How far can a community push self-sufficiency before the complexity becomes another dependency?

I've been working on a long-term pre-land project called Melondra, and one of the questions I keep coming back to is where practical self-sufficiency stops helping and starts creating a different kind of fragility.

The aim isn't to disconnect completely from the outside world.

It's more to ask how much of the infrastructure needed for a comfortable modern life could sensibly be brought closer to the people using it.

For example:

producing a meaningful proportion of food locally;
preserving and storing seasonal surpluses;
collecting, storing and reusing water;
generating and storing energy;
recovering useful heat rather than simply throwing it away;
composting and nutrient recovery;
workshops and local repair;
shared tools and equipment;
some local manufacturing/fabrication;
keeping useful stocks of parts and materials;
designing systems so that they degrade gracefully when something fails.

Where I'm particularly interested is the interaction between all those systems.

A greenhouse isn't only a greenhouse if waste heat from another process can warm it.

Food waste isn't necessarily waste if it becomes feedstock for another system.

Stored rainwater, treated wastewater and potable water don't necessarily need to be treated as one interchangeable resource.

A workshop can be much more valuable if it also allows the community to maintain the machinery that its food, water and energy systems depend upon.

But there's an obvious danger.

Every additional pump, controller, sensor, treatment process or automated system creates something else that needs maintaining.

A supposedly "self-sufficient" settlement that can't function because one proprietary controller has failed isn't very self-sufficient at all.

So the direction we're currently exploring is:

use technology and automation where they genuinely reduce labour or resource use, but keep essential systems understandable, repairable and capable of useful degraded/manual operation.

That balance is one of the things I'd particularly value the experience of people here on.

For those who have actually built homesteads, permaculture systems, off-grid infrastructure or intentional communities:

which systems have genuinely made you more independent over time, and which ones turned out to create more maintenance and dependency than they were worth?

And at community scale, are there things that you think become dramatically more practical with 50–100 households than they ever could be for one homestead?

The wider project is here for context: https://melondra.org

It's still pre-land and very much a developing design rather than something I'm presenting as a finished solution.

Gabe Melondra wrote: ... one of the questions I keep coming back to is where practical self-sufficiency stops helping and starts creating a different kind of fragility.  

...use technology and automation where they genuinely reduce labour or resource use, but keep essential systems understandable, repairable and capable of useful degraded/manual operation.

I haven't absorbed and contemplated this whole post thoroughly yet, but my initial thought is that in some situations you can create fragility by having complicated systems that become reliant on a single individual - if that individual becomes unavailable for any reason, something critical may fail and there will be no back-up plan.

If you look even several hundred years back - before the industrial revolution - parents started teaching their children those complicated systems by the age of 5. They were essentially training their replacement.

Yes, keeping things simple and repairable is important. Our old washing machine had mechanical switches. It died (it was 30+ years old). The replacement has all electronic switches which not only can't be repaired, they likely aren't standard enough to be easily replaced even 5 years from now. My neighbor's son recently bought a really old Ford car - (like Model T era. ) Why? Because between him and his dad, they can fix it.

Consider basing the essential infrastructure of the community on technology from around 1890. That allows gravity-fed water, wells and hand pumps, wood and masonry construction, passive heating/cooling, root cellars, canning and fermentation, animal and human power, belt-driven machinery, blacksmithing, woodworking, mechanical workshops, sewing, bicycles, railways, windmills, simple electrical generation, and sophisticated agriculture.

Base it on systems that people can understand, maintain, repair, and reproduce locally.

Then layer modern technology on top wherever it helps. Solar panels, electronics, automation, power tools, computers, modern materials—all wonderful. But when possible, let their failure result in inconvenience or more human labor rather than failure of the essential system.

If an irrigation controller fails, open a valve by hand. If a pump fails, perhaps gravity still moves some water. If refrigeration fails, some of the food supply still stores by other means.

Plan for graceful degradation: modern technology makes the community easier to operate, rather than making the community possible to operate.

