Stop the Madness - Learn to Grow Food!

"Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way, we don't know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate, who before puberty, understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty, will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition, we have a elaborate rationalization instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle. I say, instead, that it is madness mass-produced." - Wendell Berry

I agree - now, let's stop the madness! Grow our own food, I mean. If you've never done it, start. If you've done it, do it some more. If you don't have a clue, then take a gardening class or at least buy a book about gardening. Or read a book that will motivate you as to WHY growing your own food is a good idea before you actually care to go out & learn how to do it...

Have you ever grown any of your own food? What was/is your experience with it?

There is something amazing (& absolutely essential, in my view) about learning to cooperate with nature & figure out how to get food out of a seed (or egg, or tree, or vine, etc.) and onto our plates. Pure magic!

A New Beginning

I quit my job. I'm going to work on self-sufficiency. I'm not doing this because I'm good at it, ready for it, or anything else that would say it will be successful. I'm doing it because it drives me. I have an insatiable desire to work harder than I've ever worked at something that will likely be more difficult than anything I've ever done. I have some skills. I have some chickens. And I have no idea what I'm doing. Welcome aboard!

New Babies!

Baby chicks, that is. :) I've had chickens off & on over the last several years. The laying hens we have now are a little over 3 1/2 years old, and we're down to 6 of the original 12 chickens. They're still laying several eggs a week, but I decided it's time for another bunch of the little cuties to come join our homestead. This time, I chose Buff Orpingtons because they're friendly, good mothers (I'm always hoping we'll get a rooster & be able to raise our own chicks), and good both for laying eggs and for roasting & eating. Besides that, they're really cute! I bought them last night; they're just two weeks old:

Garlic!

I planted garlic a couple of nights ago. This may not seem significant to you, so let me explain how cool this really is. Get excited! It is ideal to plant garlic in October, let it winter over, and then harvest it the following summer when the tops of the plants start to fall over. Each clove planted grows into a head of garlic (you just have to buy a head of garlic that still has little root hairs attached so the garlic is alive & will grow). Some of the garlic harvest can be saved to plant a few months later, and the rest can be eaten. Yum! I love garlic. Anyway, the cool part is  this: if I keep planting some of my harvest every year, I WILL NEVER HAVE TO BUY GARLIC AGAIN! I'll tell you that this is exciting, because I am really motivated by accomplishing things that are measurable and although I am still far from being self-sufficient, I realized that I can be self-sufficient in my garlic supply. I am incredibly happy about that. :)

Getting Started

This blog is about the journey I'm taking toward greater self-sufficiency. Read along, if you like, and live your dreams, too!

For years, I've dreamed of living self-sufficiently. I've read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and dreamed of what it might be like to produce all or most of the things we use right here in our own little space. Of course, they had more land and didn't have to have a "job" most of the time, so they had more time & space to devote to growing all their own food, raising their own animals, spinning wool into yarn and then weaving it into fabric & making clothes out of it, building their own houses, boiling down maple sap into syrup...as I am living in different times with different resources, my life isn't going to look like that. At least, not yet. ;)

As a child, I helped plant gardens, feed chickens, can vegetables & milk goats, and I learned how to cook. I'm glad.

As an adult, I'm learning to do some of these things "for real." I'm discovering that it's different when you're the grown-up instead of just "helping," but it's tons of fun either way!