Homestead diet plan

One thing i wish I had was a decent squirrel population here. We get alot of the little red ones, not worth a bullet IMO. Once in a while I'll spot a scrawny grey. No wild rabbit either but I keep my own. Some grouse and lots of turkey around though.

Ahhh, gotcha. What else do you grow for the chickens? Stock feed is one area we've not much tackled yet. The birds are fed off the land 100% through the growing season, pigs are reduced on their outside intake during that time, but winter is long and feed must be purchased.

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Well good luck. I will be pulling for you and please keep us informed how it is going. This will be very interesting and also a good lesson.

Olivehill, I feed corn and beans and also recycle any eggs not eaten. My chickens eat more eggs than me! They also free forage during the warm months. If my supplies run low I will buy bag feed, I'm not totally against it I just try to keep it to an absolute minimum.

Emdeengee, Thanks! I will keep checking in. I hope this lack of rain is not a sign of things to come this year or I could end up without much to show for my efforts. It'll still be a learning experience one way or the other.

May I ask what varieties of corn and beans you are going to plant? I've had good success with sweet corn but never tried a dent corn. Also, I am able to put up a lot of green beans but have never tried dry beans. I have 5 kinds of dry beans to plant this year (thank you, Martin!).

Potatoes, onions, garlic, squash, greens, all easy enough when the weather is kind.

This makes me think of the book "The Yearling", they really depended on the garden producing, and shooting game, it was a matter of life and death.

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I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.

Vinegar. I think that is something that you could make yourself and it is not only useful for preserving and flavouring but also for house cleaning. If you make it ahead of time - even if you have to use sugar - I think it would count in your homestead diet.


How to Make Vinegar

How to Make Your Own Vinegar: 6 steps - wikiHow

I think my biggest problem with doing this would be meat, I eat alot of meat and would have to cut that down alot before I could think of doing this, but the way these commercial slaughter shops are being run and the things they have been doing recently it maybe a good thing to do.

Maybe I'll be able to do it someday, just not this year, good luck as I am jealous even if you don't succeed your close to being able to. Thats more than I can say...lol

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We wouldn't have to give up much if we set that challenge for ourselves, already buy very little, but items we can't produce or grow here (bananas, for example). For milk, we would have to barter. Meats? We rock-n-roll for that, due to both being into fishing, DH into hunting, clamming, shrimping crabbing, and we can raise our own meat birds (will be doing that this year). We raised pigs this last year, still have plenty of pork, venison, chicken, salmon, cod, crab, and the list goes on. Our gardening nets plenty to feed us all year around (stubborn DH or I wouldn't ever need to buy fruits/veggies). We could even tap our Maples for some sweetener... We are on a gluten free diet, so could start growing our own alternatives, too. It wouldn't take much here to be producing just about everything, bartering a bit on the side for "extras."

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Darn

Remember to use the fish and deer (any animal even the rabbit) trimmings for the chickens. I would love to have gallons of what is called Fish slurry (think fish slime minue the chem) I have been known to freeze fish waste for winter feeding as I only have to put it in the freeze for a few months till the freeze happens.

This is a great blog by a guy that did what your thinking.

100 Meter Diet Plus More

Actually, all the animal/some fish waste went to "the pigs," after proper USDA cooking (pigs are Omnivores like us). DH saves the fish heads for crab bait... Since we won't be raising pigs this year, I'll remember to save all the trimmings for the chickens. Yep, contrary to what a lot of folks think, they are Omnivores, too!

We are fortunate and blessed to be just 5 minutes from the salt water of the Hood Canal, near where hunting is allowed, and have a boat w/paddles (we can carry that, but bring it down in the truck), a small 14 ft boat w/75hp motor that is fun, and now a 21 ft cabin cruiser (Glassply in great shape). DH has gone through it with a fine tooth comb, mechanically speaking, rebuilt the lower unit of the outddrive, worked on just about everything in that category. He will be done working on it in just a few weeks. We are excited to take it out and do some fishing (where it is open), soon shrimping, then crabbing... When DH mentioned he would like to build an Alaskan Bulkhead for it, I found a pic online, and DH would like to build it that way (sliding glass door type one with glass on both side, opening in the center). Our smaller boat will be sold, just waiting for a little warmer weather...

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Christie Acres
www.SequimForLife.com
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http://luxurywaterviewhomes.com/
SequimLiving@gmail.com

Why Oct? THere's a lot of eating to happen on a HS in the summer garden. Is it because of the grain harvest for your animals? I really hope you don't run out of food.

I planted jelly beans last year, but they never came up. Hope I can learn how to do it.

You could grow wild rice, couldn't you? Tastes better than the "polished" white rice.

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I don't know anything about wild rice, other than it needs "wet", right? I like wild rice but I usually have it in a blend with a couple of kinds of brown rice, from the natural foods bulk section. I never buy white rice, or white bread/pasta. I know that my diet is carb-heavy because I don't eat meat, but they are healthy carbs, I just need to limit them more than I do.

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I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.

Darn, maybe you can pick yourself up 6 to 10 stevia tranplants as a sugar substitute. I have four to six plants each year and I harvest and air dry enough leaves from to keep me until mid summer of the next year.

What about oats? oats might grow well up there. If you want to play around and experiment, I came across a clever little use for dry beans that the chinese came up with. They grind the dry beans into flower and use it to make cookies and other things. I had cookies made with the bean flour and it was good. Maybe you can play around and try to come up with a bread made from ground dry beans and ground sunflower seeds mixes together.

Corn is truckers favorite, thats a dent corn. I've found it to be very robust, much easier to grow than sweet corn. Beans are green pole beans and dry cattle beans.

I'm not familiar with 'stevia', does the plant have sugar in it's leaves? For bread, I'm thinking corn meal. I'm growing a lot of corn ( dent ) and I have a hand mill. I did it a few time last year as an experiment, it makes nice course ground corn like for gits or palenta. I could probably manage some sort of crude bread...maybe try to catch wild yeast? IDK worth a try though.

Most of the harvest will come throughout summer into fall. I plan to preserve all of it to have enough to get me through winter and spring of next year. Next summer I'll eat 'off the vine' and harvest enough to push me through oct.

I'm thinking it will be easier that way than eating into my harvest in summer. That puts a lot of strain and pressure to grow and harvest enough to both eat now, and preserve for the long winter. Also, I expect to go through a dietary adjustment period. I will probably feel hungry and alittle weak for a few months and I'd rather not feel that way when I'm working hard in the field.

PS, callie...If I run out of food, then I will call an end to the experiment and go to Walmart for a steak and beer. Its not life or death. I am going to try to see it through though, and as long as I have food in my pantry and I'm feeling relatively healthy I'll keep at it. Whatever happens will be a learning experience, and I'll be wiser the next time. I often believe I can grow my own food and survive if I had to...but can I really?

let's find out.

Stevia is a plant that has extremely sweet leaves. Many people use it for sweetening things instead of sugar - better than the chemical alternatives as it's totally natural and has been used for a very long time in some areas of the world with no known side effects. It's a tropical plant. The leaves have a little bit of a green taste but it's not a bad taste. We buy the extract (no green taste with the extract) and that's all we use to sweeten beverages. It doesn't do well with heating - looses it's sweetness - but I recently read that if the temp stays below 400 that it doesn't break down too much.

In the book I mentioned earlier in the thread, the author grows meal corn, which is what truckers fav. would be, and also flour corn. Not sure but I think she grows a third variety for something else. She can't eat gluten so all her bread type products she makes from corn.

Wonder how people in the old days made baking powder or something like it that would rise quick breads like cornbread? Did they only make flat breads if they didn't have a rising agent?