The 90% ers

Yes, just handeling weight, I know what it weighs. I used to buy potatoes in 50lb bags, under 5 dollars a bag, I can get them right now for 10 a 50lb. This is potato country,as it is also know for sugar beets,beans(mostly soy beans),cucumbers,corn,Hay of all kinds especially Alfala,which we raise for our cattle. It should take about 5 monts to feed out a pig, variables ofcourse. Piggs would love milk and bread,eggs.

eta. I harvest my potatoes by pulling the tops,they are usally almost dryed uo. Then I sit on the ground and use a potatoe fork to go under the hills as much as I can so I'm not stabing potatos. If I do stab any,I toss them to the side and use asap. I can dig them and immeatly use a sprayer on a hose,the skins come right off for canning. The ones for storage go under a big tree and dry out, unwashed, a couple of days,then are packed in boxes with layers of newspaper.

Well, we're working on getting to 90%, but probably won't be there this year. This is really only our second year of being really serious about supplying most of our own food.

But here's the list so far:

Onions already started (plus some that are overwintering): Granex, Bridger, Redwing
Grean beans : Bush and italian
3 varieties of filet beans
3 varieties of drying beans
Limas
carrots
sweet corn
pop corn
ornamental corn
3 varieties of pickling cukes
1 variety of slicing cuke
eggplant
gourds
lettuce
scallions
shelling peas
snap peas
3 varieties of peppers
5 varieties of potatoes
pumpkins
shallots
spinach
2 kinds of zucchini
3 kinds of summer squash
3 kinds of tomato
tomatillos
watermellon (2 kinds)

Hannah90 -:

I saw this in the 2013 Irish Eyes catalog........

...........this catalog has some very detailed planting information, including: how many seeds needed for a 100 foot row and per acre. Planting distances and depth, plants per acre. Amount of food to grow for a family of 6, which includes how many lbs. to raise, quarts to preserve, yield per 100 foot row in lbs., etc. It covers the main veggies, although does not show swiss chard, so I would probably use spinach as the amounts. It's quite nice......

Pigs are the easiest animals after chickens. Get your feeder (he will probably weigh more like 75# by the time he is ready to leave mom) in early spring, for us that is april and feed him just like you said. He will weigh 250# by october when it is time to butcher which is perfect weight to put in the freezer. After 250 most of the weight a pig gains is fat. We even do our own butchering and figure pork cost us less than $.60 a pound and boy does it taste gooooood.

Thanks for the info on pigs and vegetable poundage!

I just put my onions in. i have never started onions from seed. I don't know if this is going to work. I had an old pine box I drilled drainage holes in. Put 3-4 inches of starter mix in, added water. Sprinkled seeds over it, then covered with vermiculite. I have two heat lamps perched on the edge of the box. I also covered the seeds with plastic wrap. I felt pretty good about this... until I realized I have NO idea what to do when it's time to transplant. Crap.

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“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

you guys have given me some real food for thought (pun intended) I am re-working my plan on paper. I am coordinating my menus with my garden and meat plan. For example, my menu will only include things I can locally raise or barter for. I won't plan for fish shipped in from far points of the planet - except maybe salmon, might as well have my salmon as long as I can afford it.

I am so excited about this!

One question: I have noticed a couple of mentions of starting onions from seeds. I have never done this successfully. What do you do that insures your success? Thanks

PrairieBelle

I couldnt get onions carrots ect to sprout well UNTILL I started covering them and that kept them damp and the buggers sprouted. Of course this means you got to check on them everyday,

Got some of my seeds ordered - noted that somethings are already sold out! So best get a movin if your oredering seeds. I tried White Mari sweet corn last year - I wont grow anything else ever again. It was fantastic, if you like white super sweet corn this is the corn you want.
Im adding 75 June bearing strawberries and some more grapes. Also going to put a few more raised beds in - I found they dont get the rabbit distruction the regular garden does. So Im putting my lettuce broccili and other veges rabbits like in them.

