Just another Day on the Farm

5 Reasons to Join your local Plants Groups

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

No matter where you live, be it city, town, country or homesteading, the odds are good that at some point and time, you are going to want to produce your own food.. its a logical step..

Even if it starts with tomatos.. I am not sure why everyone seems to start with a tomtato, starting with root veggies in many cases would be easier but none the less, the humble tomato is the gate way garden plant for many..

I think its because there are so many kinds, the taste of a homegrown tomato vs store can not be undersold and it can grow in a pot anywhere that you can stick it in full sun ideally.

However at some point folks cross the line from a tomato to gardening.. the average size garden in town is now 3 feet by 6 feet in raised box format and the average in ground garden is 10 by 16 per the stats I dug up, * having said that they are old stats and I can find little to no backup on them.

Most folks consider a large garden to be 100 by 200 feet, those of us who are homestead should have a lot more then that.. while you need to start small, you need to work your way up to half a acre of annuals and a half to a acre of the rest..

Yes, you can try and do it with less land, and you can do it successful if you are willing to put the time and work into it.. but if you are running a busy household, you are raising a family and or critters etc.. and you have the ability to do so, use that land..

but lets get back to plant groups.. what is a plant group.. well it can be darn near anything that works for you..

In my early 20’s my plant groups where the older ladies from church, they were at times a sheet put on the public board at the post office, and they were at times, me finding the right moment to walk by a yard and say.. Wow, your garden is amazing, plant and garden folks love to talk about their work.

In my 30’s, it was more about church plant sales, but then came the net and facebook and o my, the reach now.. Seedy Saturdays, Local plant events, Local freecyle for plants and so much more.

At this point, I am a member of my local facebook plant groups, and its taken me to whole new level of gardening, they have not expanded my garden so much as they have expanded my excitement for it..

While I was raised gardening, I was raised very old school, potato, carrots, corn and so forth, in neat rows, weeded between and hoed out.. it was a very orderly thing.

When I started gardening, I split it between herbal and food, fresh eating food for myself and herbal for teas, craft and dried, then I moved to the farm and I went all three.. fresh eating, herbal, medical and putting up..

Then on our second year on the farm, I started growing crops for my critters, it opened up a huge new world of learning, because I was reaching for protein and calories, not just taste..

I got lost in it.. for about five years, it was my focus, food for us, food for the farm itself..

Then I joined the facebook group.. wow.. suddenly I was allowed to have a breath of fresh air.. and I have expanded my goals and gardens again.. Not just doing regular seed growing but odd and old plants, heritage plants, bulk seed saving and so much more.

So here is my Farmgal Tip of the Day.. Step outside the homestead groups and join a local to you Plant and Garden Group.

Here are my top five reasons to join a plant-garden group..

You will keep up with local plant events, they will post seed swaps, they will post Sale days and they will allow within reason, those that raise seedlings to tell folks about it. They will offer advice to your zone, climate and growing year in live time.
They will work together to create group buys for huge savings, they will tell you about the farmer that has straw for 2 dollars a bale instead of the 8 in kijji, they will tell you that so and so little market is the place to buy x or y or z
They will host seed swaps, they will save plants, roots and yesterday, I saw someone say, I have leaves would you like them for compost, they will share rides to events, they will share drop off and pickup points, I have dropped of upwards of 5 folks free plants at one persons place and had others come there.
They will expand your mind in good ways, they will post about local community gardens, they will talk about school gardens, they will share about the local harvests of fruits, they will share information about your local permaculture events, food forests and so much more.. In our group, we have planned and have folks do trips to garden centers, farms and so much more.
They will create plant friendships, online plant friends will send you seeds in the mail, and they are some of the most understanding friends you will get.. they understand if you say.. I am in planting season now.. they understand when you say, I am canning today.. and the best thing.. you will find the ones that say.. I will help dig the bed with you, I will help can with you, I will help harvest with you.. and though that you will share your knowledge but you will gain so much more yourself.

