Self-sufficiency

This is the horticultural area of Los Horcones. We plant in beds.

The economy of Los Horcones is oriented toward self-sufficiency. We want to be as economically independent from the outside society as possible.

By wanting to be more self-sufficient we are not rejecting the goods and services from the outside society, it is simply a practice we consider very important for the survival of any community, city, state or country.*

*A world with cities and towns where its members produce a great part of what they consume to us would be a better world in many aspects.

Every town should be as self-sufficient as possible.

We are partially or totally self-sufficient in various aspects.

Los Horcones is financially self-sufficient. We have obtained the money to finance Los Horcones with our own labor and not from an institutional sources.*

*Recently, in October 1997 the Mexican government has helped us with some of our construction projects because at Los Horcones people with scarce economic resources can learn working skills. Thus, one of the social help activities of a Walden Two community is work training consisting of teaching pre-occupational and occupational skills.

We built this pond to raise catfish and tilapia.

Los Horcones is partly self-sufficient in food. In different seasons we are more self-sufficient in vegetables and fruits than in other seasons. For many years we were self-sufficient in milk and products derived from milk. Next year (1998) we have plans to increase our food self-sufficiency. A recently acquired piece of agricultural land will help us achieve this objective.

This is the Tangerine & orange orchard, it has about 32 fruit trees and in an older orchard we have 25 grapefruit trees and 10 lime trees.

We have about 200 chickens for eggs and meat. Usually children pick up the eggs and help an adult to feed them. This picture though was taken when most chickens were changing feathers.

We raise rabbits and feed them partly with alfalfa we grow. We eat their meat, sell it occasionally or sell small rabbits as pets.	Baby pigs. In Los Horcones pigs are fed with the whey left over from cheese-making and food leftovers from the kitchen and vegetable garden. We eat some and sell or exchange the rest.

Although we eat some, we keep these noisy turkeys more for fun and ornament than for meat production.

We make our own granola, whole wheat tortillas, bread and muffins.We also sell these products as a source of income.	We also make fig or citrus marmalades and herb vinegars.

Insert picture of the apple orchard

Los Horcones is self-sufficient in elementary, middle and high school education. We have a school and many members are teachers. We home schooled the first generation of children born here.

We are not obsessive in achieving self-sufficiency because we know it largely depends on the number of members who form the community.When there were 50 members we could be a lot more self-sufficient than we could be with 20.

If we had 500 members this Walden Two community could have a hospital, more schools, shops, etc. We could achieve a higher degree of self-sufficiency in the production of goods and services.

Please do not expect Los Horcones to be a totally self-sufficient community. We buy many things that we do not produce.

Come and help us become more self-sufficient

Solar water heaters and other solar energy collectors,used in the laundry building. This, besides saving us gas which costs money,is more ecological.

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Last up-date: December, 2002

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