As one tiny person on a very large planet, it can feel like our efforts to save the world won’t make any difference whatsoever. But if we all try to keep a better mindset about things like the environment and each do our small bit, the combined effort adds up tremendously. If you want to do your bit, being more self-sufficient is a great way to go about it. When you produce your own food and power off grid, you reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to supply these things. Being totally self-sufficient might not be possible, but anything you can do will have an impact. Here are a few ways you can go about it.
Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables
These days you can get hold of just about any ingredient you want. And as convenient as that is for us as a consumer, it’s terrible for the environment. To ensure that different varieties of fruits and vegetables are available all year round, our food does thousands of miles across the globe. Air miles equates to fuel, fossil fuels to be precise which we all know the impact of. Create a vegetable patch in your garden, BHG.com has advice on how to do this, or hire an allotment patch. Focus on growing produce which does well in the climate you live in. To extend the growing season you could invest in a greenhouse, this will give you more produce over the year and allow you to keep the temperature consistent. To make the fruits of your labor last longer, you could preserve anything surplus. Jams, jellies, chutneys, and pickles all work well. You could start canning or add to flavor vinegar. You could chop and freeze ingredients, or bake them into foods like pies and the freeze these.
Raise Chickens
We’ve all heard the horror stories when it comes to how chickens are raised. Cruelly held in battery farms in cages too small to move in, to harvest as many eggs as possible for the mass market. You have the option of buying free-range eggs if you care about how ethically the chickens were treated you have the option to buy free range, but better still- why not raise your own? Chickens make great pets, and raising them can be a hobby in itself. TheChickenHub.com has a guide to the best incubators and information on how to get started, so it’s something worth considering if you want to be that bit more self-sufficient. Let’s face it, is there anything better than fresh eggs for breakfast each morning?
Install Solar Panels
Another way you can help the environment, save money and become more self-sufficient is by producing your own power. Solar panels are something any homeowner can get on board with, they pay for themselves in a couple of years and can reduce your bills dramatically. The less power you use from the national grid means fewer fossil fuels are being burned.
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