I am involved in a number of plant breeding programs, and I love it.. I had done a number of these types of things myself but I was working for my own gardens good, now I share with others and it allows me to expand my work, just as they do with me..

http://homesteadbloggersnetwork.com/green-thumb-thursday-linkup-111215/

Posted in gardens, Life moves on daily | Tagged Food for harvest, Gardening, Heritage plants, Homesteading, Local Plant events ottawa, Plant breeding Programs, Plant groups, Raising crops for your farm animals, Saving Seeds | 1 Comment

Frugal Friday- Lucet Cord and their many homestead uses

Posted on November 6, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Winter is coming, the power bill will go up, the feed bill will go up, the hay costs add up, and food will rise..

In fact about the only that will not rise in cost is many luxury items.. The next two months will show that strange split between what I often see as a disconnect between what we need and what we are trained to want..

You see while all the basics, food, heat, light, shelter and so forth will go up, the cost of THINGS that keep us busy is about to go into major sale mode.. o yes, I am talking about the push for Christmas. SALE, SALE, SALE

The hard part of that is that for me, for us here on the farm, for those that choose a homestead lifestyle, almost all of those sales are not helpful to us.. there are a few things that do not fit that lump up (and I am going to do a post on them.. A top ten list of things that go on sale at Christmas that are worth adding to your farm)

Even in the grocery store, the above will apply, its harder to find a good sale on fresh food then it is to find sales on processed food..

So in keeping with finding ways to be both frugal and in terms of useful and needed, today’s frugal Farmgal Helpful Homestead Tip..

Get they a Lucet 🙂 in a few sizes, one small to do fine line, one what is considered a large size for many rope needs and one oversized for farm ropes. I can not tell you just how much money a homesteader can spend on leads, ropes, collars and halters, and in many cases, you are buying and replacing as they grow. Add in the tropes needed for storage, the ropes and twine needed for gardening and o my, the costs can go up and up and up. I remember when a lead was 5 dollars, now 15, 20 or more is not uncommon.

Yes, its frugal to buy them on sale only, to stock up and put one extra away, but to be able to take five or ten min and make your own, for rough rope, you can use your binder twine and recycle it into a stronger form.

But if you buy some wool in the discount bin, at the second hand store or at a farm sale, you can make soft but really strong Viking cord for mear pennies each

I got mine here http://www.lucets.com/lucets.html Please note I do not get anything for referring him, I just like his work and prices, I also love that many of his wood has stories that go with it.

Ropes for farm use

I have been making quick and easy sheep or goat collars that cost me less then a cent or two per collar, each collar lasts easily a year on the sheep, I tend to make a new one because its so easy to do, easy catch sheep have a single loop, harder to catch, get a slightly bigger and when put on, a small loop is knotted in, so that you can snap on a lead.

Making looped scarfs for our own use, I wear these a lot, this one is a fancy go to town pretty but I have a number that I wear that are farm chores ones

If you are creative, gift ideas will follow, 25 foot tree garland was made at my girls knit night, I will be making hot pot pads as gifts as well Sometimes you need to step sideways and find ways to make your own on things you will use a lot of and that is a costly staple at the store.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 6 Comments

Sausage and Brussel Sprout Soup.

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Ok so to say that this is loosely based on a much loved soup of my hubbies needs to be owned up, I do not make his soup often because I can never quite get that same taste with homemade broth that comes in his beloved can..

Yup, hubby loves his Italian Wedding Soup.. but I do try at times with my own version of it.

Farmgal tip 1, I never harvest them before I get at least three good hard frosts on them 🙂 I always expect everyone to try things themselves so try them before and after a frost and you will see why.. it helps take some of the sharper, darker bitter edge to them in raw form.

So I thought, hmmm soup for lunch.. then I looked in the fridge.. hmmm, this the result of the hmm. This would serve two heaping and hearty bowls of soup in supper amounts, can be served with fresh bread if you want to do so. I had fresh buttermilk bread to go with.