Potatoes - Ive found you get about 30lbs per 5lbs planted [if that helps your figures] Beans -green 30 ft row will feed two people all year. Peas [sugar snap] 60 foot of them does it for the two of us. Carrots beets a 30 foot 2 ft wide row is plenty. Squash winter - I either have to much or to little So I put in 4 hills of each kind I like. Peppers green 8 plants hot 4 of each. Tomatoes - I dunno I always have to many Im only doing 12 plants - thats what I did last year, 4 plants stayed in the greenhouse and I got maters till Christmas.

We have Apple peach and pear trees, and wild blackberries - which precludes me ever growing rasberries. Blueberries dont do well where Im at either Ive tried several times over the years.

Got 4 hens and a rooster too

I found onions from seed take too long for me, NY.

I start Onions in a flat container,seeds very close in the greenhouse. Take them apart and plant single in a row when it's time to go in the garden. Easy to keep moist like this.

Still have a potatoes up here in 50 pound bags for $6.50 in Standish.

I'm going to pretty much stick to our usual stuff but there's only 2 of us & I still have plenty to share with family & friends after putting up what we need.

My usual is
Tomatoes
cucumbers
Butternut squash
sweet dumpling squash
acorn squash
Summer squash
zuchini
egg plant
onions
potatoes
assorted sweet, mild & hot peppers for salsa & Bells for eating & cooking
Turnip greens

I want to try sweet potatoes again, been a couple years & last time they did terrible for me so I hated to waste the space.
Also thinking of adding a few Blackberry bushes & would Love some sweet kind of sweet seedless grape.

We also have a small orchard although last years early warm weather zapped our buds so we didn't get a single piece of fruit.
I have strawberries & everbearing red raspberries too

So... there is a question building in my mind. How do ya'll USE the food you grow. Most of what is coming from the ground is vegetables. I don't know about you guys, but I don't go out to my garden in the morning and pick vegetables and eat them all day long.

So, what do you do? Do you plan meals out? I know many folk take about half of what they grow and "put it by." But it seems like for me there is always a time in there, usually in august, where I just have WAY too much of everything. This year I am going to try to sell more, but I don't know how well that is going to go.

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“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

I do give some away,feed the chickens and the cows like the extra corn,squash,pumpkins. Because of crop failure, I do put up more than I can use in one year. Many things like extra strawberrys, rasberrys ect. go right into the freezers,I'll wait until things slow down to deal with it. The easyest tho is to just put it in a gallon jar and make wine.I also dehydrate. I do sell plants in the spring when devideing herbs and prennials. Extra seedlings, I give away. Right now, I'm canning up last years Kidney beans, that helps heat the house on real dreary days, and the beans won't get too hard.

I can understand having a lot of beans, potatoes, squash. You can practically make meals out of those sorts of things. Tomatoes are a staple for us as we eat a lot of spaghetti, chili, and things of that sort. So, paste tomatoes never go to waste here. Slicing and cherry tomatoes tho... I can only eat so many of those. Same with salad greens. For one thing, I haven't figured out the trick to keeping them well. They are always wilted by two days in the fridge.

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“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

I just received this information on the drought predictions for this spring. It appears they expect it to persist. I will be taking this into consideration as I plan and plant my garden.

http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20...on_drought.gif

Belle

Ok, I may do I a little dance. I am (barely) in the green "improvement" sections. I'm still planning for a drought, though. I've never known a severe weather pattern like this to only last one year. So, I am still going to mulch like a mad person and plan a better watering system.

