What we hope to always have and have growing...Self Sufficient

[secuono]

We are hoping to expand our garden this year as well as make sure we can grow so much of certain things to stock pile.
They are; potatoes, corn, cucumbers and pumpkin. The first three will be for us, pumpkin will be stored to feed the livestock. Will also be growing a lot of tomatoes, peas, leafy veggies and peppers. I'll be selling what I can and rest will be for the livestock again.

We also breed livestock; I breed to sell and butcher sheep, pigs and rabbits. Pigs are new, so we won't have any for awhile. Sheep we got a year and a half ago, last lambing season, we had only one ewe lamb born and 4 ram lambs. One ram was black and white, we kept as a pet until we sold him 3mo ago. Rest easily sold, so we ended up having no lamb last year for the freezer. Hoping we have many lambs this year, half ewes for breeding and the rest rams, all but one will be sold. Hopefully.
We've been eating rabbits for about a year and recently, I have been culling and bringing in new, better stock. We are always expanding on the rabbits, just like sheep, we love them and they are so easy to care for.

Our chickens are only for eggs and to be cute pets, I had them for meat, too, but that was not worth it. I had Pekin, but fed them like pets and they ended up not fat enough to eat. I may try that again either this year or next and this time, darn near free feeding them.
The livestock also feeds our dogs and cats, mainly the LGD.

I'm expecting a lot from our small farm, hobby farm, whatever you want to call it. But hopefully things work out. Surprisingly, my fiance agreed with me that he would like it if we could have our own meat and veggies and no longer need to buy from the store. Never expected that from him, he's more of a city boy. We both grew up in the suburbs, but I've always wanted to work with animals and to live calmly and free, so this is as close as I can get to that. Found out solar is actually NOT worth it money-wise, so I abandoned that real quick. But our electric fence is solar, very, very worth it.

I eat meat, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, pickles and corn. I'm a very picky eater! Everything else is not for me. But the cucumbers, we turned into pickles this past fall and OMG, we both fell in love with our vinegary pickles, they are amazing. We ran out and bought a store jar, total crap! Our family also fell head over heels for ours! There are only the two of us, we both eat very little in a sitting. Fiance hates left overs, I can eat them for about 3 days straight or for every meal for two days before I am beyond over it. So I need to find a way to make fresh food in small amounts without spending all my time in front of the oven!


Anyone else hoping to expand and grow more this year?
Anyone have dish ideas that are easy to make from my listed items for two adults??

 

[897tgigvib]

I notice you did not mention dry beans or flour corn.

I think the two of you are doing a great thing more folks should do!

Yes, grow what you like to eat, but also broaden your palate some.

The solar power is a large investment to jump into, but if you add one panel to a battery to operate a few led strips at a time, it is a doable thing. big power gobblers can wait.

Bountiful gardens, (google it), has a good number of sufficiency type varieties and crops.

Keep up the great work!

 

[baymule]

Secuono, I grew my first carrot this year http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=35062
and I have been making carrot salad. Grate a carrot, mince up broccoli or cauliflower or both, add a handful of nuts, a handful of golden raisins, a dollop of Miricle Whip and stir it all together. It is good, goes together fast and if you keep it small, you won't get tired of it before you eat it all.

Stir fry is easy to make and you can use what you raise. Cut up bite size peices of meat, marinate overnight. Cut up your favorite vegetables, what ya'll can eat in one meal. Saute the meat, add veggies and stir until slightly done. Serve over rice.

 

[secuono]

I cannot grow carrots, I also hate them. As a kit, my dad used to make carrot juice and make us drink it, so now I hate it.
I used to only eat meat and potatoes until I met my fiance. Now I eat broccoli, cauliflower, shrimp and in small amounts; onions & peas.

I am on a solar forum and I asked straight out, they told me every 5-7 years, you need new batteries and cost of solar panels as well, it really is either equal or cheaper to use your electric company. I would love to hook up solar w/backup for certain things, but for the real power suckers, we now have a gas generator for the power outages, will stay with the company.
Our water is well water, would like that on solar so it always works. Want the pond, aquariums and other hobby items on solar. Solar electric fencing is a godsend or atheist-w/e-send, if we had it hooked to our AC, my pony would of busted out so many times.

 

[baymule]

So don't use carrots, make a broccoli/cauliflower salad. Use the things you like in different combinations and with different seasonings. You will figure out how to portion the ingredients to make a meal for the two of you.

 

[Jared77]

If your looking at aquariums it might be worth looking into aquaponics. If done correctly or indoors you could have food year round. Fish, crayfish, and a ton of veggies. Growing in small amounts to keep what you want fresh and expanding over the summer to grow crops that will last all season like squash, and potatoes. Store those for the off season and your still eating better than anything at the store and a lot cheaper too. Granted you might be stuck to the grid at that point but you have to decide what your willing to give on.

 

[Carol Dee]

Good Luck Secuono, Our garden gets bigger every year. It is great to be able to buy less fron the store. About those carrots. If you can find some grown in the garden, fresh from the soil carots to try a bite. I think you might be really surprised! Like the pickles they are not what you remember.

 

[897tgigvib]

Sec, a self sufficient garden will also have edible perennials. (still working on my morning coffee and bleary eyed)

Things like Blackberries, Asparagus, Dwarf apple trees, Grapes, amd a lot of othere.

