Category: Self-Sufficiency

Winter Egg Production

Chickens are affected by the amount of daylight available. In fact, layers typically need 12 to 14 hours of light each day to lay eggs consistently. Commercial egg laying operations will provide this amount of light artificially, if necessary, to ensure the chickens keep laying eggs. Of course, commercial egg laying operations also heat their coops and keep chickens in conditions that reduce the quality of the egg that you get in the store. Part of the benefit of raising chickens in natural conditions is that you obtain a high quality egg that actually contains more good elements and fewer bad elements (such as cholesterol and fat). However, there is a cost involved with getting this higher quality egg and that’s a reduced winter production.

A number of sources online mistakenly say that egg production stops completely during the winter months. However, my own experience says otherwise. Yes, the production is greatly reduced, but we still obtained 63 eggs from our ten hens during the month of December. This is contrasted with 248 during August, which is a typical summer month. So, you probably won’t have enough eggs to sell in December if you bake and eat eggs regularly. However, you also won’t have to go completely without eggs.

Of course, the question is why you wouldn’t provide a light in the coop if it will induce the chickens to lay more eggs. The problem with using a light is that it robs the chickens of important nutrients they need during the winter months. The chickens need these nutrients to stay warm during the winter, especially if your coop is unheated. Heating and lighting a coop is also expensive, so you’d need to consider the tradeoff in additional costs. When all is said and done, most small operations will be better off letting the chickens have a bit of a rest during the winter.

You can improve egg production by ensuring your coop has south facing windows so that the chickens do get the maximum light available. This strategy will also keep the chickens warmer because the sunlight will heat the coop during the day. Given the experience we’re having with the chickens, I credit the south facing window for getting any eggs at all.

One of the things you can do if you really must have more eggs during the winter months is to freeze your eggs. That’s right, you can freeze eggs during the late fall (as production is going down) for use during the winter months. You can whip the eggs up and freeze them for up to 12 months.  It’s also possible to freeze just the whites.  Unfortunately yolks don’t freeze well, so you need to choose how you plan to use your eggs as part of your strategy.

There are tradeoffs for nearly any self-sufficiency strategy you use. We’ve chosen to follow a natural path when it comes to egg production by giving our chickens a bit of a vacation during the winter months to ensure that we continue to get quality eggs when they do lay and also to extend the life of our layers by not overtaxing their systems. What is your experience with winter egg laying? Let me know at [email protected].

 

It’s All in the Engineering

A considerable amount of my time in fulfilling the self-sufficiency dreams Rebecca and I have is spent building new items and repairing existing items. Existing equipment of all types requires constant maintenance as well. If you leave a cage exposed to the elements long enough, it’ll simply rot away. Everything has a tendency to fail without some sort of maintenance. All of these efforts—everything from building to maintaining to tearing down when an item is no longer useful—relies on some sort of engineering principle. If you want to get water to your garden, but the hose diameter is too small, the resulting trickle will only serve to frustrate you. Building shelves that don’t rely on proper engineering principles are downright dangerous. Installing electrical elements without regard to the amount of current the circuit needs to handle will almost certainly result in a fire. In short, in order to know in advance just how well something will work and what you need to do to maintain it, you need to know the engineering behind it.

In the Building Larder Shelving post, you learned about the engineering behind building shelves that will hold up to the weight of canning jars, which is considerable. This is just one of many posts that I’ve created that define the math behind self-sufficiency. If you ever find an error in my calculations, please let me know so that I can provide an update with the correct information. It’s also important to realize that my calculations are for a specific project type and you need to use them with your project in mind (making any required changes).

Fortunately, there are other places where you can find interesting information about engineering principles. One of the best places I’ve found recently (as passed on by a friend) is Engineering Toolbox. This site provides all sorts of useful information about various engineering disciplines, including how to create the proper sort of concrete for a project that you have in mind. If you were to mix the concrete without using a recipe, you’d either end up spending way too much money for your project or you’d end up with a project that won’t hold up to any kind of abuse.

It’s incredibly dangerous to take on a building or maintenance tasks for which you lack the proper equipment or training. Always make sure you understand not only the engineering behind the task, but that you also adhere to any required building codes and obtain the proper permits and inspections, as required. More than a few people have gotten hurt by not taking the proper precautions, so always verify that every step of a process you perform is done correctly before you proceed to the next step. The care you take in performing self-sufficiency tasks will always pay dividends in your personal safety and the longevity of the project.