Farmgals Sausage and Brussel Sprout Soup Recipe

1 small onion, peeled an diced
1 large clove of garlic, peeled and diced
1/4th a quarter pound of ground pork
2 cups of cleaned, sliced brussel sprouts
4 cups of white broth, (chicken, turkey or rabbit but you could also use veggie if you wanted to do so)
2 tbsp. of tiny round pasta
1 tsp of a basic Italian herb blend.

Ok, so put your onion, garlic and pork into a good quality steel or cast iron pan, spread your meat out into a thin layer, allow to cook until firming up and then chop it up with spoon or flipper, you want it to be in little bits, about the size of a itty bitty meatball, Once the meat is cooked though, add your sliced sprouts and you want to let the onions cook clean but you want that meat to crisp up, you want to cook it over med heat till you have stick brown bits on the bottom of the pan, watch this carefully as it can go from brown bits to burnt quickly. You should also get a bit of golden browning action going on those sprouts.. awesome!

Now add your broth, your herbs and your pasta, it will hit that hot pan, stir up all that lovely bits into your soup, bring it to a simmer at the med heat and then turn it down, set the timer for ten min and cook till the pasta done..

Serve it up hot..

While I wanted it to be able the richness of the broth, and the meat and sprouts, if you want a splash of color, do consider dicing up some red pepper and adding it in the last 5 min to add way to make this dish just pop when served 🙂

Posted in gardening, Soups and Stews | Tagged Brussel Sprouts, Eat what you grow, Fall soups, Farmgal recipes, Garden, Sausage and Brussel Sprout soup reicpe | 2 Comments

Gardening 2015 – Fall Garden Prep

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Yesterday, we winter prepped the bird pen garden and Garden E in the Side yard, (yes, when I have a large number of gardens in different areas, they giving plots by letter it makes it easier when talking to each other)

while Bird Pen garden is a very easy garden to winter prep, This year it grew tomatos, beans and cutting flowers its a lovely raised bed garden that runs the length of the chain link on a pen (its normally used in some form for birds) and the garden is a combo climbing and normal, it has 12 feet of vertical climb space, so while the garden bed itself is only three feet wide by 20 feet long, it is in fact a larger garden then it seems..

Helpful hint* When looking at gardening, be it on a homestead or in the city, always look at each space as its own and do not be afraid to use small tiny spots to put a mini garden in.. Each garden area will have its own micro-climate and that means that what you can grow in Garden E can be grown somewhere else.

Garden E is a interesting garden, its a mix of methods and then some.. its the size of a average garden plot in town or a city, so small compared to my gardens or a garden market type but average otherwise.

The land was mowed down hard and tight, then I placed 6 to 8 inch deep large straw bale squares down over it and I overlapped them tightly, on top of that, they got 1 year compost, 9 wheelbarrels loads, I spread each load over 1-9th of the garden, it gave me 4 to 6 inches on top, then we repeated with 4 year old compost to top it, another 4 to 6 inches.

Into this was planted Corn, winter melon, radishes, and some dill, the corn loved the insane richness, and produced very well, the wintermelon produced well for a late planting, the radishes were lovely and the dill was planted later and was used for greens only, not making it to seed, but I have lots from other areas in the gardens.

I did not weed out at all in the corn area, which was 80 percent of the garden, with only the front being done into other.. when we harvested the corn, I pulled all the corn including roots up and feed it all to the pigs, same with the winter melon, I then went back and took my hoe and dug up anything growing in the whole garden, I put a few things into the burn bile, one or two into the compost and the rest into feed the pig pail.

At that point, hubby brought me 9 more wheel barrels of one year old wet, heavy but turned deep pack bedding, its a mix of hay, straw, horse, sheep and goat poo with a bit duck to boot. this was spread 4 to 6 inches thick..