I would list five:
-Bison shallow well pump, paid $500 12 years ago, now it's close to $2000, but would buy again in a heartbeat; never let me down except one year when due to drought the water level dropped below my 6 m pipe and then I thought the pump broke and purchased set of new seals, but it was completely fine
-direct solar fridge: works with one panel, does not work at night but improves quality of life by 1000%
-irrigation system, no electronics, just hoses, valves and emitters: without it, it was impossible to establish any trees, as watering 300 plants by hand in 40 C and scorching sun will kill and why to have a homestead if it feels like penal colony?
-tractor: cultivated hostile land, moved tens of tons of building materials, trees cut for firewood, lifted logs to the mill, perimeter discing for fire break, pulling stuck vehicles in muddy winter; it has to be older model with proven technology
-direct solar small device charging, with no charge controllers, batteries, inverters, breakers, etc: I directly charge my laptops, phones and Makita batteries (which I use for one power tool and two lights); before I was using cheaply made small generators that were breaking after 3 months beyond repair

In general I do not feel like I ever purchased any tool that I would not be happy with, as I do a lot of research and try to buy quality things, made of thick metal with minimal electronics. Because of that I'm able to repair them - a process that I hate, as I do not like repairing things, but somehow I always succeed.
I have a lot of tools that I use once or twice per year - like rock coring drill or large stone saw, but when I use them, I'm always glad I have them as the rental would quickly surpass the tools' initial purchase price.

I don't have much practical experience with this yet, but I have thought about it.

Like the post above me said, if you want TRUE self sufficiency you probably have to go pre 1900 tech like the Amish (partly, I know it's complicated).

Most of us probably aren't willing to give up cars and electricity and electronics and the internet. How would we post on this forum?!

So there will always be a certain percentage you have to import from the outside world, and you have to pay with cash so you need to somehow make money either from a job or selling your products/produce/services to the outside world.

How big is that percentage? I think it depends a bit on your personality, comfort level, and how you measure it, but I think for me it's likely around 30%? I probably won't be giving up my truck, my phone, my laptop, or my internet access.

But in terms of food, I think getting to 98% or even 100% is much easier. Buildings, it depends on the materials and techniques you use. I'm not skilled (yet?) in natural building, and so I'm importing screws and nails and power tools and plywood. But the labor can mostly be internalized. The further you move towards natural building methods, the closer to independence you can get here. Still, windows will probably always be outside your wheelhouse, and will you blacksmith all your own nails?

Hello Gabe!

Welcome to permies!

I think a lot of your questions will be answered through doing.  

As you build the systems, you will see how they work together.

What region are you in?  I would go to other intentional communities and see what they have built and what is working well.

Wheaton Labs in Montana, built and run by Paul Wheaton, is an excellent example of  technology, innovation and simple living.  
https://wheaton-labs.com/

I would encourage you to spent a few days or a week there to get to know how it feels to live in a place like you want to build.   I believe you will come home with tons of great ideas for you new project.  


If you cannot travel to Montana, invest in a personal consultation with Paul.  He has personal experience with many communities and their founders.  
https://permies.com/t/131485/permaculture-consultation-paul-wheaton

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Consider basing the essential infrastructure of the community on technology from around 1890. That allows gravity-fed water, wells and hand pumps, wood and masonry construction, passive heating/cooling, root cellars, canning and fermentation, animal and human power, belt-driven machinery, blacksmithing, woodworking, mechanical workshops, sewing, bicycles, railways, windmills, simple electrical generation, and sophisticated agriculture.

Base it on systems that people can understand, maintain, repair, and reproduce locally.

Then layer modern technology on top wherever it helps. Solar panels, electronics, automation, power tools, computers, modern materials—all wonderful. But when possible, let their failure result in inconvenience or more human labor rather than failure of the essential system.

If an irrigation controller fails, open a valve by hand. If a pump fails, perhaps gravity still moves some water. If refrigeration fails, some of the food supply still stores by other means.

Plan for graceful degradation: modern technology makes the community easier to operate, rather than making the community possible to operate.

I really like the underlying principle here.

I probably wouldn't set 1890 as a literal technology ceiling for the essential layer, but the idea of asking “what is the simplest version of this capability that can still function locally?” feels extremely useful.