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“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Anything that is not for immediate eating is either canned, dehydrated, or frozen. Frozen greens can be used by themselves or in things like veggie lasagna. Dehydrated greens, squash, carrots, peppers, onions can all be used in soups. I crumble the greens up in soups and they are just like herbs (you never know they are there). Those times of the year that I have "way too much of everything" my canner is going everyday. Any other excess is fed to the rabbits, pigs, or goats. We never have anything that goes to waste and we never really seem to have more than we can use. We also supply my mom with her vegetables and we help out a couple neighbors down the road with produce and then we run a small CSA for 12 weeks(pays for my seed addiction LOL!). And yes, I pick every single morning. I use fresh and then the rest is put up or put in the fridge to put up in the next couple of days after I have picked more. Cucumbers and squash take a couple days sometimes to build up a canner load. Hope that helps, Kat

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Come visit Homesteading and Homekeeping at Whisperwind Farm

I hope that improvement comes through for you. Here in Oklahoma, we are entering into our third drought year. Ditto on the mulch and watering system. I am also going to try a hugelkultur bed for my strawberries this time. (after 3 failure years--Who'd a thunk it?) I also purchased long sheets of cloth to use as a shade cloth for when the temps go above 100 degrees for weeks on end. I had a lot of sun scald last year. I am also going to plant in afternoon shade locations.

Blessings,
Belle

Hannah, I have been working on answering these very questions. This year I am planning my meals very thoroughly. I am considering nutrition, meats that we will have available to us, vegetables that we will available and when, and what we like to eat! I haven't posted my list yet because I am working on coordinating all those considerations.

i started by listing every supper meal we eat - including the occasional "breakfast supper". Then I marked off things like "store bought ready meals" like a rotisserie chicken or frozen lasagne. If they are really important to us, we will learn how to cook it from scratch, right? And I minimized or completely eliminated meats from the grocery store.

Then I listed the meats we have or will have: Beef, pork, chicken, fish, venison, some wild fowl. I took a look at some of our list of what we actually got our of our recent meat harvests such as how many pounds of ground, how many and how big of roasts, how many steaks, etc. and tried to gauge about how many meals I can get out of a steer or hog. I estimated about how often I want to eat fish (about weekly) and chicken ( once or twice weekly).

Then I set up a 61 day meal plan on an excel spreadsheet (but you can use a notebook or whatever) and made columns for my meat cuts. We really love our ground longhorn beef so that was my first column. I put a 1 or 2 (indicating pounds needed) beside each meal that required ground beef. At the end of the column, I know how many pounds of ground that I need for 61 days. And when I completed all the meats, I know how many steer, hogs, chicken, etc we will need for the year by multiplying the total by 6.

Once I completed my meats, I added my sides such as vegetables, breads, condiments, etc.

Once I finished my suppers, I moved on to breakfasts since that is our second largest meal of the day and did the same thing. And then went on to lunches. We are big left-over eaters, so that helps a lot. We will save even a few bites of green beans if we know we are going to have stew in a few days.

This is how I am approaching this. It may not be the best way and it probably won't work for everyone, but it is working for me so far. I like to have a good viable plan and I hope it will prove to be one for me. Also, i don't want to spend time, energy, money, etc to growing a crop that we won't eat. Or putting it away the wrong way. For instance, I know that we will very rarely eat corn on the cob out of the freezer, but will eat it very frequently if it is loose whole kernel. So I know that we have to de-cob it fresh and can or freeze it then.

I would love to hear how others are planning as well.

Belle

Belle,

WOW! This is amazing! I had no idea how to go about planning food out like this. I was already planning it in my head... Do you have any picky eaters? I have a very picky eater in my house. DM eats about... 6 different things include pizza, chicken strips, chili, spaghetti, hots dogs and cheese sticks. Heh. I have told her if things get really tough, she'll eat my good cooking when she gets hungry enough

I am going to try this and see how it turns out. Just curious, what are you favorite meals? I am thinking about things like burritos, enchiladas and taco. We love those. Always make and season my own meat, but like everyone else, I buy the tortillas/shells. Anyone tried making their own tortillas?

I had already been compiling a list of what can be canned to make meals easier. I love the idea of going to my own "grocery store" and pulling a heat n' eat jar of soup off the shelf. I want to learn to make cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup to can. I like to make salsbury steaks a lot. One of my favorite meals is chicken baked in Cr. of chicken soup, served under peas and mashed potatoes. Oh yum...

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“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson.