Boy the pantry Challenges go all the way back to 2011.. so we are coming into our 7th year and it starts tomorrow. In a nut shell, its eat out of the pantry, storage or the farm. Its a great time of the year for it, its lean.. the hens are just starting to lay again, this year we are coming in with no active freshened milking animals and while we had a week of early spring weather with some good maple run weather, we are not growing anything outside yet, the ground is frozen, and most of my gardens are covered in one to three plus feet of snow yet.

It was the starving time of year that bad part when most of the winters crops were done or turning done and at the same time, nothing fresh was really coming in.. the river is breaking up.. so no ice fishing and no regular fishing either.. no hunting.. but I can still take from the farm.. when it comes to “fresh” meat.. rabbit or a young rooster

Now I am going to admit that the house is loaded! If I thought I kept a full fridge, meet my darling mom.. she does even more then myself.. so we are starting the challenge with a number of extra’s that I would not normally have if we were coming off No-Buy Feb..

As always, my critters needs are not included in this challenge.. so my little pigs Puddin and Pie will continue to get their fresh stuff for their health an well-being.

However Hubby and I are going hard core.. if we get invited to someone’s house, we are allowed to eat whatever is being provided and I will note if it happens. Otherwise, no eating out, no bringing in food of any kind and I will be running the challenge for a min of four weeks with a possible six week window.

Each week I am going to try and do mini challenges within the pantry challenge itself, we will see how they go, it could be bad as I stumble along.. we will see I am still thinking on this idea of how to add something a little bit more interesting each week as we work though it..

The odds are good that I will be doing double posts most of the next month once the challenge starts, one post for the challenge, one post on other things.. I have found that on years where I combined them into one single daily post, that recipes and more are lost in the search feature on the blog.. this way works better for digging out data at a later point.

Its snowing today and below freezing but its a pretty soft snow that is falling this morning.. we have two sheep that are starting to bag up and one goat that is showing signs of bagging up, so we are on watch and the jugs are ready to be made active in the big barn.

I am hoping to have a milking animal for the farm sooner then later 🙂

Ps, as per other years, if there is a sale on that only happens every three or six months, we are allowed to bulk buy and put it away(not to be used at all during the pantry challenge) so that we do not miss stocking up.  It used to be that many things came on regular sales but in the last three months and even the past six there have been a number of things that are not hitting the sales like normal and even worse.. more and more of the sale rows are filled with non-food sale items only.. you can buy dish soap, toilet paper and so much more on sale.. but food.. that is becoming harder and harder to find good stock up sales on.