Then modern technology can sit above that and reduce labour, improve efficiency, optimise things and make life much more comfortable — without becoming the single thing that makes the underlying system possible.

Your irrigation example is exactly the sort of behaviour I've been trying to describe: if the controller fails, watering becomes less convenient rather than impossible.

I think that gives me a much clearer test for future systems:

**when the clever layer disappears, what useful capability is still left underneath?**

That probably applies to food storage, water, heating, transport, communications and quite a lot else.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:I would list five:
-Bison shallow well pump, paid $500 12 years ago, now it's close to $2000, but would buy again in a heartbeat; never let me down except one year when due to drought the water level dropped below my 6 m pipe and then I thought the pump broke and purchased set of new seals, but it was completely fine
-direct solar fridge: works with one panel, does not work at night but improves quality of life by 1000%
-irrigation system, no electronics, just hoses, valves and emitters: without it, it was impossible to establish any trees, as watering 300 plants by hand in 40 C and scorching sun will kill and why to have a homestead if it feels like penal colony?
-tractor: cultivated hostile land, moved tens of tons of building materials, trees cut for firewood, lifted logs to the mill, perimeter discing for fire break, pulling stuck vehicles in muddy winter; it has to be older model with proven technology
-direct solar small device charging, with no charge controllers, batteries, inverters, breakers, etc: I directly charge my laptops, phones and Makita batteries (which I use for one power tool and two lights); before I was using cheaply made small generators that were breaking after 3 months beyond repair

In general I do not feel like I ever purchased any tool that I would not be happy with, as I do a lot of research and try to buy quality things, made of thick metal with minimal electronics. Because of that I'm able to repair them - a process that I hate, as I do not like repairing things, but somehow I always succeed.
I have a lot of tools that I use once or twice per year - like rock coring drill or large stone saw, but when I use them, I'm always glad I have them as the rental would quickly surpass the tools' initial purchase price.

This is exactly the kind of real-world list I was hoping people would contribute.

What strikes me is that several of your biggest quality-of-life improvements aren't necessarily the most technologically complicated ones.

The irrigation system is a great example. Even without electronics, removing the need to hand-water hundreds of plants in extreme heat transforms what is practical.

And the direct-solar examples are making me think harder about how many unnecessary conversion/storage/control stages we sometimes add simply because that's the conventional architecture.

If something can sensibly use the resource directly, every intermediate box is another cost, efficiency loss and potential failure point.

The old tractor point makes sense in the same way too — sophisticated enough to remove enormous amounts of physical labour, but still understandable and repairable.

That feels like a much better test than simply asking whether something is “high tech” or “low tech”: **how much useful capability and labour saving does it give you for the complexity it introduces?**

As a bit of a Luddite, and using an outhouse in my early years, I am not convinced that modern technology necessarily reduces labor, improves efficiency, or makes life more comfortable.

Joseph,

Please elaborate what you consider to be modern as I'm also used to extremely Spartan lifestyle.

What is the size of your community? Once we have some idea of size then we could brainstorm. Can you give us an idea of population and footprint of the community? I think that I would like to see what functions that you would stack in your list, for instance, heating greenhouses with compost similar to the way French greenhouse were heated with manure in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:As a bit of a Luddite, and using an outhouse in my early years, I am not convinced that modern technology necessarily reduces labor, improves efficiency, or makes life more comfortable.

I'm also sort of a luddite but not in all areas. It'd be fun to map out the "tech tree" and see where we think the optimums are? E.g. I think the outhouse vs flush toilet thing depends on the person, some people just can not get over not having a flush toilet.. they just can't do it. I don't know why.

I personally think that almost everything in cooking has gotten MUCH WORSE with technology. Peak cooking is some sort of metal fire stove with a cast iron griddle/pan. Cooks better than anything invented since.

Coffee is especially bizarre to me: it's just grounds in hot water. Yet we somehow manage to make & sell $500 machines with electronics that require you to purchase plastic pods for the grounds and you STILL have to fill water every time! And the coffee tastes terrible compared to simple cowboy coffee. The electronics break and get messed up, my friends had to send their coffee machine in and get a new one because the chip started malfunctioning... again, it's just hot water.

