We have been busy planning and setting goals for 2014. In the new year I am planning on not buying food at the grocery store. Now I frankly know that we will not be able to go without a grocery store for a year, but I would like to see how well we could do without shopping. I won't be depriving anyone. We have plenty of food and raise enough to meet our needs, but we have been in the habit of buying at the grocery store our every food whim.
We like food and we like good food and we love food adventures. We cook from many different continents and different ethnic foods fill our diets. Many of those items require specialty stores and I will even travel an hour and a half to shop at an ethnic store. After praying at the end of last year, God revealed a few things to me about our diet.
After a disappointing growing season, I began seeking God about our farm and gardening practices. Where were we going wrong? Why so many failures? Why does it feel we are spinning our wheels and not getting any where? God revealed to me that I was taking the wrong approach to our homestead.
I kept trying to grow what we wanted to eat. I spent significant time on things like trying to grow sugar beets, researching rice growing, raising geese, growing soybeans in order to ferment our own soy sauce and other such projects. Instead I need to focus on eating what we grow.
We can raise lots of potatoes, dry beans, and dry corn. Enough hard wheat for all the bread we currently eat, would be more challenging. Soft wheat grows better here. We eat a lot of rice, but growing it is not practical in the PNW. The chickens stop laying in the Fall and don't start again until after winter solsitice. I kept supplementing with store eggs so I didn't have to change my menu plans. We make sausage but not enough to feed us all year, so sometimes I got store sausage.
We kept trying to raise enough animal feed for all the animals all winter. We fed animals for significant lengths of time when we should have been butchering them. I didn't have storage space for all the meat at one time and I preferred frozen to canned meat. So we stretched out the butchering and fed to many animals through the winter. We went through too much feed.
Why were we doing these types of things - gluttonany. We wanted what we wanted and were not willing to live with and enjoy what God had provided. We are going to work on making some changes and doing things a little differently. We are looking forward to a great gardening and farming year.
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