what steps are YOU taking?

With peak oil fast approaching, what steps are you taking to make your own family self sufficient? Growing veg? Going off grid? Learning new skills?

And are your efforts at self sufficiency a direct result of this, or do you imagine that you would have taken steps in this direction regardless?

Green-Moo

We have started using paper bags instead of plastic. We have also planted a garden to become more self sufficient. And the biggest is walking places instead of driving.

Some things I am trying to do as a result of the current environmental situation and some I would like to think I would be doing anyway. I try to walk or bike almost everywhere and I also use cloth grocery bags consistently. I’ve purchased rechargeable batteries that I’ve begun to use consistently and also have started using efficient light bulbs.

One simple thing I started recently is growing all vegetarian plants, currently have tomatoes, egg plant, cilantro and mint grown in the back space, I reside in a rental house and so not able to grow many plants in my back yard.

Well, self-sufficiency for me requires electricity. Because I am disabled. But I am planning to plant a vegetable garden issue. So I’ll be able to do something.

It’s always good to have a look at how you are actually trying to make a difference. Personally I am fairly good at recycling, only the minimum amount goes to landfill sites. I grow some of my own vegetables even although I only have a small garden, you can grow quite a bit in containers. What I would really love is to be self sufficient in energy but that is unlikely to happen as I simply don’t have the money to set up a system. It always comes down to money in the end doesn’t it?

We have/maintain a large family garden at our parents ranch. The whole family pitches in to keep it going.
We also reduce, reuse and recycle everything we can.

City life is a little different, and though I would love a proper ‘kitchen’ garden, the reality is that I have a number of fruit trees (2 figs, greengages, grape vines, hazlenut) and grow my own, mint, parsley, rosmary, thyme, bay, coriander, chives, tomatoes, spring onions.

I do have a bird table, which is much appreciated by sparrows, thrushes, and robins in the winter time. I keep the hazlenut tree (even though it is actually a nuisence) so that the squirrel family in the tree at the end of my garden have food. (I don’t even mind too much when they dig up my tulip bulbs looking for their buried nuts!)

We do our best to recycle, and our local council is very proactive in this area, providing every household with special bins, one green, one black, to sort our paper/ bottles/cans/plastics/textiles into, which they collect regularly.

I try to buy locally grown produce, and avoid excess packaging. We drive an eco friendly car, but use public transport wherever possible. I know I could do more, and am always looking to improve on what I am doing.

Recycling anything that can be recycled is one of my pet projects. We have radiant heat in our home but I find it very wasteful; it heats from the top down. We use space heaters or the fireplace if the living room is too chilly. We eschew heating blankets on the bed so we need to cuddle up under our quilts to get warm.

Heating blankets? you wimp Evie!

Hubby has built in central heating, no matter how cold it gets, he is always warm. When my tootsies get cold in bed in the winter I just plonk them on his tummy to warm them up

(does tend to wake him up suddenly though… heheheh..)

The things you are doing are great though. One of the things that city dwellers can do is make sure they sort their recycling/garbage themselves because often big urban centers don’t have the time to enforce it. Buying local is a good step too.

(Heating blankets? you wimp Evie!)

???? Me? We do not use heating blankets. Never have.
We have an assortment of kids that like to crawl in bed with us at any given hour and any day and they are warm little bodies. LOL

I have finally gotten into a routine to remember to bring my cloth bags to the grocery store and to reuse my produce bags. This took some time!

LOL! ooops… Sorry Evie, I meant that wimp Molly

Wish I had gotten the hang of the cloth bag thing. I remember to leave them in the car, so i do shopping, bring bags in to unpack, then forget to put them back in the car for next time!

LOL, stav.

It did take me a while to get in the groove with the cloth bags. I had to make notes to myself for a while. After I bring in the groceries, I put the bags by my purse or the front door. Then the next time I go to the car I throw them in the back.