Let me paint you a picture. It’s a beautiful fall afternoon and the sun is beginning to set, shadows dancing on the rustling leaves of the ancient sugar maple trees that line either side of your wistfully winding dirt driveway. Perched on a hill, your simple home offers views of an accompanying few acres of land, a quiet spot where you rarely see more than a few cars pass by throughout the day. Your children run barefoot through the grass. The gardens flow with abundance, while free-ranging chickens scratch at the earth, a few pigs nuzzle the border of the woods, and a dairy cow lifts her head from grazing to meet your eyes in anticipation of her evening milking. With all of that nutritious milk at your fingertips, you’ve started making artisan cheeses, cultured butter, yogurt, and ice cream. What began with a few jars of homemade tomato sauce in the pantry has evolved into a full-swing root cellar storing crops that’ll last you most of the year. And you’ve even picked up knitting the sheep’s wool that you sheared in early spring to start making garments.
Chasing a taste of the good life – a self-sufficient life – you’ve become quite skilled in the process. As the outside world makes less and less sense (and feels less and less in tune with your ideals), you know that no matter what happens “out there,” you can provide what your family needs. So, at the risk of dashing that sense of homegrown security, what if I told you that the concept of “self-sufficiency” is a myth (and always has been)?
Dispelling the Myth
The image I painted may conjure visions of Little House on the Prairie, harkening back to a bygone era of rugged individualists who were able to do everything needed for survival. But the truth is that we, then and now, can’t do everything alone – nor should that be our ultimate goal.
As a homesteader, I’m aware of the myriad reasons that bring folks back to the land. Since the earliest days of the industrial revolution, multiple movements have prioritized a return to agrarian roots, and I reckon we’re at the forefront of another such movement. At the core of these movements is the desire to remove ourselves from the broken systems in our society. We want more nutritious food, more time with our children, and less stress. Amid a world of unknowns, we seek to reconnect with nature and to take our family’s health and safety into our own hands. And while we could all do with a well-stocked toolkit – solid cooking skills, knowing how to mend things that break, confidence to administer first aid – I’d argue we can’t truly deploy any of these tools alone. After all, pioneer folk paid money in exchange for certain goods, they bartered and traded labor and materials when necessary, and they had an intimate knowledge of the people who lived closest to them, relying on their neighbors during both difficult circumstances and celebratory occasions.
Let’s consider the concept of neighborliness. In a world that’s seemingly more divided and polarized by the day, many of us don’t know the people who live next door, let alone down the road or block. Yet, these are the folks who actually could lend a helping hand in the case of an emergency. Where have all the social dances gone? The grange hall suppers and book clubs? Social media has taken the place of social interaction. Our isolation breeds skepticism about humanity. The seeming expansiveness offered to us by the internet instead shrinks our worlds, contorting our egos through a sense of competition played out through endless scrolling.
I have to wonder: Don’t my neighbors also need food to survive? Don’t they breathe the same air I do when we step out onto our porches?
Interdependence Means Security
I’ve witnessed this pervasive distrust become an aspect of modern self-sufficiency – and it’s begun to rub me the wrong way. So many of our problems have been greatly exacerbated by people making decisions based on what they personally have to gain, with little regard for their neighbors. Every person has a neighbor, and every person is someone’s neighbor. And few of us (if any) are able to supply everything we need to thrive.
On our 14-acre homestead, my wife and I raise chickens, pigs, sheep, and geese. We milk a dairy cow, have a 1/2-acre garden, and are considering (at least for now) homeschooling our 3-year-old son. We jump for joy knowing that our freezers are full and we won’t need to purchase meat from the store. We share an exuberant high-five when the potatoes come out of the ground, the garlic is braided, and the fridges are stocked with butter, milk, cream, and cheese. These are incredible moments as homesteaders. They bring such a sense of rich achievement and comfort to our lives.
But for every bit of frozen protein or dried fruit, there’s something more we rely on from others. We still purchase wheat, oats, sugar, tea, and all sorts of luxury food items that make us happy. To meet the needs of our cherished dairy cow, we rely on Seth and Buddy to grow and harvest our hay. Nate comes by to artificially inseminate the livestock. We buy grain, alfalfa, and sunflower seeds from Andy, Scott, and Sheryl at the local feed store. These good people not only fill the gaps, but also enrich our experience. It’s with them, in part, that the concept of community sufficiency has taken root for me.
Road Map for Community Sufficiency
What is community sufficiency? I think of it as a group of people striving to achieve localized sustainability through interconnectedness and interdependence. In the process of opting out of broken systems, we’re able to create better, more life-serving solutions with the strength, flexibility, resilience, and efficiency of community.
Let me paint another picture. Your homestead garden has experienced unexpected problems this growing season. The potatoes you were going to rely on through winter were destroyed by blight. Fortunately, your milking cow is giving in excess. Your potato-growing neighbors didn’t experience the blight conditions you did, and because they don’t keep a cow, they’re delighted to trade with you.
Imagine instead that you don’t live in a location where you can grow your own food. On a walk through town, you see a flyer advertising community-supported agriculture (CSA) shares. After enjoying the CSA’s abundance for several weeks, you reach out to the farmers to see if they could use another hand next season. (They can!) Maybe you’re a baker, mechanic, brewer, doctor, or knitter. You’re a fisher, hunter, farmer, builder, teacher, or organizer. You’re a master mender or creative problem-solver, a robust visionary, or a practical doer. You’re a person who deserves to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled.
At its most basic, community sufficiency means creating local and reliable connections between the things you need and are unable to produce yourself and the people who can meet those needs. But more than a transactional regime, community sufficiency is about knowing your neighbors and offering and receiving support, knowledge, resources, and skills. It’s embracing the idea that we all make up humanity, we all deserve a healthy home and good food, and we’re all in this together, regardless of our backgrounds.
For these reasons, I’ve become a homesteader who no longer holds the ideal of self-sufficiency. Instead, I lean into the ideals of community sufficiency. In a wonderful world that has a plethora of problems, it’s become abundantly clear to me that a lonely fighter is a losing fighter. For our success as homesteaders (and our children’s futures), we’ll need to rely on each other for tackling our greatest challenges and revitalizing common ground.
So, to my fellow neighbors, I humbly outstretch a hand and lend a pitchfork: Who’s with me?
Nathaniel B. Munro is an agrarian writer and homesteader striving to live a deeper, more connected life with his family in Maine.
Originally published in the July/August 2025 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.
