Self - insufficiency

No, the title above does not refer to my parenting skills. I am acutely aware with this blog that what I often have to say is what millions of other stay-at-home lefty liberal foodie mums have to say. Being original in the era of the internet is pretty tricky. Being a mum is hard. And choosing food with conscience is even trickier. But maybe some of the things we take for granted are actually not what they appear..
I was brought up on a smallholding (though that word didn't exist when I was little - we just had lots of animals - a whole herd of goats - grew our own veg, baked our own bread, and didn't have a telly). Crisps were what we saw in our friends cupboards when we visited them. As exotic as Barbie dolls and pot noodles. My mother, who emigrated from Germany when I was two, worked from home, taught me at home until I was ten, and I helped feed the chickens, learned to milk the goats, built dens in the woods, when I wasn't doing my lessons.  All very house on the prairie.

An idyllic upbringing, which made me love real food, and craft building, and the great outdoors in general. For years The Self Sufficiency Bible was my main reading fodder, and it's a rhetoric so many of my friends buy into too. If we could just grow our own stuff and not need the shops, everything would be better.
But it's not as simple as you would think, this dream of ours. As Julian Baggini, author of The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think, says: "It seems obvious that self sufficiency makes us more secure, less dependent on others and therefore more resilient. But this is wrong. What makes us stronger is not independence but interdependence". We are stronger when we make links, work together, trade. I always thought I would love to live the way I grew up - on a little plot of land, up in the hills, making everything myself. But it turns out I love the life I have now far more. In a small-ish rural town, with lovely shops, and cafes, and people to say hi to in the street, and no garden. A few pots to grow herbs in, and I'm happy. There's a great greengrocer in town.
Everything we do, be it buying the seeds to grow our veg, to felling the trees to build our houses - everything relies on others, is done better when it is done as a cooperative effort. Our so called self sufficient childhood was made of a million links and interdependencies, and was all the better for it. Growing your own is great, as long as we are aware that to even do so has required a global market. Those seeds have come from somewhere, the tools manufactured, how-to books printed, wellies made of Brazilian rubber. Even the most ardent of my crafty make-everything-myself friends buys their underwear from somewhere!
We live in a global world, and are all the better for it. It's just about how we do the communicating, the trading, that will make it a better place. In my opinion. Make those interactions personal wherever possible, cut out the middle man, make your choices conscious ones. Be self-insufficient, and proud :)

As a footnote - the author of that book is speaking at the How the Light gets in Festival at Hay next Tuesday! Afternoon tea and philosophy, what could be better?

https://howthelightgetsin.iai.tv