Becoming more self sufficient

[shortlogger]

The last few years I have become more and more uncomfortable with the way my family depends on stores for too many of my daily food needs . As a boy growing up near my grandparents we would butcher hogs and chickens and can lots of vegetables from 2 different gardens. They still shopped at the grocery store for certian things but all in all they supplied most of their food needs for themselves . I am trying to get to a point of greater self sufficiency much like they lived . With  all the uncertainty in today's economy I feel like it's a good idea and a healthy alternative to many of the unhealthy food in the stores .
I feel like many of the logger/sawyer type folks on here probably have that same self sufficient spirit if so what all do you do to produce your own food ?
I currently am raising pigs , chickens and goats and I also am working on a orchard and expanding the variety of vegetables I grow along with working on preserving more of the vegetables and learning how to cure pork like my grandparents did And I'm hoping to dig a root cellar .

[Small Slick]

I agree with you. My wife and I plan to begin canning soon.

[sandsawmill14]

first is wood heat then it sounds like you bout have the rest covered except the experience far as curing the pork if you can get the mortons meat cure (sugar cure is the easiest to find here) and follow the directions and can get the weather for it you should have no problems the general rule is 1 week per inch of thickness for full cure then hang it and smoke it to keep the bugs out. sometimes we will put it in paper bags and tie the top closed and pour black pepper where you tie it above the string after we hang it main thing is the temp 40-55 degrees is where i like it the best but the meat need cooled good before you put it in the salt so it doesnt  sour the meat from the body heat of the animal. there is a max internal temp the meat can reach before you have to get it out and refrigerate it. it is in the mid 50s but i dont remember exactly what it is. i just feel the meat and guess at temp. been a few years since i cured 1 but im gonna try to start one next week

[shortlogger]

I can remember grandpa smoking and curing the meat but only vaguely. I've been having it done but I'm excited to try it myself

[Roger2561]

This brings back memories (some bad and some not so bad) working in the garden.  I have 8 siblings (6 brothers and 2 sisters) and we had approximately an acre of garden to tend.  While my school mates were traveling places for the summer vacations, we were working in the gardens, barns, hauling truck loads of hay, etc... and I wouldn't change it for the world.  It taught me a work ethic that's sorely lost among a lot of the young folks.  I'm confident that if push comes to shove I'll be able to fend for myself and assist my siblings but those who have never been taught the art of planting and caring for a garden, animals, etc... they are the ones of whom I feel sorry.  Now, if someone could invent a way that the gardens could weed themselves, that's my definition of the perfect world.  Roger

[sandsawmill14]

i have 3 siblings 2 brothers and a sister and our garden did weed itself at least as far as dad was concerned  :D :D :D he took care of the row crops and the garden was ours but in his defense he was working full time in a factory about 20 miles away so he was already doing all he could.  we also raised feeder pigs but nothing like the farms do now  we kept 12-15 sows and all of that kept us out of trouble while we were growing up. we never did mind it because we didnt know any better :D only thing i remember that i thought just wasnt right was we had to plow the garden with horse/mule depending on year because i was to little to drive tractor he said >:( but he finally turned me loose on tractor when was 13  ;D  now i still plow with a horse some and wont ley my 18 year old daught drive the tractor unless im riding with her smiley_dizzy : :D :D :D

[Sixacresand]

I admire you folks that are self sufficient, grow your own stuff, hunt and butcher raised animals and know how to preserve it. I know it takes commitment and a lot of time.  Because of the required commitment and time, I don't try it anymore.

[red]

I read some Blogs that call themselves Homesteaders . I really like Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm in Virginia . Most of them do not like being called Hobby Farms but to me a Farm needs 100 acres or more .  Just having a few chickens and calling your self a farmer is a little much.

[sandsawmill14]

being able to do it is much more important than doing it right now to me i might not like all thats going on here right now but im not scare (yet ) my biggest reason for doing it is to make sure my kids have that ability when im gone. i was lucky that my folks lived to be old. i still had my great grand parents when i was 18 and my grand parents till i was in my 30s so i got taught all the basics from folks that had to do it to survive  now that they are all gone i really wish i had payed more attention : :D :D :D
red i half way agree with that it just depends on what your doing. 100 acres of corn is not alot, 100 acres of cows, is about average for my area, 100 acres of hogs would x00,000 and a 100 acers of chickens would be x,000,000 (thats alot of chicken  ;D ) we have about 250 acres in 2 tracts about a mile apart and now we have pay wheel tax on farm tags because so many met the 4 or 5 acre minimum they just done away with the exemption instead of seeing who was truthful or not :

[kderby]

I have chickens.  All the infrastructure to keep the farm flock going is on site: housing, incubation, brooders, feed and a plucker!  I do it because I "want to."  If I ever "need to" have chickens, I am ready for that as well.  Same basic plan for the garden. 

