Andria Perry
Are you one of those people take that blind leap because it looks so easy? A house for shelter, dirt for growing vegetables, a gun to go hunting deer and rabbit, fishing pole in hand for those large mouth bass and do it! Right?
If only it were as simple as that. You have to work hard and you can`t live in the moment, you have to think ahead, for tomorrows food and warmth.
If you do not have any skills to prep the food that you kill or you grow, how will you make it?
A Few Good Questions To Ask Yourself
Sure people can grow food but remember you do not have a deep freezer to just toss those vegetables in and no plastic baggies, you have to know how to home can food.
Hunting? do you know how to clean a deer, or rabbit? What will you do with all that meat, how will you preserve it to last? How to cook it?
Fishing? Do you know how to clean fish? How do you cook fish?
How about heat? do you know how to make a fire in the fire place? Can you cut a tree down and cut it up, chop wood?
Those are questions you should ask yourself before you take that leap. Being self sufficient is a full time job.
Prepare First
Don`t just watch YouTube videos and say ” I can do that” you have to actually do it before hand, sometimes those videos are far from as easy as they make it look. Or their food tastes horrible!
Go and buy your home canning equipment, get used to the process of canning vegetables as well as meats for long time storage.
Learn “how to home can.” and “tomato harvest”
Go hunting. Killing is not an easy thing to do. If most people had to kill their own meat the world would be full of vegans. Even killing and cleaning a chicken you raised is extremely hard.
Learn “How to cut a chicken” and “how to home can meat” and “How to home can Venison (deer)”
Go fishing. Learn how to clean the fish. learn different ways to cook them so you won`t get tired of the same old thing.
Learn “How to clean a large mouth bass” and “boss with lime butter” and “how to clean and cook bream and sunfish”
Think About Life
How will you have light, how will you cook, how will you bathe. There are many things to think about before you take that leap.
Think first and be successful!
By Andria Perry
Photos By Andria Perry
Great post. Many take life too easily. They think everything is very easy but they “break” at the first problem. I don’t fish, but I have a garden.
Solar Power – and batteries for the freezer!
Cleaning a rabbit, yes I have done that. A deer, that i would have no clue how to do.
Fishing – ah now that I love!
The reality of getting off the grid is very hard (as you’ve pointed out well!)
Do you have solar power? I have cleaned a deer and I don`t like it at all. Fishing any day!
i have a solar array on my roof, due to working at home, we added a generator as well. our power is never out.
On the long outages, the neighborhood comes to our house!
A natural gas Generator? I only have a small set up for solar, for my coffee and Tony breathing treatments when the power is out.
yeah we got a Generac system (a good friend of mine is the regional sales manager and got a deal).
The solar array covers the day time, if there is an outage at night, the generator kicks in.
Great advice for everyone to read. Enjoyed this very much. I remember fishing with Dustin, he always cleaned the fish.
I do love to fish, I do not hunt though but I gather and grow vegetables.
Very helpful, informative, and useful advice. Back in Latvia, our biggest harvests were tomatoes and apples since we had four apple trees. The tomatoes never lasted since we ate them every day. The apples, however, were steamed for juice and the juice was bottled for drinking and put in large flasks for apple wine and occasionally we had jars of apple sauce.
When I get a lot of apples I make apple butter and give as gifts.