Finding the right site to discover just how to create, maintain, and tear down the equipment needed to be self-sufficient can be an adventure akin to the mysteries solved by Holmes. You need to exercise care in using the information you find and verify that information across several different sites to ensure it’s accurate. Of course, there always comes a time when you’re simply in deep water and need the help of a professional. Some professionals will mentor you in building your project (for a fee in most cases); others will let you help them perform the task so that you gain needed knowledge and experience.

Building and maintaining your equipment can be a lot of fun. However, doing it the wrong way can be a disaster. Let me know your thoughts about building and maintaining equipment at [email protected].

 

Where is the Global Warming?

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that I take a moderate view of global warming. In fact, I’ve even written a post by that title, The Moderate View of Global Warming. It doesn’t surprise me that a number of readers have recently written to ask if I still believe in global warming given the recent cold wave that hit the United States. Yes, I do. Of course, a belief must be based on something, so I went looking for some statistics. My own blog provides some. For example, the harvest was earlier this year than any other year for which I’ve recorded statistics (17 of them). In fact, I’ve made quite a few observations about the effects of global warming on me personally because global warming seems like this really big issue that affects everyone else.

For most people, my personal observations are nice, but unless they happen to live in the same area of the world in which I live, the observations aren’t really relevant. At first I thought I was going to have to painstakingly research the statistics myself, but then I found an article entitled, Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps. It turns out that the US regularly experiences freezes of the sort that we’ve recently had, but that the interval has been 17 years this time. It turns out that in the past 115 years, there have been 27 distinct cold snaps where the average temperature across the country have dropped below 18 degrees. That’s an average of one cold snap every 4 years-so waiting 17 years is an unprecedented interval.

The recent cold snap isn’t even very high on the list of cold snaps-it ranks 55th in the list of cold snaps since 1900 when the statistics were first collected. So, the recent cold snap wasn’t only long overdue, it wasn’t particularly cold. Our predecessors faced much colder weather than we do today.

The statistics that made things clearest for me is that there have only been two days that rank in the list of the top 100 coldest days since 2000. However, there have been 13 days that rank in the list of the top 100 warmest days in the same time period. At this point, I’m genuinely interested in recording some of my own data around the area I live, and with weather stations like Weather Underground and others, it can be easier to find user recorded statistics in a specific location. As well as record and upload my own to see any changes throughout any given time periods which could come in handy for statistic analysis. Although these statistics aren’t much comfort to anyone who has suffered broken pipes due to the cold, they all point to one thing-even though it has been cold, the earth is generally getting warmer.

Reducing pollution is an essential part of bringing global warming (defined as a general warming trend with more frequent extremes in weather conditions) under control. Personalizing global warming is an important part of understanding it. Create a list of changes that you’ve noted over the past ten or so years, such as the additional costs for cooling your home and the number of days you have to use the air conditioner each year. Once you start looking around and seeing how global warming is affecting both finances and health, you begin seeing why it’s personally important for you to control it. Let me know your thoughts about global warming and controlling pollution at [email protected].

 

Preparing for Planting

It may seem a bit odd to talk about planting in the middle of winter, but this is actually the time that many avid gardeners, especially those interested in self-sufficiency, begin to think about the planting season. Of course, the planning process starts in the larder. Even though there is a catalog in your hand at the moment, the catalog doesn’t do any good until you know what to order and your larder contains that information.

As part of the preparation process, you should go through the larder, ensure all of the oldest items are in the front of the shelves, verify that all of the jars are still sealed, and wash the jars to keep them clean. Make sure all of the jars are properly marked with both food type and year canned as well. The process of organizing your larder and keeping it clean is important because doing so will make it a lot easier to determine what to plant. Once you complete this task, you can perform an inventory to determine what items are in short supply. These are the items that you need to order from the catalog.

Sometimes you can use your larder as a jumping off point for dreams of things you’d like to try in the future. For example, until last year, our larder lacked pickled asparagus—now I wouldn’t be without it. However, before we could pickle the asparagus, we had to grow enough to make the effort worthwhile, which meant planting more asparagus and waiting several years for it to get old enough to produce a decent crop. Yes, the larder was the start of our dream and the catalog provided us with ideas on how to achieve our dream, but in the end, the realization of our dream happened in the garden and in the kitchen.