The garden is above the soil by close to a foot an half going into winter, the bed has composted and settled over the summer dropping height while things where growing..

The straw will hold for three years under, by which time if I want to do so, I will be able to do a very nice turn if I want to plant a deeper root veggie in that garden, but that is a good while coming.

This garden is going to be crazy rich again next year.. its going to be down into a three sisters, corn, short climbing beans and pie pumkins is the plan, the year after that, I will do either potatoes, tomatoes or peppers.. and only then on year four will the garden be ready for roots.

All newer gardens will be getting huge amount of the deep pack pre-mixed, already starting to compost nicely topping, the fine garden areas will be done quite differently. We are going to get there.

So if on a homestead, lets say that you do not have the money or the ability to buy extra straw to be used as a the first layer, well you have a few choices, one is to pull the top layer, flip it over and go, but you will struggle with weeds in pretty short order..

The second is to layer newspaper or cardboard or wood chips if you can get them on the ground and do your layers on top, (if using wood chips, if you can, put a layer of bird manure on top of it before you put the rest..)

Push come shove, create it without the straw layer, and then underplant like crazy, by this I mean, plant your corn, or main crop, baby it, water it, weed if needed to get it a good start, then come back and heavily seed the ground with something like raddish, mustard, greens, or anything that grows quickly, produces a green crop that CAN NOT outproduce the main crop..

If the costs of seeds is a issue (and it can be when you are first buying seeds, ouch, do they add up.. then turn to whole untreated grains, you can use barley, or wheat to do the same thing, when it gets to certain stage, just hoe it down and turn it into the soil, its much better to be in control of what is growing with the crop then not..

One more hint to cheaply outplant tradionally considered bad weeds that is very cost friendly, pigweed.. yes you read that right, so easy to collect seed from a wild source, easy to spread, easy to grow, so easy to spot, no issues that even hubby or helping children hands can not find and harvest the right plants, now young pigweed is a delight in the main kitchen garden but if you are not ready for that, everything on the homestead will sit up and beg for that young tender pigweed, be it chickens, ducks, rabbits, sheep, goats or pigs.. honestly, everything you can grow to feed your family protein be it fowl or hoofed, will eat and love being given pigs weed.

Just like its worth having a small batch of nettles growing on your farm for harvest and drying for farm use even if you do not want to eat them yourself, you should have a stand of pigweed that is your seed base source.

Having pig weed seed for use in the gardens will save your upwards of 50 plus each year in, and its high protein count can be worked into feeds for young chicks, laying birds and young rabbits..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Garden, Gardening on the homestead, Green covers, Growing your own green covers, Homesteading, Homesteading in canada, turning raw land into a garden, Using deep pack manure, Using Green covers in gardens as livestock feed | Leave a comment

5 Years on wordpress..

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Wow, five years blogging! and a total of 2, 369 posts.. I have written enough words over the years to have published 5 novels, how amazing is that!

To which I say!

Thank YOU!!! to all my readers of the blog, be it though wordpress, twitter, the facebook page or the other ways you find me.. Thank you for dropping by, thank you for comments, thank you for telling me that my recipes are served around the world

I love to know that my rabbit pate is now a Christmas favorite for a family in England, I adore knowing that a host of someone’s in BC are eating my grandmothers pie crust when they buy at the local farmers market!

I love that the knowledge and information flows and spreads, I like that I can be reading a blog I like and suddenly find they linked to my blog! Thank you! I am honored that you found my words worth sharing!

Thank you to my regular readers that have become in person friends, or private facebook friends that I am in touch with daily..

Thanks to my family that reads the blog! I feel a connection when my cousin says, we did that too, remember when back in the day!

I am grateful that you choose to give me one of the most important gifts in today world..

Your time!

Your truly Farmgal

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged 5 years | 1 Comment

Asterlane Edibles

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

I wanted to give a shout out to Asterlane Edibles for their new plant to plate project, there are a number them done, but I am going to link to the Jerusalem Artichokes, I am only going to post a bit of it and then you will need to click though on the link to see the photos, and read the recipes.

