the community to support it?

No, not totally but we are constantly working towards it. At the moment, one couple works off site during the week to fund the general infrastructure and development projects. Also working on investments that will keep the community viable going forward (The goal is that in two years’ time all the current members will be full-time residents)

In which ways is your community self-sufficient?
In which ways is it not?

All veggies, eggs and chicken are currently grown on the farm. Many different varieties of fruit are coming into their own as well. Moving forward, we wish to start putting up produce in the growing season so that there is plenty available in the low production winter months. We are busy putting in a root cellar to store the canned and bottled produce without the need for electricity.

We are busy completing a RAM pump setup to get water from the stream to the storage tanks for when Escom lets us down. We have started putting in solar power in all buildings.

What were the greatest challenges in forming/creating your community?

To find like-minded people of independent means that are able to let go of the consumer based living rules that we are brought up with. To get people to drop the belief that existence is their only lot in life.

What are the greatest ongoing challenges to keeping your community going?

People that are prepared to enter into an eco-community type living arrangement are not your normal, run-of-the-mill folk. Keeping everyone focused on the group as a whole and to prevent them from becoming totally self-serving within the eco-community can be a challenge. It is vital that folk plan for their future so that they do not become a drain on other members’ resources, this could be another challenge as the community matures.

Are there any things you would have done differently, looking back?

Yes. We would have stuck to the basics… we adapted as we went along and it would have become a millstone around our neck if we had not woken up to the fact and started changing things back to how we had originally planned.

Small steps need to be taken, it can not happen overnight. You can not be all things to all people, members must be able to support themselves in the long run to ensure survival of the community as a whole.

Could you share any information about what your community hopes to achieve?

Our main goal is to become totally self-reliant, to live outside of the system (as much as it is possible), to encourage a barter economy in our chosen area. To achieve real community, a coming together of souls that are in it for the betterment of the community as a whole and not just for individual satisfaction or survival.

Are you accepting new members?
Requirements for eligibility?

Yes. There is a documented joining process that is followed. People that have a desire to live in harmony with others, to live simply and elegantly with a minimum ecological footprint are invited to make enquiries.

Do you welcome/allow interested visitors?
Do you offer any courses?

Visitors are welcome as long as it is their desire to eventually join a community. Due to the fact that we do not generally charge for visits we do an exchange of e-mails sharing intent, dreams and long term goals prior to an invitation to visit being extended.

We do not wish to become a cheap, once-off weekend getaway. We do not run courses at present but there are plans for the future to offer hands-on training in permaculture and bio-dynamics .

What are the best ways to contact you?

E-mail with an introduction and sharing of future plans is probably the best way to kick-off a visit/joining process. Our e-mail address is 105aumfarm@mweb.co.za. Our website is currently under construction and should be up and running soon. (Editor’s note: their website is now up and running: http://khuladhamma.org/ )

Is there anything you would like to share with our readers?
Any tips for creating an intentional community?

The best advice I can give is to start small, too many people and too many grand ideas during the initial start up phase can lead to dissent and an early dissolution. It is much easier and probably better in the long run to start with a core group of dedicated and resilient people and at least get off the ground. Set your guidelines, decide how to proceed, decide how big you wish to become… pick your game plan and then STICK TO IT regardless of how tempting it is to take shortcuts and sometimes make concessions to keep members there. It will probably lead to resentment later as things get taken for granted.

Do research on the internet on communities, communes, co-housing, eco-villages and the other types of groupings. See what the successful ones have done; see what they are doing to keep together. You will be surprised by how many actually don’t make it to full community status. Forming and remaining a community is a lot of work, sometimes sacrifice and always a healthy sense of humour are required.

Always remember that people have their own truths to discover and whether you like it or not you will have people coming and going as they walk their path through life. We are registered WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms www.wwoof.org) hosts and this is a great way of getting the hang of interacting with a whole range of different people and cultures.

With nothing but a very dilapidated old structure, no electricity or municipal services, this promised to be the perfect canvas to create an off-the-grid eco-house and live a more sustainable life…
Choosing between such a dream and the prospect of raising 2 small children in Jo’burg, was really very easy, so we sold our house and started packing.

We managed to rent a small, solar-powered, old farmhouse down the road, which meant that we had to bid a sad farewell to many of life’s “necessities”: toaster, heater, hairdryer, iron, microwave, dstv. Being dependent on rainwater tanks also meant that the dishwasher and washing machine had to stay behind. By learning and exploring a new way of life, we’ve learnt that there is immense expansion in contraction and that we don’t need nearly as much as we think we do.

Country living has been quite an adjustment and we got so much more than what we bargained for! John Seymour’s Ultimate Guide to Self-Sufficiency (which has been adopted as our new bible) did not prepare us for the baboons, for example. Getting to know them has been truly insightful. They have ripped the roof of our tool shed and destroyed our wheatgrass crop twice, which has led us to investigate all sort of options of protecting our vegetable garden. We’re currently planning to build a geodesic growing dome (and we’ll probably have to erect an electric fence as well).

The floods came and changed our septic tank into a septic terror…even our house guests had to get involved in the digging! I have made close contact with dry and composting toilets and an area of interest has opened up where I previously didn’t give the flushing the toilet much thought.

We intend using a biogas digester in our new home which will take care of the “waste” as well as providing us with gas for cooking and refrigeration (the downside being that the methane gas produced apparently smells like a fart!). A matter which warrants further exploration…

We’ve almost run out of water and been without electricity a few times (but not nearly as much as we would have been if we stayed in Sandton!). The awareness of conserving water has probably been our biggest eye-opener. Water truly is the source of life and something that should be regarded with reverence and gratitude. We all dance around in delight when it rains and my ancestral Voortrekker blood gets re-awakened in the form of baking pancakes for the family as soon as the rain meter exceeds 20 mm. Having such a close connection between rain and bathwater; sunlight and using the power drill, has definitely increased our awareness of the interconnectedness of all things.

Rubbish management has also taken on higher importance. We have bins for horses, compost, worms, recycling, re-using and removal. The science of worms has truly taken my fancy and we currently have 2 wormeries under experimentation. I have even managed to convince my father to keep worms!

It has taken me about six months to recover from what some call “urban shock syndrome”. The silence out here in the country is overwhelming – you can hear yourself think! There is no electricity or traffic to cause a constant hum and no media polluting our minds by trying to tell us what to think/be/buy.Without the distractions of city life one’s inner landscape takes on a life all of its own.

Living this close to nature has brought a profound sense of peace, joy and freedom (and feeling completely insignificant – which keeps us in our place!) We begin construction on our little “eco”-house soon and so the blessed journey continues…