Frankly, laundry is also just warm/hot water with soap. I've done manual laundry many times in my life, usually when traveling, and if anything it's better & easier than a machine. Drying is only an issue if you're in a small apartment without good ventilation, otherwise a clothesline beats a dryer every time.

Refrigeration.. this one's tricky as I am fond of many foods that don't keep well in the summer heat, like dairy or meat. All the solutions to this seem to be much more location/context dependent than in other areas.

Health care.. I'm pretty convinced that most of modern healthcare is just trying (and failing) to fix the issues caused by modern lifestyle/"food" and is largely not necessary except for say a broken leg.

Transportation. I think modern cars are too fragile & complex & expensive, but I'm not giving up cars haha. They are just too convenient and practical.. same for phones and computers. I remember typewriters. No thanks.

Building is an interesting one, I think. I believe modern buildings are in almost every way worse than they used to be, even the ones built in the same styles. Most modern materials seem engineered to cut costs, not improve quality (e.g. OSB over plywood over boards). The other big "innovation" is inventing silly and unnecessary ways of design or architecture like in McMansions. Engineered trusses allow us to do wide overhangs - and they ruined attics. Oh great, now we have big halls that are usually a waste of space and expensive to heat, in a 2,500sqft house used by 2 people.

I frankly think that, depending on location and climate, timber frame & cob/earth block building are still peak. The only reason to do anything more modern is if you're hiring it out and modern methods are cheaper then, in materials or labor.

I have been in timber frame buildings in Europe that were over 1,000 years old.

The major cost factor of building is 1. do as much labor by yourself as possible and 2. keep it simple. 100-200sqft per person should be more than enough. All the water/electric in one wall. You don't need 10 bathrooms. No silly roof shapes unless they have a purpose. Build a box, it's efficient.

I think building is an important one to highlight because it's actually easier to DIY than e.g. cars or phones, and it's the biggest expense in everybody's life. Huge low-hanging fruit.


Overall, I'd argue that in very many areas of life, with maybe the exception of electronics/telecommunication/transportation, "innovation" since 1800 or so has been to make things more mass-marketable or cheaper to build, but not higher quality to the end user, or even necessarily cheaper to the end user. It will not just be a self-sufficiency bonus in case SHTF to be self-sufficient in categories like food, building, health, etc, it will both be cheaper AND higher quality than you can buy at any price! You simply can't buy food of the quality like it used to be common, and you can't really buy the same quality building either. At least not in 99% of places.

Great question.

Case and point; Electric fencing dramatically reduces the time and initial capital needed to restrain animals, but I am on my 5th charger in 18 years and several of those were repaired (not by me) along the way from lightening damage.  Still hard to say if I am ahead of just using woven wire.

Looking forward to additional responses.  I’ll try to add more as time permits.

Gray Henon wrote: Electric fencing dramatically reduces the time and initial capital needed to restrain animals, but I am on my 5th charger in 18 years and several of those were repaired (not by me) along the way from lightening damage.  Still hard to say if I am ahead of just using woven wire.

Very valid point. It could be a great tool during the process of figuring out whether you're compatible with the type of animal, or want to try other options, and while deciding where you want your permanent fencing. However, most of the people I know who have used electric fences as truly effective paddock shift, had lots of extra people around.

I have tried to put up and take down electric chicken mesh by myself and it's a time consuming, frustrating process. A well designed paddock shift system may cost a lot more, but could easily be managed by a single person. (Granted, I'm on the small size, which doesn't help.)

Jay Angler wrote:

Gabe Melondra wrote: ... one of the questions I keep coming back to is where practical self-sufficiency stops helping and starts creating a different kind of fragility.  

...use technology and automation where they genuinely reduce labour or resource use, but keep essential systems understandable, repairable and capable of useful degraded/manual operation.

I haven't absorbed and contemplated this whole post thoroughly yet, but my initial thought is that in some situations you can create fragility by having complicated systems that become reliant on a single individual - if that individual becomes unavailable for any reason, something critical may fail and there will be no back-up plan.

If you look even several hundred years back - before the industrial revolution - parents started teaching their children those complicated systems by the age of 5. They were essentially training their replacement.