Our larder also holds our canning supplies and equipment. This is the time of the year when you should perform an inventory of these items as well and ensure they’re in good shape. For example, the seal and pressure relief value on your pressure canner requires regular replacement—we simply make it a practice to replace these items before the start of the canning season because doing so is inexpensive and reduces the risk of mishap in the kitchen later. No matter where you store your canning supplies and equipment, now is the time to maintain them.

Writing your needs down as you discover them is a great idea. Check out the various catalogs you receive starting this time of year to determine which products will best suit your needs. It’s unlikely that you’ll completely fill your garden with just the items you need from the larder. The catalog will also supply ideas for new items you can try. Sometimes we try a new variety of vegetable or fruit just to see how it grows in this climate. Over the years we’ve discovered some items that grow exceptionally well for us (and also experienced more than a few failures).

Don’t just address your main garden, however. It’s also time to check into herbs and address any deficiencies in the orchard. This is the time for planning. Trying to figure everything out later, when you’re already engaged in preparing the garden, will prove difficult and you’ll make more mistakes than usual if you wait.

It’s also important to start ordering as soon as you know what you need. The catalog companies won’t send you product until it’s time to plant. However, they do use a first come, first served policy. Other gardeners are already order products. If you wait, you may not get your first choice of items and may have to reorder later.

Planning is an essential part of a successful year in the garden and orchard. However, I also enjoy starting the planning process this time of the year because it makes winter seem a little less severe. A little spring in winter is like a breath of fresh air. What sorts of things do you do to prepare for spring? Let me know at [email protected].

 

A New Type of Solar Panel

One of the things that has always caused me problems with solar panels is that they’re a limited technology here in the Midwest, unless you want yet another surface to clear of snow in the winter. In addition, finding places to put the solar arrays is problematic. Once you do find a place to put them, the installation itself is normally an eyesore. So, even though you’re getting power from the sun, you’re paying a relatively high cost for it in more than just monetary ways. Which is why this new solar panel that doubles as windows for the house is intriguing. You can find a quick overview of the technology in the ComputerWorld article entitled, Transparent solar cells could turn windows into generators. The MIT Technology Review article, A New Solar Material Shows Its Potential, provides a little more depth.

The main material used in this new solar panel is perovskite. There aren’t any panel that you can buy today with this material, but it does have a lot of promise. Even if this particular material doesn’t work out because it’s too fragile, a composite with the material or a material with some of the same characteristics could produce solar panels that double as window panes. Because window panes are vertical, rather than at an angle, they won’t suffer from many of the environmental issues that current solar panels do. You won’t see them as something separate from the house and it’s less likely that they’ll be damaged because the house partially protects the windows. Because the windows won’t angle to precisely match the angle of the sun, these solar panels are unlikely to be as efficient as standard solar panels.

Although these new solar panels have some benefits, I’d stick to the original solar panels which attach to roof tiles. A friend of mine recommended a Wisconsin Solar Installers company however I don’t think I’ll get any installed this year. I’m still undecided about the whole solar panel situation, to be honest. I feel it is too much of a hassle to make any kind of changes to the house right about now. Also, I must read up about the solar panel installation laws here to get a comprehensive idea about everything. That is sure to take up some time.

Perovskite is a kind of rare earth mineral. Actually, the term encompasses a number of rare earth minerals that exhibit a particular structure. These minerals are somewhat common in a number of locations worldwide. Of course, mining perovskite will still incur the environmental damage I discussed in my A Discussion About Green Technology Pollution and A Discussion About Green Technology Pollution (Part 2) posts. It’s important to realize that this technology reflects a small, but important, step forward.

Several of the articles that appear online indicate that this new technology should be a lot less expensive than current solar panel technology and more aesthetically appealing as well. These two factors bode well for this technology. People won’t use green technologies that cost more than current technologies to use and few people are willing to put up with unappealing yard ornaments. If the people working with this technology succeed, your next window upgrade could provide power to your house as well.

The one thing that concerned me about this technology is whether it would look like standard windows. From what I gathered in reading various articles, the panes can be tinted, just like standard panes. From what I’ve read online, the level of tinting won’t be dark enough to stop you needing blinds or curtains, making them even more like standard windows. If you do decide to invest in these windows, you may want to dress them with shutters. Here are the top-rated plantation window shutters London citizens can purchase, as an example. In addition, it’ll be possible to sandwich the panes with inert gasses, such as argon, to produce windows with high emissivity values, which means they should work great in colder climates. Adding shutters will also help in colder climates as they can help to keep the heat in along with the inert gasses.

