Benefits of living a self-sufficient lifestyle

This is exactly the world Benoni Agricultural Holdings resident, Elsabe Booyens and her family, live in.

For the past three years, the family has been cooking meals using their own home grown ingredients, bottling their own preserves and jams, baking cakes and biscuits for all occasions, and raising chickens, lambs, pigs and cows.

Some benefits of this lifestyle include:

• Improving your family’s health by eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. The vitamin content of home grown produce is at its highest when food is eaten straight from the soil.
• Saving money on groceries. Your grocery bill will shrink as you start harvesting your own fresh produce. A packet of seeds costs less than a packet of tomatoes, and if you buy heirloom, non-hybrid species, you can save the seeds from the best produce, dry them, and use them the next year. If you learn to dry, can, or otherwise preserve your summer and autumn harvests, the benefits increase.
• Reducing your environmental impact. If you grow your food without pesticides and herbicides, you’ll reduce air and water pollution.
• Getting outdoor exercise. Planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting add purposeful physical activity to your day. If you have kids, they can join in, too and learn to follow in your footsteps.
• Enjoy better-tasting food. There is no comparison between the flavour of fresh, organic home grown food and store-bought food.
• Building a sense of pride. Growing your own food is one of the most rewarding and responsible things you can do.
• Food safety. When you responsibly grow your own food, you don’t have to worry about the contamination that may occur elsewhere.
• Reducing food waste. South African households throw away about R5 000 worth of food per household each year. If you have grown your own food you will be less likely to waste.

This article was sponsored by Real Food 4 Real People Market. Visit their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter.