Feeding yourself doesn’t mean disappearing into the woods or living by candlelight. It means shortening the distance between your work and your food. Most people think “self-sufficiency” means living in isolation with a generator and a bunker, but that’s marketing. What you actually need is a system that produces something real and returns value back to you instead of draining it out.

Food is the first reason most people stay where they are. Every system knows it. You can quit a job, sell a house, or cancel a subscription, but you can’t stop eating. That’s the point of control.

Fall mums are the pumpkin spice lattes of the garden world: convenient, cute, and completely disposable. The cycle to buy, display, and toss keeps us spending money while quietly harming the environment. They look perfect for a few weeks, but that perfection comes at a cost to the planet and pollinators.

What should you plant instead? Asters are the real fall flower. They thrive naturally, return every year, and actually serve a purpose beyond porch décor. Where mums mark the end of a season, asters keep it alive.

When we wrote about What We’re Listening To a lot of people responded. So we figured we’d do the same with what we’re reading right now.

When we want something to read, we go to the library. The library is public infrastructure. It already belongs to the people who use it. You walk in, take what you need, and bring it back when you’re done. No purchase, no algorithm, no permanent data trail. It’s free because it’s supposed to be.

Every business wants to look local now. Even the big ones. They pair with breweries and bakeries. They run joint giveaways with boutiques and food trucks. Your favorite coffee spot teams up with a bank. Your favorite candle shop pairs with an insurance agency. They call it collaboration, like it’s some kind of neighborhood potluck.

It’s not generous. It’s not selfless. It’s survival.

This is not a mop bucket. It’s a clothes washer. It’s not convenient. It’s not fast. It’s not impressive to look at. It’s something better. It’s available. It works without asking anything from you. No electricity. No coin slot. No locked lid or error code demanding a technician.

People are rushing into crypto because it dangles the promise of escape. Fast money. Control. Freedom from the same banks and governments that hold the leash. But look closer and you see the same old trick: a system that farms you while pretending to liberate you.

Alexys has been living with Multiple Sclerosis for nearly a decade, and it shapes every part of our farm. Our happy animals, beautiful gardens, and daily rhythms are rooted in countless choices we’ve made to build a life that allows us to thrive despite our daily challenges.

When we have free time, the stereo goes on. Not streaming, not playlists, but CDs. We don’t listen to them because it’s trendy or because we’re clinging to nostalgia. We listen to them because when we buy a CD, we own it. The music doesn’t vanish if a subscription ends. The money goes straight to the artist instead of being shaved down to fractions of a cent. And the album sits on our shelf where we can pull it down and hear it the way it was made.

Fall is the season for slow fires. When the nights cool down and the air sharpens, it is time to fire up the smoker. Rabbit takes smoke beautifully, and this recipe is one of the simplest ways to turn what you’ve raised into a meal meant for cool evenings and crisp days.

Heat is survival. Without it, a house is just walls against the cold. On this farm we learned that lesson in our first years here.

Disclaimer: This post describes the process of slaughtering and butchering a rabbit. It contains graphic details that may not be suitable for all readers.

Processing a rabbit is one of the most direct ways to reclaim food from the system and put it back into your own hands. When done correctly, it is fast, clean, and respectful to the animal.

Our newest doe, Navy, carries both her name and her coat like a badge of her lineage. She was born from our herd buck, Radish, and her mother, Beans, short for Black Bean. Her name, Navy Bean, comes partly from her mother and partly from her beautiful blue-gray coat. Her slate-blue coat is striking, but it is more than color that made us hold on to her. She is the combination of two temperaments we consider the foundation of a good rabbitry.

When it comes to raising animals for meat, most people put up a wall. They don’t hold them, they don’t talk to them, they don’t get too close, because it makes the end easier.

We’ve chosen the opposite. Our rabbits are held, talked to, and given love every day.

In our last newsletter we asked a question:

If money and policies disappeared, and all we had was land and food, how would you care for your community, not just yourself or your family but everyone around you?

The days are shrinking, the sun sets sooner, and the season is drawing to a close. For us that does not mean the work is over. It simply shifts from tending plants and animals outside to stacking, storing, freezing, canning, and tucking away the food that will carry us through the winter. This is the point in the year when every bit of energy invested in the farm pays off. The freezers are filling, the shelves are lined with jars, and the pantry becomes its own kind of insurance policy.

When everything feels unstable, people look for anchors. Markets collapse, currencies lose ground, corporations tighten their grip. The systems that tell you they can protect you are the same ones that profit when you are dependent. Real stability comes from something they cannot print or inflate: land.

I was diagnosed with PTSD recently. Not from war. Not from disaster. From work.

Most people think self-reliance starts with a big jump. Buy land, plant a huge garden, get animals, and flip the switch overnight. That’s the fastest way to fail. You don’t start by betting everything on skills you’ve never tried. You start small, because every mistake costs less when the stakes are low. Dabbling is how you find out what actually works for you, what you’re willing to keep doing, and what falls apart in practice.

At Carlton Hill Farm we make use of every part of the rabbit. Nothing goes to waste because each piece has value, whether it ends up on our table, in the garden, or feeding our animals who live and work alongside us.