It ties in nicely as I plan to harvest and do some recipes for this amazing plant myself in the next few weeks and while I do not have kids scale for taste testing, my hubby does the same scale pretty much LOL

Asterlane edibles is expanding to some online sales in the coming year and I want to put the word out and support her in this new plan, she has been selling locally for a while but is going to start selling seeds for shipping within Canada.

http://asterlanedibles.ca/1/post/2015/10/plant-to-plate-jerusalem-artichokes.html

There are several commonly said things about this tuberous member of the sunflower family but one of the more common ones is “Okay now what the heck am I supposed to do with them?” The other thing is that they can cause a gaseous expansion of the belly. This is due to inulin also found in such thing as garlic and chicory. It is also considered a prebiotic but you might want to start slow.

They can be eaten raw or cooked but have a distinctive earthy sunflower-y taste that can overwhelm a dish. We have eaten them roasted, grated raw into salads and fried in various ways.

For knobbly varieties when cleaning, I suggest breaking off the knobs to get in the crevices. If I’m peeling them, I add the little bumps in the animal feed bin (compost might sprout so plan accordingly).

We harvest after a few frost in the fall or in the spring before they really get growing. Frost apparently improves flavour too. I store them in a large pot of sandy soil in our garage until the deep freeze hits and later in a basement cellar that stays cool. You can also store them in the crisper in the fridge for a short time before they start to dry out

One of the things I love best about Asterlane is that while she does sell plants and seeds, its not in your face.. There will be no pushing of sales. Its there but her passion and love of plants shines though, its her love of sharing in all ways that lead to the overflow being put into sales.

Its something that I am finding hard with a number of blogs these days, they are not writing to share a passion for them, they are writing to either sell something or to create a sale base and for me at least.. it shows.. and there are times I miss the old days of blogging where it was about sharing our knowledge and worlds with like minded folks.. So many blogs now are all about.. how do I create a readership to sell my “products” to..

Asterlanes plants to plate is a great example of doing it right.. If you know her already, I am sure you are nodding your head and if you about to meet her for the first time.. enjoy!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 2 Comments

Farm artwork by my mom

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Mom did a pretty painting for me of my pasture, barn an such.. but still needs to do a touch up on the sheep yet

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

Purple Sweet Potato

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

As you know I grew three kinds of sweet potatoes this year, The standard orange, the white fleshed and the purple..

I have to buy special short season pre-started slips, I have started my own slips as well from short season Georgia Jet that I have over wintered the sweets and then done my own slips but also have had great luck buying pre-started slips and will continue to do so..

I have tried growing them in the ground and also growing them in a very heavy straw mulch, I will keep playing till I get it just right 🙂 The joys of gardening, never stop learning, never stop trying something new..

I cured them, and yesterday we baked off a nice purple as a small side dish.. I was very pleased with the color, outstanding.. the flavour has great depth to it, very sweet potato but a drier flesh and a more starchy flesh, more like a potato but only time will tell me if that is because of it needing more curing time or if that is just the way it will be.

I like the lighter ring in the baked one..

This is it all mashed up, before I added butter, salt and a touch of milk to make it more creamy, it was gobbled up that is for sure, but I would love to use it to color a cupcake or make a purple pie 🙂

I look forward to growing more of them in 2016. Do you grow purple sweet potatoes and if so, what is your favorite recipes to use them in.

Posted in Food Storage, gardens | Tagged Gardening, Growing food for winter storage, Growing purple potatoes, Growing short season sweet potatoes, Growing Sweet potatoes in zone 5, Growing Sweet potatoes on the homestead, Winter Storage | 1 Comment

Lending a helping hand

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

In the past few weeks, I have read in newpapers that we need to help this group or that group.. I have read posts on facebook talking about helping our countries own folks in need over others. I have read requests for donations to local causes and I have read blog posts asking for help in a number of ways. Twice in the past week in my mail box is the start of what will be the never ending asking me for my donation to causes.

