Come on Spring!!

  Here in NW Arkansas the weather has been particularly nice this winter, a few cold days, a dusting of snow and a little rain. Makes me worried about what will happen here in February and March. We have also been receiving the annual seed catalogs in the mail, you know the ones that makes us feel like a kid in a candy store, so many choices that it's hard to decide what to plant. My friend Tabbie and I are going in together to buy seeds from Baker Creek,http://rareseeds.com/. We have a list of 53+ vegetables and herbs that we want to put in our gardens this year. My garden didn't well at all last year due to the very hot summer we had and the major invasion of bugs that came to visit. I am going to expand my garden quite a bit this year, make space for a larger variety of yummy stuff. The melons, squash, and cucumbers are all going on the little hill area behind the main garden, I hope to get more than last year as Hershey isn't here to carry them off. 6 more raised beds will be going up in the next month or so with other planters scattered around the garden. I want a really colorful garden with all kind of eccentric planters and surprises that catch your eye when wondering thru. I found tons of ideas on Pinterest and hope to put them in the garden this year.

These are just a few ideas I want to incorporate into the garden, to find more click on the Pinterest button on the right. What are you plans for the garden this year?                                                                            Blessed Be,

Being self sufficient and prepared,

  For awhile now I have been thinking about what would happen to us if the world around us collapsed. If the banks went belly up, no jobs, if we had to survive completely on ourselves. We would probably, maybe last a month! Where we are in our home/lives at this moment we are not self sufficient what so ever. The only bulk items I have on hand is popcorn.Does anyone ever think about what their family would do if the world crashes like that? Because there is a good chance it just might. My husband and I have talked about what we would do, talked a lot but haven't done anything yet. The #1 thing we would do is go to as many pharmacies or stores that carry diabetic supplies and load up on them as this would be what we would need to keep our daughter alive until the world straightened itself out.I hope we will be in a place to supply as much of our own food as we could and I am learning to make things like laundry soap/other soaps we would need, not much but a start. I have been collecting books on homesteading/how to/herbal medicines which I hope would be of use to us.

 I look back on my childhood and came to realize just how strong my mother was. We pretty much always lived out in the country or in very small towns. We moved around a lot! One of my favorite places was in the itty bitty town of Pyatt Ar. We started out there on a large acreage that had a new barn, a new milk house and a well house on it. Those buildings were what we lived in. We had our beds and living area set up in the barn and the kitchen was in the milk house. We had several acres of vegetables growing in the bottom land and a huge on up by the house for us. My brother who was about 16 or 17, myself(10) and the twins who were about 5 at the time helped mom take care of those gardens. We would swim in the creek down by the road or out by the rail road tracks.We had chickens, ducks, rabbits and dogs. I remember mom canning in the milk house and how hot it would get. The twins and I would take off up in the woods for the day and come back when it was getting dark, drinking out of the cold spring, eating blackberries. The school I went to had 1st-2nd in one room,3rd-4th in another and 5th-6th in another, the other grades were over in another building. I thought it was a wonderful school! In the winter we would move into town until spring and planting time. My mom was about 45 at this time and I remember how hard she worked to grow food for us and get it put up for the winter.I remember her making clothes for us and teaching us what bugs in the garden were good and what were bad. For a kid it seemed like a great life most of the time but for an adult I think it would have been a struggle. My older sisters probably know more of what mom went thru at that time. To me the strength she showed back then gives me hope that I can get my family thru anything that comes our way.                                                         
 It has finally dawned on me that my husband,kids and myself will not be able to do this on our own. We need a community, a group of people/families with varying talents and skills that can work together to build a secure,well prepared place to take care of our families if anything major happens. I don't know if that can happen on this property we are on now or if we need to look for a more suitable place. I do feel that everyone needs to get themselves someway ,somehow, into a position where they can safely survive a major catastrophe. It might be getting some families together on some land and growing or building everything you need, a group of people in a neighborhood banning together and making plans, everyone in an apt. building working together to makes things safe (this would require you to know your neighbors), helping family/friends monetarily who can get a safe place set up so that you could take your family there. I am not an alarmist, but bad things do happen, be it with mother nature or man made and there needs to be plans in place for our families so we will not have to rely on a government that probably won't be there to help us.The 99% needs to start taking care of their own! We can you know, we can band together, thinking outside the box and create our own paradigm shift.

        

Blessed Be,

Buying in Bulk,

   A couple of days ago I was talking to my husband about not being able to keep enough food in the house,with 3 kids who have bottomless pits for stomachs it seems we are always running out of everything. We had talked about buying in bulk before but never really committed ourselves to doing it. This weekend I have decided this is something I want to do. I never have enough money to put in a big bulk order or to restock my kitchen all at once so I decided to commit to buying at least 1 thing in bulk every time I need to buy groceries. This time I bought pancake mix, syrup and spaghetti(we use a lot of these), next time  maybe ketchup, mustard and mayo,something else we use a lot. I want to cook in bulk also, trying to do most of a week or months cooking in a weekend. This last week I made a large crock pot of pinto beans and ham, now for some reason my kids will not eat beans in this form but eat all and more if I put it thru the food processor and make bean dip/refried beans. In the end I had a huge bowl of refried beans way more than they could eat before it spoiled. I decided to make bean and cheese burritos to put in the freezer for lunches, I also made sausage/egg and cheese burritos for a grab and go breakfast. My goal is to have the freezer full of meals/sides/deserts/breakfast so that if I am not able to be home to fix dinner then someone else can just grab something home made/healthy and do it.

 My friend Tabby told me about a book that I really need to buy now. Fix, Freeze, Feast by Katie Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik. http://www.fixfreezefeast.com/index.php?pg=hm. This is a wonderful book on how to prepare meals in bulk step by step. Our local librarian also recommended this book, Don't Panic-Dinners in the Freezer. http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Panic-Dinners-Freezer-Great-Tasting/dp/0800730550 I plan on using these books a lot and seeing what others I can find,
One of the problems I see coming up is how to store bulk supplies. We don't have a lot of pantry space and at the time there is no outside storage that would be safe from creatures and bugs. Our freezer is on the small side, is about 20yrs old and is not a self defroster (can we say pain in the keister!), it will need to be replaced pretty soon down the road. Finding containers that seal well and will fit where I end up storing everything will be something to work out as well.
 Another way to store items in bulk is to dehydrate them, then I wouldn't need to worry about freezer space. I found a wonderful informative website named Dehydrate 2 store, http://www.dehydrate2store.com/ , I have done several recipes from this site. Of course I plan on learning to can this summer, another way to store food you buy or raise yourself in bulk. I learned about canning meats from Granny Miller's blog http://homesteadgardenandpantry.com/canning/home-canning-meat/ , this is a great homesteading blog.
 All in all this is another step in our homesteading journey and if anyone has something that worked well for them on this subject I would appreciate a heads up.