Someday I want to try a hog but my wife is a 4-H Agent and there are plenty of 4-H Kids with hogs to support.

We are incubating eggs at the elementary school now.  Hopefully we will teach youngsters that food can come from the neighborhood and not a superstore.  They say our local superstore has three days worth of food in stock.  After that we are on our own.....

Kderby   

[sandhills]

My grandma picked and canned/jellied everything, wild plums, sand cherries, choke cherries you name it and everything from grandpa's large garden.  I really wish I'd have learned that from her, I can butcher anything although I've never cured anything, but would really like to get into canning.  We didn't have a garden last year do to remodeling/moving but I have a nice spot for one this year and I'd like to give it a try.

[red]

I like the ideas of being self sufficient I don't want to high jack about the size of Farms .  My ideas are towards building a cabin with logs from the property . Then the woodmizer way had a story about Chattercreek Sawmill about ten years ago . www.chattercreek.ca  well they were definitely Off Grid on a large scale.  So again I am high jacking from self sufficient to off grid . But if you are going to take two years of your life to build a Home. Well have a few chickens, goats etc and a nice garden too. Makes sence to plan the garden the year before . Build 8 ft deer fencing . Ok my rant is over

[pineywoods]

Get a copy of a book called The Foxfire Book. It's a large collection of articles put together by a group of young folks for the purpose of documenting the ways of our early settlers. They went out and spent some time with old folks and documented their lifestyle, mostly in the Appalachian mts. Covers everything from building log homes to butchering, canning, gardening, etc. Good read, plus a handy reference.
I think there was a second edition called Foxfire II,

[thecfarm]

sandhills,canning is really easy. Think clean and hot. I suspect you have an extension close by? Ask around,must be someone that knows someone. My wife was always kinda scared about canning pressure cooking. She has been hot bath canning for years. Seem like a few told her it's dangerous and can blow up.  : I know my Mother did it and never had any problems. I forgot who got her to try and now she enjoys it. Just have to watch the pressure. I know Brenda would show anyone how to do it. Come pay us a visit.  ;D I work in a hardware store and women will come in with questions and I have called Brenda and gave the customer the phone. Ball puts out a nice canning book too. Brenda buys one every year. Tells how to can and new recipes each year.
Yes,it's kinda pricey to get into it,but all that stuff will last for years. And I mean years.
I have a root cellar,but it's no where near full.

[sandsawmill14]

red i do agree with you about the homesteading sites and the advice some of them give. if you look at when some of the more popular ones they will say when they started and most started since the turn of the century and i noticed one last winter who said they moved from LA in the summer of 2014 and was giving detailed instructions on gardening/canning and curing meat   i dont know i guess he was a fast learner ;D  also their instructions for slaughtering pork and chickens was hiring a mobile slaughter house to come to their "homestead" to take care  of the lob : :D :D :D

[Roxie]

When I was growing up, my Grandfather had a tobacco farm near Sparta, North Carolina.  It was about 40 acres, and he didn't own any form of transportation, there was no electric, or indoor plumbing of any kind.  He went to town about three times a year when his (then grown) children would visit and take him. 

The house was wood siding and two stories.   The downstairs consisted of a small 'sitting' room and 3/4 of the space was the kitchen, where the wood cook stove provided the only heat for the entire house.  Just off the back porch was a water pump where we would fetch water in buckets for them in the morning before breakfast for cooking and cleaning up.  The "bathroom" was about 3/10 of a mile out the back.  There was a spring house built beyond the water pump over a very cold stream that provided "refrigeration" either from the stream itself (milk in bottles) or the rocks around it (butter, smoked hams). 

Each year, he raised two hogs that were kept in a pen about 1/2 mile from the house.  They were feed sloop from buckets on the back porch of every scrap from the kitchen and garden.  He butchered his own hogs and his wife, Minnie, canned the meat.  I remember canned sausage at near every meal.  We never ate sandwiches because bread was too fussy.  Biscuits and cornbread were served with every meal.  He had a few dozen chickens that ran loose and finding eggs before breakfast was another one of our jobs.  To eat chicken was rare, but did happen several times a year.  He also had a Guernsey cow that was milked twice a day.  In addition to the best milk to drink in the world, Minne took the cream off the top and made butter and butter milk for biscuits.  He had a barn for the cow and hay storage that was cut with a scythe and stored loose. 