I have views on pretty much all of it, but the truth is my thoughts on it are just that my thoughts.. and I am not going into details on them per say..

What I did decide was talk about what I do when it comes to lending a hand, a tool, giving a gift or making a donation, or supporting a cause.

I am of the old belief that you should start close to home, working your way from family to friends to local area to larger community, then to those in need in my own country and finally then out of my own country.

I break with this in one big way, I have supported a microloan program overseas for the improvement for women and children for years.. What I love about that program is that my money rolls over and helps again and again and again.. the payback rate on the microloans are in the high 90’s and once that money is payed back its loaned out again, which means that while each year I give enough to get so many small business started, with the money being paid back it, loaned back out..

As a women who was lucky enough to be born in Canada, I feel that not only is it my duty to help support women issues and rights in my country (cause lets not forget about little things here like the 30 percent difference in pay based on sex etc) but its my moral reasonability to also help women who live in a different culture then my own.

I want to respect their culture but I also want to find a way to help lift them up and support them.

However lets get back to my own local.. so family, well, that one is pretty easy at this point in time, everyone in my family is holding their own, friends pretty much the same, but there is ways to give, ways to help.. time is a gift to give, knowledge is a gift that can be shared an so forth.

Two things I do regular is I support the local green food box, not because I need those boxes of food most of the time, because my farm overflows (it is nice in the dead of winter though) but because its a great program for those that are in need an the more that buy in, the better the prices are for everyone. this means that I help makes sure that those in need get a little bit more in their box.

One of the other, and there is many reasons to this, I like older made items, their history has meaning to me, I like how well they are made, but I shop regular at the local church basement, its a triple win, I am getting what I need or want on the farm but I am not supporting a system of new, I am getting better quality and I am also supporting the church program that in turn supports so many different things in our local area.

Then comes the larger communities, I tend to give away hundreds of dollars worth of seeds, and plants every year, (this plant gift giving has helped create friendships which I adore) in a number of ways, I do not limit this to just the local plant sales or even to a certain group for fundraisers, I expand this gift of plants in as many ways as possible, I have gifted plants all up and down the Ottawa valley. I have worked with some of the local plant girls to help bring in larger orders that allow others to get smaller orders out of my shared huge bulk orders for savings for all.

Then I expand it outward, I have a love of the north and I tend to expand a helping hand that way next, I have lived up there and seen first hand the things that can and do happen in terms of need for food.

It is common for me to also give a little something to rescues for critters, I do not personally support the SPCA or any shelter, preferring to give a hand to those that do small personal rescues, so this year, I gave the funds to buy a large bale of hay for horses, I gave bags of kitten food to a person that had a dropped off expecting momma and it was nice to give them a helping hand on unplanned and unexpected costs.

I also give my time to a number of things I believe in, one of them is coming up on its 5 year gathering in 2016, how does time fly.. its a full day event and good amount of work but so worth it..

I have given to the local food bank, done a grow a row, helped buy the fixins for a Christmas basket an every year, I buy at least one gift to be given to the toys for tots in need program.

What about you? Do you support crowdfunding? Do you like to give in your own little pond, or do you like to throw that help as far as possible and create a ripple half a world away? Do you find a middle ground like I try to do.. working close and local first, finding ways to give back, finding ways to match your world in line with your helping others, finding a way to share your knowledge, and at the same time find others who share the same interests as well.

Do you give something to the non-human rescues as well, do you give something to help the world as a whole..

I still have my acres of rain forest I bought years ago as part of a project, its part of a reserve, I check it every few years to make sure its still going and working as it was intended.

But like how I used to support the SPCA and moved to small rescues, where I am giving to a person and to a animal that has a name, I have moved my world help from a global view to a tight focus on things like food forest, local community gardens, protecting our local waterways and so forth..

Like my pretty hen, I have my eye on the what is important to me 🙂 I love the look of grit and determination on her face.

In my teens and twenties, I went global, in my 30’s I started it getting more and more narrow focus on local.. It will be interesting to see what my 40’s, 50’s and 60’s will bring to the table.

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Lending a hand | 2 Comments

Winter is coming.. Pantry is loaded.. and I am planning for 2016

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Just another day on the farm

Yup, seems like a odd thing to be doing right..

I keep reading homesteading blogs that are all about hay for the winter, wood for the stoves and talking about how much snow they are going to get..

(I have my winter supply of hay, straw, plus hay banked at other barns, We are set for our heat and snow is snow.. we have the tools and we live in Canada, and I have barns for all my critters)

I am busy canning, busy still bringing in the last of garden less then 2 percent till to come, my freezers are full, going to need to turn on another one for the meat butchering and do a lot more canning for meat yet, the pantry and root cellar is full of hundred and hundreds of pounds of food.

All my garden seeds are done for the year, the last set was dried, bagged and labelled and put into storage for winter. The seed potatoes are set apart, the best sweets for slips are placed carefully, the things that are to be overwintered, are bedded down, and the garden is not put to bed yet but its a slow process to get all the plants laid down, and the loads of manure added for overwintering, but as the pens are finished out from around the farm, and then will start back up again in the deep pack method till spring cleanout.

We are working on topping up a couple areas and I intend to expand some areas as well.. plus as things die back, I am hoping to get the chance to run the mower over a few things yet before the snow comes.

Which currently leaves me on pantry patrol, Anything not used that was canned 2007 or later is being cleaned, looked at, feed to the pigs and the jars washed for reuse.. I figure if I have not eaten it in the last 7 years, its not something that we are using.. Then counts are being made of what we do have, and a combo of these counts and what I have saved for seed will be what and how I plan and figure out next years garden.

Some things are easy.. I have a very good idea of how many tomato plants I need, anything over 50 is golden.. anything less and hmmm, I might need to worry a touch on if I will get enough for the year..

But other things are a bit more touchy, example.. corn.. Now the length of the cob and the amount of corn per stalk can change depending on the type, so while I know how many pints I need to put up per year for us, I need to overplant between fresh eating and a little unknown data on production to make sure I can do up a one year supply.

Ah, and there is the catch.. depending on the pantry, some things still need to ideally be planted for a two year supply instead of a one, and on other things, I only need to plant enough to do fresh eating, with a half year supply for a top up in the panty..

My stats are slowly coming in for this tracking year, some things are very good and others are a touch lacking but its safe to say, that I will once again make the 2000 to 3000 pounds of food for the household use, and at least 2000 pounds plus for the critters use.

Side note, I did find it interesting that when we went though and emptied over 60 jars to date from 2007 and longer for the pig use, not a single jar was bad, not a single jar had popped its lid, not a single jar had anything wrong with the food in it, other then color and in a rare case as tiny amount of texture change.. it was all good. I had rust on the outside of the lids, but I had not lost a single inside part..

I am trying a new plan of dipping the lids in canning wax to prevent rusting of the lids in the damp cellar in summer, even with venting, the summers are bad here for dampness.

This is worth noting because so many folks talk about a 10 to 25 percent loss on many sites and they are talking about 1 to 2 year old canning. not seven to ten year old canning.. I often wonder why they get such loss, sometimes I think its storage issues, other times, I wonder if its a missing thing in the process, example, the books call for ripping the rim with water to check it, but I always use hot vinager when I do the rim.. I always leave more of a head space then a lot of other folks and I am old school in regards to sugar, salt and acid levels.

So tell me, are you doing a pantry count at your place, are you finishing up your seeds or do you have things all over, are you pretty much done your garden canning, are you gearing up for fall butcher, are you hunting to fill the freezer. Are you going to be figuring out your garden and seed order in the next few weeks like I will be..