Yes, keeping things simple and repairable is important. Our old washing machine had mechanical switches. It died (it was 30+ years old). The replacement has all electronic switches which not only can't be repaired, they likely aren't standard enough to be easily replaced even 5 years from now. My neighbor's son recently bought a really old Ford car - (like Model T era. ) Why? Because between him and his dad, they can fix it.

Jay, the point about everything depending on one person is a good one. We could have spare pumps and controllers and still be stuck if the only person who understands the setup is away.

Part of the intention with Melondra is for people to learn several roles and pass those skills on. Someone may know a system best, but I wouldn't want them to become the only person who can look after it.

That would also be a useful test of the instructions: can someone who didn't build it follow them and deal with an ordinary fault? If not, there's still work to do, however well the system runs when its designer is around.

Samantha Lewis wrote:Hello Gabe!

Welcome to permies!

I think a lot of your questions will be answered through doing.  

As you build the systems, you will see how they work together.

What region are you in?  I would go to other intentional communities and see what they have built and what is working well.

Wheaton Labs in Montana, built and run by Paul Wheaton, is an excellent example of  technology, innovation and simple living.  
https://wheaton-labs.com/

I would encourage you to spent a few days or a week there to get to know how it feels to live in a place like you want to build.   I believe you will come home with tons of great ideas for you new project.  


If you cannot travel to Montana, invest in a personal consultation with Paul.  He has personal experience with many communities and their founders.  
https://permies.com/t/131485/permaculture-consultation-paul-wheaton

Thanks for the welcome, Samantha. Panama is where we're currently looking for the first site, particularly the west of the country. We haven't secured land yet.

I agree that seeing how people actually live with these systems is important. I'd want to learn about the maintenance and everyday frustrations as much as the things that work well. Those are much harder to judge from plans and descriptions.

If you know of communities in Panama or a similar climate that would be worth getting to know, I'd be interested. Wheaton Labs is useful to look at too, although we'd need to think carefully about what transfers to a tropical setting.

Robert Ray wrote:What is the size of your community? Once we have some idea of size then we could brainstorm. Can you give us an idea of population and footprint of the community? I think that I would like to see what functions that you would stack in your list, for instance, heating greenhouses with compost similar to the way French greenhouse were heated with manure in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Robert, the working plan is around 175 community residents in roughly 120 homes, alongside a separate retirement village of up to 60 homes. Those are planning figures for the developed site, rather than the number we'd start with.

We're looking in Panama, with a preference for around 70 usable acres or more. We haven't secured land yet, and we still need to check how much land the food growing, buildings and other uses would actually require. Our earlier 50-acre minimum was a search filter, not proof that everything would fit.

On combining functions, I'd be interested in things such as using suitable plant residues from food growing for compost, and collecting roof water for uses that don't require drinking-water quality. A shared workshop could support the growing systems, buildings and everyday repairs.

Your greenhouse example is the sort of connection I mean, although in Panama we'd need to start with the local conditions and find where heat would actually be useful. Which combinations have you found worthwhile in practice, once the maintenance is taken into account?

Gabe Melondra wrote:Jay, the point about everything depending on one person is a good one. We could have spare pumps and controllers and still be stuck if the only person who understands the setup is away.

Part of the intention with Melondra is for people to learn several roles and pass those skills on. Someone may know a system best, but I wouldn't want them to become the only person who can look after it.

That would also be a useful test of the instructions: can someone who didn't build it follow them and deal with an ordinary fault? If not, there's still work to do, however well the system runs when its designer is around.

This is a very important point that I've run into. One of the communities I've been involved in was started by a super high-energy solo founder who would just do/build/make/run everything. The problem is that, at this point, he is the only one who can do 80% of the tasks. Even somewhat simple tasks are often blocked by only him knowing the exact details of how to do it, to what spec to do it, or, more fundamental.. where the tools are!

if you know you have the right tool, you just don't where it is on this 100 acre property.. you don't really "have" it. So everything in this community was blocked by having to ask him, often times multiple times for a single task or project, and he's busy with other stuff cause he's so high-energy and constantly moving forward with other things.

