How much of your own food do you produce?

[DaisyKeymaster]

I’m always curious about this when I get together with folks who homestead. How much of your own food do you produce yourself and how much of it do you buy?

For me, these days, it’s 95% purchased since we’re living here in town. But in the past, we were up to about 60% if you count the stuff we bartered our home-raised goodies with other homesteaders for. At that time, we raised meat chickens, laying hens, ducks, goats, and had a large garden. Our property also had loads of wild blackberries.

What about you?

[Anonymous]

We keep a small garden in larger pots on our back patio in the summer. It faces the afternoon sun. I grow herbs in our kitchen year round. Everything else we buy in bulk and either freeze, can, or dry for storage.

[Crow BarKeymaster]

We had to buy eggs for the first time in . . . nearly a year.  With the shorter days, the chickens are not laying.

This year was an odd year.  Late spring.  The grass in the fields was not as tall.  The gardens were all late in producing.

Apple trees went bare early.   Same with the blackberries.  We only got one collection out of them.

So, this year was not a good year.

We have so much pork from last year, this year we did not raise hogs.  Normally I was be getting ready to slaughter, and process them about now.

[DaisyKeymaster]

This was my worst garden year in a decade. I got nothing more than a few cherry tomatoes and a couple of yellow squashes. Usually, even in the city, I have enough tomatoes for the entire year along with onions, garlic, and butternut squash for the winter.

[Anonymous]

When it comes to hot peppers we are at 100%, everything else, not so much.  The first year I planted here the garden was amazing, but every year after that was less and less impressive.  I had 6 melon plants growing this year and they started out amazing, had over 15 fruits, then over a 2 week period everything rotted.  Tomatoes, total bust, between 20-30 plants and less than 5 tomatoes, that nobody wanted.  Bean plants made a few million flowers but next to no beans.  The poles did better than the bush this year.  Hot peppers are still growing for now.  I got some herbs that are going good, but those are mints, which are pretty easy to keep alive once they get started.

I have planted some fall/winter plants and hope to get something out of them.  If one of the spinach plants makes it to full size I will consider it a major success.

[Anonymous]

I forgot about my radishes, they grew and are growing again from what I just looked at in the garden area.  Winter rye is coming up too, that’s a ground cover in my containers, to hopefully knock back some of the wood sorrel that is completely taking them over since pulling it out by hand really isn’t helping much.

 

[AeronwyParticipant]

This past spring we did fabulous with green beans, tomatoes, field peas, okra, summer squash, hot and sweet peppers and a little corn. Didn’t have to buy any of that at all. My winter squash did not do well compared to the past. This fall we are doing great with green beans, all greens and broccoli and cabbage, kohlrabi, tomatoes, lettuce, hot peppers, etc. Not time to dig sweet potatoes but expect after Dec we won’t have to buy any sweet potatoes for a while. The only produce we are buying are potatoes and the odd bag of mixed veggies. We seldom buy eggs cause of layers but they have slowed down since one of our ducks decided to set a nest.  So we eat quite a lot out of the garden save for breads and meats. I don’t know what that comes out to percentage wise.

[Anonymous]

I normally manage to produce about 90% of the fruit and veg we use at the allotment including beans for drying, I have neither the room or inclination to keep animals for meat/milk/eggs. I do a lot of preserving and between the fresh garden and what I have put up, even in the depths of winter most of what we eat is home grown.

Animals don’t really figure for me long term. My plan is to go veggie,

[namelusParticipant]

1. Last few years have been buying bulk items I don’t grow like rice and beans, or can make easy salt and sugar. Using  micro green ,spirolina root cellar and canning about 80% most of the bought things are local or barter items. Though I do love citrus but that is only available I stores near here, too cold to grow.

Most of the bought things are exotic fruits some sweet tooth stuff.

[LittlesisterParticipant]

Don’t know how I missed this one. But since it is getting close to planting the garden, I thought I would let you know what we plant. We only have a small backyard garden with two areas of flower beds also where we plant veggies. We plant green beans, butter beans, tomatoes, summer squash, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, cherry tomatoes, red and green peppers and eggplant. That pretty much fills up our space.  We don’t have chickens or anything. So have to depend on store for a lot of things.   Though this year I want to try planting celery to see what happens. We are no longer planting winter crops as neither hubby nor I can handle the cold long enough to care for it. I am going to figure out a place to plant carrots and potatoes as well as onions this year but got to figure out our small space to see what we can do.  As far as veggies I don’t buy much from stores. But this year I do want to hit the farm markets for corn, and other things.  We used to have a huge garden next to hubby’s cousin’s farmers market but a 7-eleven sits on that spot now. It was nice while we had the use of that land though. We planted a lot in that space.

[John ParkParticipant]

We purchase almost everything.  We’ve only had our place a couple of years, and with 2 small children and 50+ hr weeks, my progress has been limited.
Apples are planted and growing, but not producing yet.  Same with hazelnuts & honeyberries.
Elderberries and raspberries are producing, but I haven’t built netting cages yet, so yields are limited.
Garden is up to 400+ sq feet of beds, but not all in production, so basically we get tomatoes and squash.
As the kids become more independent, and I finish other tasks like clearing land, hopefully we will see a steady increase in producing our own.

[OldMt WomanParticipant]

Lil’Sister….you could try planting potatoes in upright wire circles.  Look up potato towers and see if that might work for you.  You keep adding soil when the vines/leaves come thru.  It’s a no dig method as well as space saver.  Be careful not to grow varieties like Yukon Gold…they don’t vine in a way that works.  That’s vague… but it’s been years since I was reading about this.  We tried it but the arid climate dried the potato towers out too much.

There was a time when DH and I did a lot of our food.  Minus staples like sugar/oils/salt..  We had a good fishing spot -which they restructured and the fish are just now making a come back.  I milked goat.  We bartered extra eggs for services like snow plowing our driveway.  Since we were making most meals from scratch, we were shopping at the store about every 3 months.  Those were the gardening days BEFORE THE VOLES……

Now….we’re waiting to move to a garden-friendly location.  Other than black currents, not a lot grows up here.  Yarrow and rose hips and willow/aspen for medicinal things.  But calorie or nutrient dense food is not plentiful thru wildcrafting.  🙁

We’d definitely like to get back to productive gardens, etc.  But doubt we’d ever grow grains.  I’d love to live in an area where other folks grew grains tho…

OldMtWoman  …..love my goats but they are high maintenance for old folks…

[WhirlibirdParticipant]

Hmm, basically 100% of our red meat is hunted.

Working on the fish but all of the chicken and pork is bought, but there ain’t much of those used, mostly for variety and then the occasional bacon fix. But we figured out a fair venison bacon recipe for some applications so we buy less of the porcine product.

Eggs? Thanks to my side gig, about once a month, I get 12-15 dozen for free.

Veggies, thats the one that kicks our budget. The greenhouse has been a learning experience but may actually be productive this year, it certainly won’t be enough for us all but to augment the purchases, it will help.

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