To plant the tobacco and garden, he had a one man plow and pushed it himself, or we hitched the cow to the front and led her around.  We hoed the rows and picked bugs and worms off the plants.  He cut the tobacco off the stalks in the field with a machete and then they were tied onto poles hung in the tobacco barn (the largest building on his property).  The tobacco company picked up his dried tobacco, and he started the process all over again.  About the only thing they purchased in town was flour, coffee, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda, and a few cases of beer.   :D

[Brucer]

Get a copy of a book called The Foxfire Book. ....... I think there was a second edition called Foxfire II,

At least three of them. "The Foxfire Book", "Foxfire 2", and "Foxfire 3". I have a boxed set.

They were published between 1972 and 1975 and are a compilation of articles from Foxfire magazine. As pineywoods says, they were written by a group of young people, documenting the local knowledge of older people.

I suspect that there may have been more books published later.

The back story is interesting. The books editor, Eliot Wigginton, was a newly minted teacher, assigned to a small high school in Georgia. His first six weeks as a teacher were a disaster, and he was about to impose some serious discipline on his unruly class. Then he had second thoughts. He realized that most of the acting up was because his subjects were boring to teenagers, and not seen as relevant to their everyday life. So he tried something different. One day he walked into his class and asked a question. "How would you like to throw away the text and start a magazine?" Then he suggested that his students might be able to find interesting topics by talking to their relatives. What a great way to teach!

[DanG]

I think there were 14 Foxfire books altogether, but there may have been more.

[Mooseherder]

Great story Roxie.

[WV Sawmiller]

Sandhills,

   Like CFARM said canning is easy. We pressure can most of our stuff vs using a water bath. Get a good pressure cooker and read the manual that comes with it and you will find directions for canning many items. Buy a good canning book from the canning jar folks (Kerr, Ball, etc) and they will likely provide more than you will ever use. We can deer meat some veggies and fruits.

   Making jams and jellies are also easy. We don't use pectin. Basically we use equal parts of sugar and cooked fruit/juice with 1/4 the fruit being green for acid (or just add lemon juice, OJ, or such for ease and a little different taste) and cook them until the juice/mixture starts to jell on the wooden spoon or a saucer.

    We don't try to cure meats or fish but we do freeze a bunch of it. A vacuum sealer works great for that. We eat plenty of fish and deer meat and only meat we buy is pork or chicken. I hunt and fish until I am comfortable we have a years supply in the freezer then after that either stop or give my catch or kill to others.

   Wife raised pigs as a kid and won' t have one on the place. Chickens and other poultry are very popular where we live. Every coon, possum, bobcat, fox and coyote knew when we had them. We no longer keep cattle as kept us too tied down to tend them.

   Go ahead a try it. You will be pleased and proud of yourself.

[21incher]

It is amazing how one thing leads to another. I started heating with wood to eliminate my largest bill of the year for fuel oil. Then I decided to saw the large logs to provide me with wood to build structures and furniture. With the trees down I then had a good sunny spot to grow a garden. With all the extra vegies we then started canning so  we could enjoy them year round. Next we needed a root cellar to store the canning, winter squash, potatoes, onions, and wine. Then we planted grapes to supply us with jelly and wine. Next we planted apple trees for eating, cooking, and hard cider. Then we had a spot left to plant elderberries for more wine and jelly. Next my wife started baking all of our breads and pastries. And on and on. With us it  seemed that everything that we started to do or grow on our own has given us a higher quality product then we could afford to buy and made us less dependent on others while providing us with a education that money can't buy.

[sandhills]

Thanks for the advice and encouragement, as with many here my grandparents and a married couple who I had the blessing of having as landlords while getting started farming all started with nothing back in the thirties.  I'll never forget old "Toots" (landlord) telling about the first house she had after they were married and she couldn't walk around the bed to make it because it took up the whole room, or the fact that "we'd milk anything with teats on it, even the chickens, then go trade the cream every Saturday for the groceries we needed for the next week"  :D. I'd like to think I could do that if necessity ever called for it.

[shortlogger]

Yeah things have changed. My grandma said they had to move the hay out of the old house that was on their first farm . They also milked cows in a open pen grandpa said he'd milk 10 or 15 just however many they could catch they eventually built a barn and went grade A .
In Between morning and evening milking he would go get a load of short logs or pulpwood . Their way of life was hard but it was also simple and rewarding .