I am reading an excellent book right now that I'd like to put on your radar. It is Henry Loucks, The Great Conspiracy of the House of Morgan and How to Defeat It. It contains a great description of self-sufficiency, kind of like Tudor Monastery Farm. Loucks is writing in 1915:
I write of conditions in a well settled section of Eastern Ontario, near Ottawa, the capital of the Dominion of Canada, and I assume that to a great extent the same was true of all the Northeastern and New England states. Home production and barter was the rule, and the medium of money the exception.
Farm tenants were very few. I do not now recall one in the two large townships with which I was familiar. I do remember well, though, that the farmer who had a mortgage on his farm had lost caste in the community, and the one man in the community who held most of the mortgages was called a usurer, and somewhat of an ogre. He had few friends.
Now for my own family experience. We raised our own wheat, and took it to the custom mill my grandfather had built and for each bushel of wheat dumped in the hopper my cousin took out one gallon; the rest we took home as flour, bran and shorts.
We had our own maple sugar bush, as most of our neighbors had, made our own syrup and sugar, and some to spare. Of course we raised our own vegetables. Wild berries of several varieties were abundant, and with a large family (I am one of twelve) we always had an abundance of fruit.
Instead of canning, we dried for winter use. Coring apples and stringing them up to dry, and ringing pumpkins for same purpose, was an evening pastime in season.
We raised our own meat, and feasted on venison in season; fish close by and abundant. When we did not have tame bees, we could find bee trees, and had plenty of honey. For the table all we lacked was a few groceries, for which we exchanged farm products.
For clothing, there was comparatively little bought at the store, and such as was, was paid for with some farm product. We had our flock of sheep, and father and we boys had a suit annually, of all-wool cloth. The tailor would come to the house and fit out the men folk, taking some farm product home for his own family use.
Mother and the girls had their good warm flannel clothes, one-half wool and half cotton, no shoddy. For footwear, we usually had one or more hides, which we took to the village tannery, and in due time received one-half of the tanned leather, ready for the shoemaker, who in season brought his bench to the house and remained until the family were all shod, and he was paid for his labor in large part, if not wholly, in barter.
We raised our own flax, and had our home-made linen for table, bed and clothing. For summer wear we men folk had nice home-made straw hats for week days, and fine hay hats for Sunday.
I do not claim that every family was so fortunate, for mother was an exception as a mother and housekeeper, but the system of barter was the same for all.
Taxes were light. The school teacher boarded around among the scholars, and we had not then developed the science of graft in public affairs.
Don't be put off by the word conspiracy in the title; it's an excellent book on how wrong it is for our money to be supplied by a private corporation for private profit. The key sentence so far is: Can Congress by legislation, delegate a power reserved in the constitution as a public function[the power to coin money in Article I.8], to a private business to be operated for private profit ? I find it very disturbing that most people don't realize that our money is not issued by the US government, but by banks. See the following videos for how this is done.
I recommend all the videos in the Peak Prosperity Crash Course. It really is not possible to understand Texas/American Government or History without understanding this issue of money, which is central to it all.
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