Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Self Sufficiency as a Retirement Strategy

Most retirement strategies focus on “wealth creation” or providing you with enough cash to maintain your pre-retirement extravagant lifestyle. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it is worth knowing that there is a better way – doing it yourself – self sufficiently!

Complete self sufficiency is difficult if to impossible to achieve, even if you do have abundant land, and are prepared to work damned hard! But a measure of self sufficiency is open to anyone who is interested and has some resources behind them. How self sufficient you aim for will depend on your means, abilities and the level of comfort/lifestyle you desire. It is my retirement strategy of choice but I have no intention of working my bum off after I retire, but having some fun being able to thumb my nose (to a certain extent) at the system.

If you do choose self sufficiency as your retirement strategy it is as much about reducing your outgo as maximizing your income. Every dollar that you earn, you pay tax on, and the rate varies on the country and your income, but every dollar that you save, you keep 100%. My parents-in-law retired some 15 years ago when interest rates were 18%, but now they are 5% and they are finding that they have much less to live on. By maximizing your self reliance, you are insulating yourself to a greater or lesser extent from the external forces over which you have no control, but can have a dramatic effect on your lifestyle.

There are other benefits from the self sufficient lifestyle –
• Boredom is NOT an issue.
• Improved health due to improved diet (if you grow your own you eat it fresh an know what goes into it!)
• Improved health due to continued exercise – admittedly there will be as much or as little of his as you want, but generally gardening, cooking, power generation, working with animals etc. carried more exercise with it than crashing out in front of the footy on TV.
• Reduced exposure to strikes, terrorist actions, inflation, and big picture nasties like bird flue or peak oil.
• Increased sustainability/ reduced environmental footprint (you are more “green”).

A lot of the stuff involved in Self sufficiency is not for the “Compleat Idiot”, you do need to know stuff. To generate power you need to be able to set up solar panels or a wind generator, manage batteries and regulate your demand so that it dos not outstrip your supply. It requires more knowledge and experience than what is required to plug in to the reticulated electricity supply and turn on a switch, but the rewards are there and not only monetary ones. There is also a considerable degree of satisfaction to be had by being able to provide for yourself at this basic food-and-shelter level. So…………. as with any retirement strategy, the time to start your preparations is now!

When you start looking at being self sufficient you start consideration of the basics like food, water energy and “other fun bits!”. There are plenty of other articles that talk about maximizing your income, so I will focus more on minimising your outgo, but in an article of this size all I can provide is an overview, hopefully motivating you to look further into some of the subjects discussed.

Veggies

This is one of those unavoidable expenses, we all have to eat! But growing your own veggies is not just about saving money……..it is about taste, convenience, nutrients and reducing your environmental footprint. Your veggie garden can be as big or as small as you want, or are able to cope with and two tomato plants in containers on a balcony are better than nothing! 

Backyard veggies garden

There are many ways of growing your own produce and perhaps the simplest is digging up part of your lawn and planting seeds or seedlings. If your soil is not what it could be, you can make raised beds by importing organic materials such as manure, straw, hay, compost etc and or good soil and then digging it into your garden, some edging material to build up the bed and there you have it. Raised beds are a bit easier to wok with and veggies love the rich loose soil, so draining is not a problem.

You may have difficulty with digging or poor soil so another easy way is to plant a no dig garden. This is based on making up a bed with compostables such as Lucerne hay and straw and chook poo (well rotted) and then planting your seeds or seedlings direct into it – as the bed rots down, lots of nutrients are released. My main argument against this is that all of the components have to be bought it, but if your soil is poor etc. it could be worthwhile. 

Veggies in containers

Maybe you don’t have the space for a large veggie patch – so how about containers? They are easy to move around and a surprising number of veggies grow well in containers. A container garden can also be very attractive is you get a bit creative with your containers, drainage is assured and you can take advantage of companion planting. They do need the water keeping up to them on hot days and, again, everything need to be bought in although recycling things into veggie growing containers is good for the environment too!

To get the maximum out of a small space, there is always hydroponics – growing your veggies in a water solution of tailored nutrient. These can be simple or complicated, such as the set ups used to grow certain “recreational” drugs. I have experimented with organic hydroponics but without much success to date, so unless you have better luck than me it means using chemicals. There are books around that tell you how to make up your own formulae, but most people seem to buy them from hydroponic suppliers. For a small area, if you have the interest, hydroponics may work for you.

For my money, whatever way you choose to grow, organic gardening (fertilizer and pesticide free) makes the most sense. Not just because it is the most environmentally friendly and gives you residue free food but because if you are going towards self sufficiency you don’t want to be forced into buying expensive chemicals.

