Small steps

I often get discouraged that we cannot do more. I see other homesteading blogs and they have goats and sheep, they have already had seasons of canning, they milk their own cows, and I feel stuck in suburbia without the ability to do many of these things. I decided to look at it a different way, while we are hoping the next few years bring us to a home with multiple acres and the ability to have a larger garden, and small orchard and farm animals, we are doing quite well for where we are.

Here is our information. Our home is located on .77 acres, a good portion is wooded, plus our front yard is large with a creek running through it, not a great growing location. We have built out a two -tiered garden this year to serve as a main garden, we have the old smaller garden as the berry patch and we are fashioning a small makeshift garden on the side of the property to try out some crops I haven't grown before. We already plan to expand the garden we had built this year to include those crops next year. We are growing: pole beans, snow peas, two kinds of tomatoes, eggplant, two summer squash, two zucchini, pickling cukes, regular cukes, carrots, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash and sweet pumpkins.

In addition to our garden, we are supporting our local farms and buying local as much as possible. We are waiting on our beef order from a farm in Maryland, we get our milk, cream, eggs and honey from a local farm, I joined a CSA and will receive my weekly box of produce from them as well. I believe we will be able to make almost all meals 100 mile meals this summer, although some items such as olive oil are not local. I also localize my coffee, buying fair trade organic beans and roasting them here at home. We compost and try as much as possible to make our food. Overall, for being in suburbia, I think we are doing pretty well! Now I need to get these kittens to 6 weeks old, and into new homes, and then we start the chicken search :)