I really wonder if I could do it

I seriously question this especially at the end of our garden could I really help my family survive if we were to live self sufficiently

IT is frightening to me here in northern WI because I know that for much of the year there is no hope of growing anything outside at all

Our animals many of them have escaped the pigs ..no they are still there till we slaughter

but the chickens have tore holes in the poultry netting around their chicken yard and many of them are out either in the woods next to the house or in our yard ..one tried to break into the front window last night freaked the kids out (it was still light outside so I chased it back toward the chicken house)

obviously we would need a better solution for the chickens

we are down to roughly 25 meat birds and about 24 egg birds (and two roosters for the egg birds) considering we started out with 71 I say that sucks but we lost some to disease (a couple chicks) several to some animal and then others took off and a couple we lost to cannibalism.

It would be a brutal existence and really brings those old books to a better light

we do not know just how great we have it here food in such abundance that many stuff ourselves to death (myself included I am very overweight) we know that if worse came to worse we would not "starve" in the real sense of the word

One of the hardest things I have had in my attempts to learn to live more off of what we have and can get ourselves here is how much do we need?

I went to an organic gardening talk some months back and the woman there said that for a family of 4 you would need 80 tomato plants to supply for them the sauces and things the average family would go through

but what about MY family??

we eat something with tomatoes in it at least 3 times a week be it ketchup or spaghetti or salsa

and how much of other things? how much meat? how much lettuce? how much spinach how many onions and let's not even get started on

potatoes!!

(we are of Irish descent after all and potatoes are eaten with almost every meal!)

how many pounds of flour?

I collected only a few pounds of berries in all of my berry picking excursions(granted Dave and the kids ate a LOT of berries before I got to wash and freeze them)

When I think of this I wonder how I could do it all and then I remember

In the little house on the prairie books (I love those so much but I use them because they are a great example of life before supermarkets and McDonald's that many people know) The Ingalls family DID not do the work alone

one family member was not doing everything by themselves as a hobby while the others stood back and watched or played or went to school or football or work

their work was survival

they built their hen house to withstand everything so none of their chickens were killed

they planted their garden and preserved everything they could

they hunted

they used the animals they raised right down to the pigs tail

Many look back on those days and those lives as idyllic

WRONG so many dangers existed then death was an everyday part of life loss of a child loss of an adult to accident or infection was VERY real

I would not want to go back to that time of uncertainty

Imagine being there now with my garden attempts I have a house full of green tomatoes because I had a frost I have a handful of onions

no peas set aside (they did not do well)
only a few jars of pickles (I did not plant enough or put up enough cucumbers )

only a few pounds of fruit
very few dried herbs (for medicinal purposes)


really makes my attempts seem futile LOL

But it is a start like I told the kids it is a learning garden and with this year of learning we will do better next years garden will with a little luck of the weather produce even more and since we all have been educated in doing things like

canning (and now we have all we need on hand to can as food is produced)

blanching (there has to be a trick to it besides what the pamphlet tells me)

dehydrating (finally a dehydrator in the house)

we have the garden beds established and Dave is all for getting it prepped this fall so that soon as the ground warms we will be able to plant

All of these things will make a difference

not to mention remembering to start the pepper plants before the tomatoes I really am gonna drill that in my head all winter long PEPPERS first