Our green technologies still create way too much pollution, but it appears that we’re making progress. Let me know your thoughts about these new windows at [email protected].

Cleaning the Coop in December

It’s December and time to check on your outside animals to ensure they remain comfortable. The rabbits are relatively easy. All you really need to do is ensure the cages are remaining reasonably clean (wire brush those bunny pellets from the cage’s hardware cloth) and that any protective measures, such as the window plastic you put in place to keep the wind at bay, are still in place and in good condition. The entire process will likely take less than an hour (if that long—my six cages took about 15 minutes).

The chickens are another story. You need to check the weather carefully and try to find a day when the temperature will get above freezing, if possible. The manure in the coop will be a lot easier to get up if you can get it to defrost a little. You want to clean out all of the old hay and manure. Unlike your fall cleanup, you won’t wash the nest boxes. In fact, this is a really bad time to do anything with water in the coop (except for the chicken’s drinking water) because it won’t dry properly. The idea is to clean as much as possible by scraping up the manure and getting it out of the coop onto your compost heap. I find that a combination of a barn shovel and a wide bladed putty knife do the job quite well.

This is also the time to check for air leaks again. Your chickens can keep cozy if your coop is relatively air tight.  You don’t want to close it up so tight that the ammonia fumes build up and hurt the chickens, but you also don’t want anything like a strong breeze in the coop.  The chickens will normally keep warm by huddling together at night on top of their nest box or other roosting area you provide. So, it’s essential that you keep the air leaks under control.

When replacing the hay, make sure you pack each nest box a little more than you would in summer to give each chicken a nice place to lay her egg. I’ll use regular alfalfa hay during the summer months because it’s stiffer and breaths better. However, during the winter months I use grass hay. It’s softer and provides better warmth. You must make sure the hay you use is completely dry and mildew free because it absolutely won’t dry during the winter months and you don’t want your chickens to acquire respiratory diseases.

Because it is winter, the chickens are more likely to keep you entertained as you clean the coop. Remember that the coop is their home, so you need to be patient as you work with them. During the cleaning process, one chicken proceeded to scold me, but another pecked at my feet (apparently trying to get off all the snow). A third kept insisting that she needed to be held and petted (slowing my progress). All this attention is quite normal during the winter cleanup.

Keeping the coop clean is quite important if you want to maintain your chicken’s health. That means getting out in winter, when conditions for cleaning are less than ideal. Working on the one or two days during the winter when the temperatures get a little higher will make things a lot easier, but even so, you’ll be trying to clean the coop with a bulky jacket and gloves on, so it’s going to take more time than in the summer months. Let me know your thoughts about cage and coop cleaning at [email protected].

 

Preparing Eggs for Sale

It may not seem like a particularly important topic at first, but if you plan to sell some of your eggs, you must prepare them for sale properly. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose your customer base. No one will say anything to you about the reasons for not buying your eggs—they simply won’t buy them. After a while, you’ll be left with a lot of eggs on your hands and no buyers.

When you get the eggs from the coop, make sure you wash them. This might seem like an obvious thing to do, but some people have actually tried to sell unwashed eggs, which is hazardous to a customer’s health, as well as unappealing. I normally use Dawn Antibacterial soap to wash the eggs and then rinse them thoroughly. The soap ensures that the outside of the egg is free of pathogens. Of course, you need to perform this process carefully or else you’ll end up with a lot of unsellable eggs.

After you allow the eggs to air dry (or dry them carefully with a towel), you need to inspect them carefully. Any flawed eggs go into my personal pack. Eggs with cracks are cooked thoroughly and fed either to the dogs or cats. There isn’t a good reason to waste good protein, but if the egg has any cracks at all, you can’t vouch for the integrity of the content. A mix of egg, rice, and leftover meat makes for a dandy addition to your pet’s daily food. Sometimes I throw in a few leftover vegetables as well.

We don’t have any roosters. If we did, we’d also need to candle the eggs to ensure there were no embryos inside. Because we buy our chicks from other places, we won’t ever have roosters for our laying hens. You need to decide on whether to keep roosters based on your particular egg laying needs. However, it’s still possible that our eggs could have a blood spot in them. We simply offer our customers a replacement egg should this happen. So far, it never has, but it could happen given that our chickens are free range. Theoretically, you can candle the eggs to find this sort of problem, but it’s still possible to miss it, so having a replacement policy is the best way to go.

At this point, you have a number of washed eggs that lack flaws. It’s time to weigh them using an egg scale. I generally keep small eggs for my personal use. Medium-sized eggs are sold at a discount, traded for something I need, or given to friends and neighbors. The large and jumbo eggs are placed into cartons and sold at full price.

Create an attractive display for your eggs. For example, I’ve set up kid friendly egg cartons. The cartons will contain an attractive mix of blue, green, brown, tan, and speckled eggs (the range of colors the hens lay). Placing the eggs in some sort of pattern also helps. Even though the inside of the egg is the same in all cases, the eye catching patterns really help to sell your eggs to the public. Of course, adults may prefer a less colorful display, which means grading the eggs by color and placing like colors in a carton. The point is to make your eggs look especially nice.

Preparing your eggs properly will help keep you in sales. In fact, a combination of high quality and classy presentation will usually net you more customers than you can accommodate as long as your prices are also in line with what the market will allow. Let me know your thoughts on egg preparation at [email protected].

 

How Cold is Too Cold for Animals?

In many ways, we follow some relatively old fashioned methods of animal husbandry. For example, a lot of people now use heated barns or other enclosures to protect their animals from winter. Of course, there are a lot of benefits to this approach, such as maintaining productivity during winter and reducing animal stress. One way to help reduce animal stress is to get some cbd for pets, this can help calm them and keep them mellow for a period if they are in distress.

However, there are also disadvantages that you must consider from a self-sufficiency perspective. For example, heating an environment for the animals incurs an additional cost that is unlikely to be repaid with additional productivity. In addition, such an approach is harder on the environment because the heat is normally provided by some sort of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, the biggest problem is the effect on the animal. If there is a power outage or similar issue that causes a loss of heat, the animal is going to be adversely affected in a serious manner because it isn’t used to the cold and hasn’t had any time to develop a fat layer. We can put on additional layers of clothing when the heat fails-animals typically don’t have this advantage. Animals also tend to have natural cycles, just as we do. The change in seasons helps keep an animal’s internal clock in sync.

Of course, it gets pretty cool here in Wisconsin. We do winterize the animal cages in various ways. For example, the rabbit cages receive a covering of plastic sheeting over the front to keep the wind at bay and also reduce some heat loss. Likewise, the chicken coop window receives a plastic sheet and the back window is both closed and secured. You can’t make the cages airtight, however, because doing so would trap harmful gasses from animal feces that would eventually prove detrimental to animal health. Even during the winter months, animal cages must have at least a little air movement to promote good health.

During the winter months, we also feed the animals food with a higher fat content that provides additional calories to help keep them warm. In most cases, this means adding more corn and oats to the rabbit food and providing them with additional high energy food treats (such as carrot scraps). The chickens receive various types of seeds with their feed, along with high protein sources such as meal worms. This approach follows what happens in nature. The seed heads of plants are exposed above the snow, so animals eat these high energy sources of nutrients during the winter months.

Our chickens love the forage all throughout the year. During the summer months they go out every day unless the weather is absurdly harsh (the weather service is predicting tornadoes). In the winter the chickens only go out on warmer, sunnier days. During the cooler days we keep them inside where they can huddle together to preserve warmth.

Part of our strategy is also to use the natural environment to our advantage. For example, all of the cages and the coop are south facing so that any sunlight tends to warm the interior of the cage or coop. There are times when we open the coop door and feel a surge of warmth come out simply because of the effect of the sun on the interior. So, it’s possible to rely on some level of passive heating to help keep animals warm.

Beside the other measures we take, we ensure we check the animal’s water more regularly during the winter to ensure the animals all have liquid water (not iced over in any way) to drink during much of the day. A good source of high energy/high calorie food and water are both essential to animal health during the winter months. All of our animals drink less during the winter, so giving the animal less water, but filling the water trays more often, is the best strategy to follow.

If the weather were to get terribly cold, we also make provision to keep the animals short term in the garage or basement of our home. Neither area is warm enough to stress the animals, but is warm enough to keep them from getting frostbite (a real problem for chicken combs). What sorts of things do you do to make your animals more comfortable and maintain their health in winter? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Engaging in the Fall Cleanup

For many people, fall is a time when they cut the grass the last time, take their car to the mechanic for winterization, check for air leaks in the windows, and ensure the furnace will run. These common chores affect anyone involved in self-sufficiency as well. For example, you still need to get your car ready—assuming you have one.

However, fall cleanup requires a lot more from anyone engaged in self-sufficiency because there are more facets to their environment. For example, fall is the time when you need to ensure your animal cages are completely cleaned. (Yes, you also clean them at other times, but fall is when you take everything apart and really clean it up.) If some of your animals are outdoors, you need to ensure they’ll have sufficient cover for the winter months. For us, that means scrubbing down every one of the rabbit hutches and letting them dry before we put a rabbit back inside. In addition, we add any manure under the cages to the compost heap. The chicken coop needs to be cleaned completely, the old hay replaced, and the windows closed. I also make sure I wash the window so the chickens can see out. It turns out that chickens like a nice view too.

Of course, you take the garden down after picking any remaining goodies and plant your winter rye to prevent erosion. The fall is a good time to look for potential soil issues and possibly get a soil test so that you know how to deal with problems the following spring. Likewise, your herb and flower gardens require attention so that any perennial plants will make it through the winter. However, don’t put mulch on immediately. Wait until the garden is frozen and then put the mulch on. Doing so will ensure that the plants are properly prepared for the winter.

You may not have thought of it, but all of your equipment has taken a beating during the summer months, including all of the equipment used for canning. This is a good time to scrub your pots and pans up and ensure they’re in good shape before you put them up. Make sure your pressure canner receives particular attention. Check to see if the gasket is in good shape, along with the rubber plug used for emergency pressure relief. Your stove will need a thorough cleaning and may require maintenance as well. Make sure everything is put away correctly so that you don’t have to waste a lot of time trying to find it in the late spring when you begin using it again.

Don’t think you’re finished yet. Now is the time to start walking the grounds looking for problems in your orchard. For example, it’s relatively easy to find pests that hide on trees during this time of the year. Make sure you check trees for problems associated with stress. For example, pear trees are prone to crack at the joints. You might need to mark some areas for special pruning in the spring. If a problem seems especially serious, you may want to address it now, rather than later.

Being self-sufficient means ending as well as you began. During the spring there is an excitement that builds that makes it easy to prepare for the new gardening season, but by the end of the season, all you really want to do is flop down in front of the wood stove. The time you take to prepare now will pay significant dividends in the spring. Let me know about your fall preparations at [email protected].

 

Encouragement, A Self-sufficiency Requirement

I’ve received more than a few e-mails over the years about the seeming impossibility of working closely with a spouse in our self-sufficiency efforts. Actually, husband and wife working together toward a common goal used to be the normal experience—working separately is a modern event and one that probably isn’t very good for relationships at all. In Making Self-Sufficiency Relationships Work I talk about the need for respect. Doing simple things that mean so much when it comes to displaying your respect for the other person and not simply assuming the other person knows that you respect them. As important as respect is to a self-sufficiency relationship, encouragement is even more important.

Rebecca and I encourage each other daily in both small and large ways. A peck on the cheek when the other person looks down is just the tip of the iceberg—sometimes the other person needs a hug instead. Being the other person’s cheerleader is a major part of keeping the other person active so that the two of you can meet the requirements you’ve set for your self-sufficiency efforts. A little encouragement goes a long way toward making an impossible goal quite achievable. Doing the impossible with less than nothing at times has become a somewhat common occurrence in our relationship. Believing that you can do something is an essential element in actually doing it. Knowing the other person believes in you too tips the scales in your favor.

Of course, the other person can fail despite the best encouragement we can provide. When failure occurs, it’s time to think about the failure and assess what went wrong. There are actually benefits to failure and failure is a natural part of life. Sometimes a little more encouragement will help the person get back up and try again. Other times, you must conclude that you’ve learned one more way to avoid failure and move on to something new. The point is that failure doesn’t mean the encouragement or idea were ill conceived or wasted—it simply means that you need to do something different. The world is full of untried possibilities, so pick one and give it a try.

When it comes to self-sufficiency, partnering with someone who understands the benefits of both respect and encouragement is a far smarter choice than choosing someone with skills. Anyone can learn a skill—not everyone can encourage another person and there is most definitely a lack of respect between people today. If you’re just starting your self-sufficiency efforts, don’t become discouraged. Anything worth doing takes time and patience, and requires a partner who both encourages and respects you. Certainly, the two of us have done both for each other over these many years. Let me know your thoughts about encouragement and respect at [email protected].