One of the reasons I ended up not staying at that community.

Would you even need a greenhouse in Panama? What about bio-gas production from the compost?  Founder Syndrome is real and that can screw up a good thing.

Do you think your property will have access to the ocean or other productive body of water?  If so, this would significantly simplify protein production. Fishing also has the benefit of bringing nutrients back onto the property to replace those lost through leaching, etc.

Your choice of a warm location solves a lot of challenges faced by us in colder climates.  Winter heat, winter animal feed, large amounts of preserving, frozen pipes, etc. all take a lot of time and energy to manage and often have us looking for higher tech solutions.  I’ve spent some time south of the border and things do seem quite a bit simpler.

Have you spent much time in Panama or a similar area?  If not, I think you will find simple, appropriate technology, for solving many issues with some local recon.  Look for projects conducted by NGO’s such as Heifer, Oxfam, etc.  They have a tremendous amount of experience with resilient methods and solutions.

As it is, I do my best to abstain from anything with a circuit board.  The aforementioned fence charger and the device I am typing on are the two I use the most.  My very limited power equipment (garden tractor, chainsaw, weedeater, push mower, water pump) are all gasoline powered.  I’ve flirted with the idea of an electric chainsaw, mainly for noise reduction, but I am not impressed with the battery lifespan (not operating time) reports I see.  2 strokes seem to be shorter lived, but a little bit of maintenance can keep a 4 stroke running for 20 years plus.  

My advise is to design your property with heavy constraints on tech, make it work without, then add a bit here and there, based on proven robust designs.

Experimentation is great, I’m glad there are people who love to experiment with tech, but robust resilience in design is usually something that comes late in the game, sometimes at the cost of complexity and resources.

Keep it simple.  The faster you can bring someone new up to speed on your system, the more sustainable it will be.

I am quite impressed with the simplicity and capability of the self contained power units made by companies such as Bluetti, Jackery, etc.  If they prove to be long lived (10 years+), I think they could be a huge asset to the sustainable off grid community.  If they fail after 5 or so, I’d probably just consider them another point of consumption.

Edited to add:  Just saw this on the Jackery website, the rapid advancement in this area is truly amazing!

“Jackery power stations last 8 to 16 years or 3,000 to 6,000 charge cycles for newer LiFePO4 models, while older lithium-ion units last about 500 cycles or 2 to 3 years.”

Gray Henon wrote:I am quite impressed with the simplicity and capability of the self contained power units made by companies such as Bluetti, Jackery, etc.  If they prove to be long lived (10 years+), I think they could be a huge asset to the sustainable off grid community.  If they fail after 5 or so, I’d probably just consider them another point of consumption.

Edited to add:  Just saw this on the Jackery website, the rapid advancement in this area is truly amazing!

“Jackery power stations last 8 to 16 years or 3,000 to 6,000 charge cycles for newer LiFePO4 models, while older lithium-ion units last about 500 cycles or 2 to 3 years.”

Yea, I have one myself. I think I've had it for 2 years now and it's functioned pretty much flawlessly. It can power a small fridge for 1-3 days depending on outside temperature. It can run power tools, even pretty serious ones, w/ about 3,000W peak output.

I think someone on here was making something like this himself.

The one thing, I think that while the "combination of battery/inverter/charge controller/outlets" form factor is nice for small to mid size applications, I think you start being better off once you get from the "small cabin w/ 12v power" to the "ADU or small house" level. At that point you don't need to scale the inverter or charge controller that much, but you probably want much, much bigger batteries. It's no longer required to be mobile if you charge from solar or a generator. You'll have breakers & separate wire runs for your outlets and switches anyway.

But for mobile utility, vehicle, or small cabin applications, these things are amazing.

Never really seen it discussed, but there are a few nice scaling efficiencies you get with animals and larger communities that actually reduce the need for equipment and tech.  

25+ish people can eat an entire animal (goat, pig, sheep, deer, etc) at once without the need for preservation.  Not only does this save on refrigeration and/or canning, but also plastic packaging.  Feasts also foster social relationships.

