You put in the words "self sufficient." I don't believe most of the people here who have answered your question really have any idea what that entails....because I actually LIVE the life you are talking about (minus the mystery income).
I'm married. My husband works on the commercial windturbines. I'm the stay home wife, who cares for home, hearth, and farm.
Yes, we VASTLY prefer to be self sufficient. It is a goal we keep working toward every single year. And every year we are a bit more self sufficient.
We live on a permaculture farm. We raise meat goats, and meat rabbits. I also have 9 horses.
We raise alfalfa for the critters, as well as rapeseed (canola). The rapeseed is made into biofuel to run our trucks and tractors. The squeezings from the rapeseed are fed to the goats (good for them).
When I say I cook from scratch, I'm VERY serrious. Right down to butchering our own animals for dinner, and grinding the wheat to make flour for our bread.
We grow a lot of our own food in our garden and with our fruit trees, berry bushes, and herb garden.
If you are being truely self sufficient your live revolves around food. Planting, growing, harvesting, and then perserving your food. I can, pickle, dehydrate, and freeze our food.
Our pantry is huge. We have over a years supply of food. Being self sufficient is serrious WORK. There are some months that are very quiet on the farm...like right now. It's snowing, and negative 10 degrees (F) outside. Of course I'll still be going outside many times today, and all night (about every four hours round the clock) since I have does kidding. In this freezing weather it's easy for babies to freeze to death fast.
Making your own quilts takes time. Shearing your angora goat by hand, cleaning and spinning the fiber into yarn, and knitting hats, scarves and other items all takes time and skill.
By the way, eventually we will not have much in the way of bills. If you have bills, you are not self sufficient. So we plan to pay off our mortgage years early, and then buy more property. We will build a straw bale house, from straw we have harvested, and baled ourselves. The house will be totally off grid, with solar, wind, and a Central Boiler for power/heat. This also goes for the shops, and barns (straw bale, and off grid).
The only bills we eventually intend to have are taxes (unescapable), cell phones, and internet. Cell phones and internet are both luxury items. We can do without them, we just happen to like the convience.
Having a power, water, sewer, electric, gas, or whatever bill, means you are not truelly self sufficient. You are dependant on others to provide your water, heat, power for your house. You cannot survive long term without those things. If you have those bills, you are not sel sufficient. Internet and cell phones, you can survive perfectly well without. Notice I didn't mention TV? We turned ours off months ago, when we realized we wer paying a silly bill for something we didn't watch.
Eventually my husband will no longer be employed outside the farm. He too will work only from home/farm. Right now we need that income. As long as we are not able to provide for both of us to be able to work dirrectly from home/farm we are not self sufficient. Our goal of course is for both of us to be working full time from home/farm, and providing us with enough income for itmes we must buy (toilet paper, salt/minerals for the livestock, tires for trucks/tractors, new shoes/boots for us, ect).
Being self sufficient means working a LOT. Your on call 24/7. Vacations do not happen. Yet it also means you are fairly free to say to yourself, "Scrag work, lets go spend the day at Yellowstone," or spend the day reading a book, or have an after lunch fling with your spouse if you want to. : )
Yup, I love the life...wouldn't trade it for anything. It is our dream, and our goal to be as completely self sufficient as possible. It can be a very lonely lifestyle though. Very, very few people share the dream and goal, so there's almost nobody to talk to, or socialize with.
~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years