Some other concepts worth reading up on are permaculture, crop rotation, green manure, mulching and composting.

Animals

Animals are a bit more problematic, you need more space and they will need a greater or lesser amount of care. Chickens are probable the ideal livestock for the backyard pastoralist. They are cheap to acquire and feed, comparatively quiet and easy to house and they provide eggs, manure and hours of entertainment. I house mine in a moveable house or “chook tractor” which I then locate over my veggie beds. They clean up bugs and weeds (after the veggie cycle is completed) dig up the beds and manure them in situ. A winner all round but you must make sure they can’t dig there way out and get access to your growing veggies – they are very abrasive and where you have chooks and veggies together you wind up with just chooks!

Chooks in chook tractor

If you don’t have enough room for vertebrates, maybe you could try insects (bees) or mollusks (snails). Of the two, snails are the easiest but you have to be able to consume the end product – escargot – or there is not much point. Bees do require some knowledge and equipment but give you honey, wax, propolis and pollination in return.

You may want to look at keeping rabbits for meat, but around here we even have trouble dispatching a chook when required, so something as small, furry and cute as a rabbit is perfectly safe. Again, if you can’t bring yourself to “harvest” the produce, you have just saddled yourself with an extra pet. I did see one group who located their rabbit pens over a worm farm and got some product out of them that way.

Energy

We all use energy in out lives, to cook our food, power our car and TV, even to purify our water so it is important to have some way of harvest our own energy without relying on the national grid or the oil companies (well, reducing our reliance on them anyway!)

In a suburban setting, the easiest method that is least likely to offend the neighbours is direct use of the suns rays – assuming you location gets enough. The sun can be used directly to cook food, heat water or dry food for preservative purposes or heat rooms. We have a solar oven which was home made and works remarkably well, a solar food drier which is also home made and works well, a commercial solar water heater and I am in the midst of making a reflecting solar cooker so that we can boil, fry and stir fry as well as bake.

Solar panels

Most equipment that makes direct use of the sun can be made fairly cheaply (sometimes even out of discarded cardboard and aluminium foil) by almost anyone with a few tools and who is moderately handy. This keeps the costs down and, depending where you live, it may be the only way of getting hold of some of the gear.

Electricity generation has more options but requires more investment and you need to know more to manage your personal energy supply. The easiest (but not cheapest) option is to buy a stack of solar photovoltaic panels and mount them on the roof or wherever. Then get an inverter (converts 12 volts direct current to 240 or 120 volts alternating current) and plug the panels into an inverter and then have an electrician wire your inverter back into the national grid through a meter that can run both ways. That way the power you produce goes into the grid and then you use the power back from the grid as required. This is good financially and environmentally but if the grid goes down, you’re still stuffed!

Solar oven

To be independent of the grid you need batteries which are heavy, expensive and do eventually require replacement. You also need to know more to operate the system, but you can run on 12 volts as well as the normal AC voltage for where you are and you are independent of the system

You can also buy or make a wind generator – an electricity generator or alternator powered by the wind. Most home made ones are based on a car alternator that is rectified to 12vdc. You can pay thousands of dollars for a commercial wind generator but they tend to be more quiet and unobtrusive and require less maintenance. The problem with wind generators is that they are obvious. They can upset the neighbours with noise and they may be regarded as unsightly – I like ‘em but I am not your neighbour. You may also be required to get government approval. I am in the process of discussing this with our local council and their fees have a potential to double the cost of the wind generator, although it was a cheapie!

Water

Water requires energy to collect, treat, store , filter and transport to your home and is remarkably cheap for all of that! If you want to be self sufficient or more sustainable then it makes sense to harvest the water from your roof. Depending on your climate, size of your roof, size of your storage and needs it is possible to be run your house off rainwater alone. People in the outback have been doing it for many years, but to do it successfully you may need to make some changes.

Water Tank

Some automatic washing machines can chew through gallons of water per wash and toilets can use 9 litres or more of drinkable water to get rid of 100ml of urine, which doesn’t make sense. There are many ways to save water such as putting bath or clothes washing water on the garden or using it to flush the toilet, or installing a dual flush – or even better – a composting toilet.

As with electricity, the more water you can store, the better and water tanks tend cost less per litre stored the bigger they are, but it depends on your situation how much you can store. Even a 200 litre drum or 60 litre (new) garbage tin will allow you to store some water and any water storage is better than none.

Composting toilet

This article has been a rough overview of how you can set yourself up to be as self reliant as possible to reduce your outgo and maximize your income in your retirement and as a by-product you may find one or more fascinating new hobbies. If you are interested I suggest you enquire further and see what possibilities suit your tastes and interests. Give it a go, every little bit helps………………….. and it’s fun!

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