What are /r/SelfSufficiency's favorite Products & Services?

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I have not done this but I have seen what I think is a flat fucking ingenious design here in Austria. As stereotypical with Austrians it's over engineered... and we have a large firm locally who deals with impeller design... so I would have a hard time claiming a normal human could do this a get similar results. However the idea is so good, everyone should have a look!

http://www.zotloeterer.com/

Also Google Translates this into English fairly well

The Millionaire Next Door. It taught me that it's the people who SAVE, not the people who SPEND, that become financially self-sufficient. Being self-sufficient has many facets; it's hard to be self-sufficient when mired deep in debt.

Brochure here.

More pics here.

>"There's a lot of meaning built into the phrase 'buy now,'" Perzanowski said. "It's not saying 'rent now.' It's not saying 'gain conditional access.' It says 'buy,' and that means something very specific to most consumers -- something that, in the case of digital content, isn't true."

This is such a good point.

I do the following to improve my "ownership and privacy"

1. I use Calibre to manage my digital library.

2. Use the DeDRM plugin on Calibre to remove the DRM from anything I buy on Amazon.

3. I download many of my books and music through torrent sites (even after I have bought it online) so I have a stored version.

4. I keep a backup of all my ebooks and music on a local network storage with offsite backup.

5. I keep my kindle in "air-plane mode" for better battery life and better pivacy.

thank you so much! We really appreciate feedback like this, it makes the countless hours we put into this all worth it!

by the way, we also have a campaign running right now developing a sustainable food production model and book, Food Web: http://www.indiegogo.com/foodweb

We'd appreciate you contributing and sharing with your friends! Every little bit helps!

Start with this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Garden/dp/1890132276/ref=asc_df_1890132276/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=266037656293&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13938220152505893121&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hv...

Absolutely understand the desire, and this Winter there are going to be food shortages - so this is a wise decision overall. My advice (for now) is to look into food preservation, you can stockpile an exceptionally large amount of food in a trivial amount of time...

My grievance with hydroponics is purely based on nutrition and a kind of primitivism.. in a survival situation nothing else matters except calories, mostly, so I endorse it if you are restricted by space.

If you enjoy gardening then there’s no reason you wouldn’t enjoy the art of seed saving. It’s a vast topic but an easy in is via this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Back-Garden-Seed-Saving-Vegetable/dp/1899233156

…and the bible on the topic (which I believe somebody else has mentioned) is:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seed-Techniques-Vegetable-Gardeners-Gardener/dp/1882424581

Good luck and have fun!

You might check out some of the build instructions for Kivas, a traditional adobe oven in the southwestern USA.

I live in Jacksonville, FL and the humidity usually drops below 80% around 9:30AM. Second highest average humidity major city in the US. Lowest humidity over the last eight days, 49%, 60%, 55%, 43%, 44%, 57%, 52%, 55%. A Wunderground weather station. Not Arizona, but the humidity doesn't stay at 99% all day.

I just finished a new floor plan for an off-grid home. I'm still sticking with the earth-berm construction idea, but have added in elements from earthship, such as using tires and a moisture barrier in the exterior walls and cans/bottles in the interior walls, and, not mentioned in the plans, but included on my list of things to do, is to have a sloped concrete roof (over soil) that drains into a series of water cisterns for rainwater collection. Also on the roof, I'll place the solar hot water heater and any extra solar panels that do not fit into the front of the home.

The new plans are here: https://imgur.com/meQEo (edited for new image with better toilet placement) You may have to zoom in to see the drawing details.

Unfortunately ProtonMail actually makes users less self-sufficient. ProtonMail is a proprietary mail system, and according to this knowledgebase article, the only way to export your mail is to do it manually one at a time. So if ProtonMail dies suddenly your mail goes with it, and you can't do any kind of automated backups along the way. They do not offer IMAP/POP access to your mailbox, so the only way to access your mail is through their web interface. These problems make it hard for users to migrate to any other mail provider (including self-hosted) which makes your mail very dependent on their company.

Additionally, the procedure for sending secure mail to non-ProtonMail users is very clunky, and unless your friends are all software developers who work in the encryption industry they simply will not use it. Fortunately ProtonMail allows you to send non-encrypted mail to non-ProtonMail users... though that kind of defeats the purpose of using ProtonMail.

ProtonMail also does not allow users to create their own keys. This means that ProtonMail has complete access to and control of your data. Nobody should encrypt their data with keys they did not create personally.

Lastly, ProtonMail does not support any of the existing public key encryption for email. This means that in order for ProtonMail to achieve the critical mass required to make it worthwhile, you not only have to convince non-technical users to use it, you also have to convince technical users to drop their current encryption and switch to it.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of end-to-end encryption for email, I just don't think ProtonMail is it.

This is the cracker we got, but still, even getting em open wasn't an easy process. Then we spent hours picking through the pieces to get the meat.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B014EDN05A/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_search\_asin\_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Then you will love this book! We read this book back in my environmental classes and it really illuminated why we have these backwards modern ideas toward nature in the US.

I don’t know where you live but it discusses the origin of the concept of the lawn itself. Peasants manicured lawns for landlords’ manors in feudal Europe and we just... kept doing it???

Break free from your chains! Abandon the lawn and embrace local habitats!

A little off topic but I picked up this manual coffee grinder and it's awesome - https://www.amazon.com/JavaPresse-Grinder-Conical-Brushed-Stainless/dp/B013R3Q7B2/

This from Amazon is $99 and comes with bottom grate & side racks.

TMS Portable Military Camping Wood Stove Tent Heater Cot Camp Ice-fishing Cooking Rv

The stove body is a one-piece cylinder, requiring no assembly.

I am using the arduino to control everything that is controlled, including to monitor temp and control the turner timer.

Humidity is definitely controllable as long as I can find/build something that can put out enough moisture to raise the humidity - but also be turned off equally as effectively. Currently I'm planning on using a ultrasonic mister. (https://www.amazon.com/AGPtek-Aluminum-Fountain-Machine-Atomizer/dp/B00P91ZFPA) I'll post again to show the results of that.

2,100 Asanas: The Complete Yoga Poses https://www.amazon.com/dp/1631910108/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_kYTuyb1GRH3J1

I love this book. I dog ear poses that look fun, may feel good, might challenge me. You can learn the progression and make your own flow.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Coroporation actually commissioned a book on passive solar housing - Tap the Sun. Check whether your local library can get it in for you, as mine could.

I can't find my Kill-A-Watt right now, but some back-of-the-napkin math would suggest it should be about 70 watts total consumption. At 12 hours per day it should average about 25kWh per month, which, around here (WA), would be about $2.80 per month cost.

>"How hard can this be? Let's give it a go."

I love this statement.

Like the other posters said, just pick something and take it back from automatically showing up at your house. You don't have to raise and slaughter your own cows, but you could do small things that make you more self sufficient.

Beyond food, what do you know how to do yourself? Can you maintain your car (oil, brake pads etc)? What home maintenance can you perform yourself?

I use this book a lot. I don't do all the things in the book, but it gives me ideas on what I can learn to do myself. :)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Modern-Day-Pioneer-Simple-Century/dp/B00DPNV6A2