2020: A year of (almost) food self-sufficiency, part I

2020 is the year I get as near as I can to being vegetable self-sufficient, growing all the veg I need for my own use.

Can I be entirely food self-sufficient? If I count the deer my BIL gives me in autumn, which I do, and the fish I'll catch on my own (both sourced off-site--this small property definitely doesn't have a lake), and perhaps a lucky kill of a marauding rabbit or two at home, I theoretically could be.

 

But I like salt and I like dairy an awful lot. I can't have goats or a cow here, so I'll still buy dairy. And I'm not going to get laying hens this year. (Maybe next year.) So I'll buy eggs as well. My title is therefore a lie! Veg self-sufficiency, yes, I'm pretty sure I can manage to accomplish that in 2020. I came close in 2019 with only 800 square feet of garden space, and how I have almost four times that much land prepped for planting. I'll never get to full food self-sufficiency living where I do now, on less than a half an acre, if I want meat and dairy (and I do). But I'm planning on coming close to it this year and even closer next year. In 2022, I'll max out, doing as much as I possibly can.

Other "imported" things I have on hand that will see me through 2020 and that I don't produce myself:

• Some tropical spices, like vanilla and cinnamon
• Some frozen grocery store meats, mostly turkey that I bought on sale for 49 cents per pound and ham I bought for 1.19 per pound on sale. 
• Five pounds of frozen bacon of my favorite brand (Representing twenty BLTs! They're coming in seven months, not that I'm counting down the days already.)
• A couple of pounds of cane sugar, about eight pounds of flour (whole wheat and white), yeast, and baking powder. I'll make bread or rolls for BLTs with that.
• A canister of oats (which I only use to make fruit crumbles and should last me two more years)
• Salt
• Peanut oil--enough to last a year
• One pound of pinto beans
• One pound of rice
• One pound box of shell pasta 
• A third of a jar of peanut butter

I also have 33 pounds of venison left (from the 42 I started with--I'm eating it and enjoying it!) and cans and freezer bags of home-grown veg, but that's not imported. These I count as self-sufficient foods. (I give BIL veg, so we could think of that as a trade, meat for veg, and I think barter qualifies for self-sufficiency.)

I love chicken for dinner, but unless/until I run out of fish and venison, I won't buy any.  I'm going to try and be as self-sufficient in meat as I can be this year, and 100% self-sufficient in veg. Right now, I think I have about 25 weeks of meat on hand. With fishing, beginning in March, I hope to get close to 20 weeks more of fish (but maybe I'm an inept angler! We'll have to see.) And when November arrives, that 49-cent turkey sale should appear again. I might be able to hold out on buying any meat until then.

Note that technically, wheat, oats, pinto beans, and peanuts, I could grow myself in this climate. Pinto beans are the only one I'm likely to grow in the near future. As rabbits love bean plants, and my anti-rabbit fencing encloses a limited area of about 200 square feet, where I must grow everything that rabbits like, I probably won't be able to grow enough shell beans (or cow peas) to see me through the year. I grew a handful of plants last year and ended up with about 2/3 a cup of Great Northern Beans--two lunches or just enough to replant this year!  I'll grow some pintos this year and determine the yield per square foot. I could also probably grow peanuts and make my own peanut butter and press my own peanut oil. I'm on the lookout for raw peanuts still in the shell that can be planted here. The main question is, do I have a long enough season for peanuts? (I think so, just barely, at 120 frost-free days.) And a second question is, will the squirrels leave me any? I will try and experiment next year.

I love veg, but I built my meals around protein sources. I typically eat eggs for breakfast.  I'll eat venison or fish every evening, and when I get tired of those, fill in with that ham and turkey that's on hand. Lunch menus I enjoy offer me more variety of protein choices: cheese by itself with some raw veg is one lunch I eat. I have cheese in salads. I put cheese on a baked potato sometimes in the winter. Or I make soup, with beans in meat stock or a very small amount of meat. Venison jerky and a piece of fruit makes a great lunch. I can slather peanut butter on raw veg. That's the protein part of what I eat. I don't eat a lot of grains or baked products. Fruits and vegetables are most of the rest of what I eat.

This coming year I'll need to buy various groceries. I'll talk about my regular monthly shopping list next week.