And then there are the skills. Some I am in process of learning like Grafting. Other skills I am already good at like propagating.

Propagating. It can mean almost or actually free plants. Things like, you see a Blackberry patch on the side of the road that really grows great and makes great berries. In spring you tuck some twigs of under the ground, and next winter you come back, cut it off from the mother plant, snip the growth back a bit, dig it up, stuff it in a sack with moist dirt, take it home and plant it.

I have backup tools for if the economy goes belly up and gas is suddenly a hundred dollars a gallon. Hand saws are the main thing. Those got to be sharp, especially if you ever get 57, and that tends to happen. Another free survival tool is humor

Easiest thing for a person to do is try to have another be able to share their flavor experiences. But in the case of fresh washed out of the garden carrots, well and rapidly grown, and the right variety, there is a fresh sweetness, a sweet crunchy nuttiness, and the way the teeth in the back munch them...might could give them a try...and if still no, extra treats for your beautiful bunnies. But I understand food pickiness. I'd be saying bleyeeech if someone were to try to describe what they thought was the pleasure of anchovies on an otherwise perfectly good pizza. I think I'd starve before eating a pizza with anchovies on it!

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Holy smokes, secuono, you have a big leg up on most of the world in your ability to be self sufficient. With the animals and gardens you could be very independent.

I think marshallsmyth hit the nail on the head with his reply. Beans would be a very good thing to grow for long term storage as well as nutrition. I also think his comment on broadening your palate is spot on as well. Picky eaters could starve in dire circumstances. One of the best pieces of advise I have received is to "grow only what you will eat" and not waste time and effort on things you will not eat. Having a narrow range of food certainly reduces ones nutrition in extremely hard times.

Leafy greens are among the easiest and quickest things to grow and among the most nutritious. They are, however, difficult to keep for long term storage.

Overall I think you are in good shape for becoming self sufficient.

I tinkered with solar power for a while several years ago. There are places for it that do well but for an individual household to expect full power from solar is, in my opinion, not recommended. Too expensive, too complex, and minimal return for the dollar. But I wholeheartedly recommend passive solar assistance to heating needs. A well designed and well built solar collection "room" can practically heat your entire home on sunny days with very cold outdoor temperatures. I have several homebrew pop-can solar collectors that will discharge 140F air at 35F outdoor temperature. I have a homebrew solar dehydrator that works very well. I also have a solar bee's wax melter that works winter and summer.

One drawback to the passive solar approach is that the equipment needed is not always attractive enough to be welcome in (or on) today's homes. I want to put three pop-can collectors across our southern kitchen wall because our kitchen is the coldest room in the house and it's a big eat-in country kitchen. But Mamma says no way!

 

[Mickey328]

WTG, Sec! We're in the process of doing much the same thing. We're not prepping for a SHTF scenario, but are trying to get to where we have more control over what we put in our bodies by producing as much of our own food stuff as possible. We have just under a quarter acre and zoned as residential, so some things are beyond us completely, at least for now. We do have laying chickens (we're allowed 6), and have just added rabbits (hoping to breed mid April). While the actual square footage of our "garden" won't increase much, we plan on planting a LOT more edibles this year by the simple expedient of sticking them in the border areas with our flowers and shrubs. We live in an area where we would have to buy wood, so going to wood heat is just not feasible or cost effective for us. We'd love to be able to have a couple dwarf goats for milking, but again...zoning restrictions We do hope to "sneak" in a couple very small batches of meat chickens this season, and perhaps next year we can get in with a couple other folks to grow out a calf on grass for beef. I've formed a FB group for our area in the hopes that others in circumstances can get together to "pool our resources', both in knowledge and skills and even in equipment. Makes no sense for us to invest in a chipper, for instance...but if someone has one and would be willing to let us use it, we could have a "chipping bee" and all get our brush chopped while sharing it with the owner, or trading the service for some other goods we have.

DH and his former wife lived totally off the grid for 20 years and he really doesn't have the desire to go that far again...it's a LOT of work, and neither of us is getting any younger, LOL. There are small things we can do, though and every little bit helps. Our altitude is about 5000 feet and we get about 340 days of sun each year; the entire back side of our house is southern exposure. We've been looking at doing some solar...not for everything, but for a little boost here and there. I've found some really good sites online that have plans for building panels and other items yourself and as time permits, we'll be looking at some of those things and adding little by little. As an example, I found plans for a solar heating unit, made out of things that could all be acquired as scrap: some 2 x 8's, soda cans, a piece of glass, black paint and a small fan...like off a computer. The person who posted it said he was able to raise the temperature in the room by about 3 or 4 degrees. Doesn't seem like much but if you did a number of similar things, it could add up to quite a savings.

Besides eating fresh, most of the things we'll grow this year will be for canning, freezing or dehydrating...to get us through the winter. I've grown beans before, but usually just ate them fresh through the season, so never put that many in. Same for peas and carrots. This year will be my first ever trying to grow enough to last us...so lots and lots of them I'm kind of excited to try it all and see how it goes. I'd really love it if we could get to the point where we only had to buy stuff we can't make ourselves...like coffee! LOL

So, kudos to you and good luck to all of us!