We have found it difficult to raise a butcher size hog solely on scraps/gleaned fruit drops, etc.  and have had to rely on intensively grown corn/soy to make up the ration.  4-6 families in a “pig club” can come much closer to feeding a hog out almost entirely on scraps, completely eliminating the need for cultivating a crop solely for animal feed.  Planting, harvesting, and maintaining soil fertility (compost, cover crops, etc) are all a tremendous amount of labor unless you are relying on complex mechanical equipment.

Many of the items you posted concerning self-sufficiency are among the most minor of the concerns. What you list is just sort of the get-started list. ~~There actually is no such thing as s-s. You need a tremendous amount of money to acquire the needed goods to (pretend) to be s-s. Then you need money income to pay the taxes so you get to keep the land you occupy.

But the biggest concerns to s-s is steel, weather and birth control. You need absolutely efficient birth control because babies grow to adults. Then you need to return to the acquiring mass goods to set up the s-s homestead for them. And there is no functioning system anywhere to does not require steel. That is something you cannot make -Somebody mentioned the Amish as a s-s example. BUT, they aren't. -Plow shares, buggy wheel rims, hand saws, anvils, hammers, nails, wheel bearings, sewing machines, horseshoes ... the list is endless of things they need and cannot make. And weather, climate, ground, soil, fertility are most important to s-s. You are not going to be entirely s-s with very poor dirt, lack of rain, too hot, too cold, too rocky. Poor growing conditions means much greater inputs to try to live. Not very s-s.

The best anyone can hope for is to be as self-contained as you can be, but you'll never be s-s. You'll need a good, reliable income source for the occasional broken arm, tax bill, buggy wheel. You'll need vast knowledge in every single aspect of daily living, you'll need a tremendous number of tools, just to produce clothes and can winter food supplies, capture/carry/store water, make rope, have fencing, roof a barn, ten thousand other things. You'll need a Midwife. An Herbalist. A blacksmith. Woodworker. Barrel maker. Gardener.

--We do all that. Have been doing it for 60 years. We have well over 100,000 tools. Many cabins for folks. Piles of scrap metal. More horse drawn equipment than most folks can imagine. Every single trade set up in its own building. Passed down family knowledge. We live on some of the best soil in the world, and the best weather possible (in my opinion). We're as close to being self-sufficient as you can get. ~And yet, there's the Amazon truck.

So, my advice is to stop dreaming of being self-sufficient. You won't do any better than the Amish (we have family and friends among them). Just do as much as you can, to get out of mainstream life as you can. --But be prepared for inter-acting with the tractor dealership on occasion.

Cave people were self sufficient with sticks and stones, at least enough to perpetuate the species.  

Sure, they dealt with high infant mortality, birthing mortality, communicable diseases, starvation, harsh conditions, etc.

Our closest primate relatives still survive in the jungle with no other tech or tools other than sticks and rocks.

What they two had in common was a large, functioning, ecosystem.  Without it, there is no way.

It can be done, with tech almost anyone could understand.  Everyone just needs to accept the fact that there will be bad, very bad, times, on occasion.  Perhaps even frequently.

I was in my early twenties when I realized and said, “It would be easier to start over in a mud hut, than it would be to make what we have sustainable”.   I don’t feel any different today.

Thanks to some pretty nice tech, we can observe how some of most primitive people in the world still live.  It is spartan, on the edge at times, but amazing to witness.  Sustainability/ self sufficiency looks a whole lot more like tent camping than a suburb.  

With enough land (huge caveat), and willingness to accept increased hunger/mortality, I really believe a motivated group could achieve 90%+ self sufficiency.

Gray Henon wrote: With enough land (huge caveat), and willingness to accept increased hunger/mortality, I really believe a motivated group could achieve 90%+ self sufficiency.

Someone reported she once overheard a teenager from a mixed gatherer/privative farming family say, "Today's a good day. We get to eat."

Most of us really don't know how well we've had it since childhood. And despite a land of plenty, many of us didn't have it all that well - surrounded by junk food that fed us but didn't nourish us. I was *very* lucky that my mom figured out early that "modern" food wasn't what she should be feeding us, and we had very little of that.