Living “Sustainably” means lots of different things to people. When the Mad Farmer came up with the name ‘Tiny Sustainable Life’ for the blog, I am pretty sure he was thinking about tiny houses, growing food, and relying less on external inputs and generating fewer outputs – very permaculture-y. We have had a bit of a fumbling start as we navigate our version of sustainability. Whether you read about it, hear a podcast about it, or see something in the media, sustainability is a popular word at the moment. To me sustainability seems to be a huge, somewhat subjective, topic. One person’s sustainability may be another person’s hot button issue.
Here at our little homestead we are choosing to look at sustainability through the lens of self-reliance. We may be fumbling about, but we are still doing it, albeit slowly. Growing food takes planning, time, patience and good weather conditions – which can be the wild card in Kansas. Sourcing your food so that you know more about where it comes from takes time. Sometimes you make do with what you have while you find a local source. Trying to buy fewer material things (except books) takes intentionality. All of these tiny steps we take as we work toward sustainability. Stewardship is often a word that comes to mind when I think of sustainability. Being a good steward of the resources available to help make sure they continue to be available seems a nice fit with sustainability.
The tiny sustainable steps you take may be very different than the ones we are embarking on, in fact; I hope they are. I hope you share your tiny steps with us as we share ours with you and we learn from each other. Whether you are trying to use less plastic, waste less food, be kinder to those around you – whatever your journey looks like and wherever it takes you, good luck! You don’t have to start big, but I do hope you start your own tiny sustainable steps.
