Preparedness and Plans for Our Self-Sufficient Garden

Did you read the article we recommended yesterday?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/27/11143/168/114/667032

We've been working to be self-sufficient for a while. With the real possibility of food shortages and/or very high prices, we are even more motivated. BUT... even if nothing happens, and there's plenty for all of us, we are tired of depending on agribusinesses and oil dudes and transportation and government ... we plan to be self-sufficient anyway.

However, we have a problem. We have to sell our house in February or March and move to a different city, about an hour away. Will we be able to sell our home, find another one and move in before the first seeds need to be planted? We are hoping and praying we can. Meanwhile we must plan as if we will, so since we intend to grow almost ALL of our food next year, we need to make preparations NOW.

First, we need to store enough to get us through to Fall 2009. (Like rice, salt, honey, cornmeal, potato flakes, quinoa, millet, spelt, amaranth, oats, wheat berries, dried eggs, powdered soy and rice and goat's milk, spices, tea, olive oil, dried fruits and veggies, and canned fruits.)

Over the winter, we'll learn how to grow everything we need, including cotton, quinoa, etc., and how to process it, like how to make soybeans into soymilk and tofu. We'll learn bee-keeping, animal husbandry, cotton-ginning, and more.

When the seed and other garden catalogs get here, we'll order what we can, including: tomatoes, beans, onions, garlic, okra, peppers, eggplant, spinach and other greens, parsley and other herbs, radishes, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, berries, fruit trees and bushes, nut trees, etc. We'll need to order grain seeds and cotton seeds from other places. We'll grow black elderberry bushes for privacy fences and cough syrup. We'll grow bayberry bushes for wax for candles. We'll grow herbs for seasonings and medicines. We'll grow cotton for necessities like cloth, medical supplies and more. We'll grow juniper for fire-starting and berries. Subsistence farming for a family.

When we get settled, we'll get chickens (meat, eggs, fertilizer, pest control, feathers, goats and/or mini cows (milk, meat, leather, lawn-mowing), and bee-hives (pollination, wax, honey). Anything we can grow or raise or do to be a self-sufficient family, we'll do.

Well, you get the drift.

As we do this, we'll take you through our process, giving as much information as we can. Please feel free to contribute your own information about YOUR journey into self-sufficiency.