How much do you produce

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rattler

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How much of your own food do you produce i mean from the garden or beef hog's ect.
we tro go grow our own green bean's potatos corn as we can but we still end up spending around $100 to $160 a week at the dang gerocry store a week and can carry it in the house in two trip's now this feed's five.I have a buddy that drive's a truck for the local food chain one store he dilivers to dose a million dollars worth of buisness a week acording to the manager seems like the price of everything is going up but what we get for our product is going down.What are you'alls thoughts on this?


rattler
 
We grow alot in the garden and freeze or can. We also butcher our own cows. Sometimes we get the notion to raise a couple of pigs or chickens to butcher in the fall. We now have a local farmer who raises pigs so we now buy from him when we need it, to support him. We used to milk our own cow as well. But we stopped cause life was to busy. Now milk in our area is nearing 5.00 a gallon, might start again.
We seem to bring alot home from the grocers. Fresh produce, cause our growing season is from june to sept, and it is an awful long time to go with out fresh fruit. But by the time you buy the shampoo, laundry, fast easy foods like pizzas, cereals, or soups, the bill seems to climb.
Some weeks it is $50.00 and others about $150.00 depending on what is on sale, the only time to buy. If our local co-op grocer has good sales like the wharehouse sales, I buy alot and stock up for a few weeks. And that is for a family of 2.
 
We go shopping once a month and average $250/month on store bought items with a family of four. I'm wanting to start raising my own eggs to cut this cost and to have some fresh chicken. But I keep asking myself why do I need chicken when I have beef, venison, fish and pork.
 
I'd guess we are growing about 75% of our food needs. We have no dairy. We try to buy as much dairy from a local farm as possible. We go to the grocery store to buy things we can not grow, like toilet paper. Our Thanksgiving was 100% off the farm.
 
We can pass by the meat sections of the grocery store. We have our own eggs, chicken, beef, venison, all kinds of wild fowl. I make our own summer sausage, and all kinds of smoked meats. All the fish we want. Sometimes buy bacon, ham, maybe some pork chops. Doesn't seem to pay to raise a hog. By the time you got it in the freezer just to much into it and always parts we don't use.
Also frozen corn, green beans and peas. Still seem to spend plenty on groceries and all the other crap we all need in our day to day lives.
When the kids were small I milked enough for our own milk and butter. Kinda miss that.
 
One of my goals this year is to build a smoke house and a big kitchen so I can play without messing up the house. Mnmt, you are right about it not being worth raising a hog. I'll trap/shoot wild hogs and these are more than plenty for our needs. A lot of people around here complain about them but if someone tosses me a lemon I'm going to try and make some lemonade out of it.
 
We used to raise 2 hogs a year for the frezer but we dont do that any more cause you can buy one that is ready to butcher and come out better then if you raise it yourself.

rattler
 
We raise our own beef, turkeys and chickens. So no meat from there is bought, we trade a guy who raises hog a 1/4 for a pig each year.
I no longer buy pickles, made my own.

I can't really think of how much we raise ourselves, but we are trying to get how much we buy in the store cut back.
 
We bought locker beef from a friend until we raised one of our own, so hardly any store-bought beef in this house for years. Every time I had to buy it, I was disappointed with it. We also buy home-raised meat chickens from a friend, he lets them get big and raises them on grass, they are good eating and a good value. We get home raised pork once in a while, we can't get it right now and miss it to the degree we are thinking about getting some weaned pigs and raising them to slaughter size.

We keep chickens for the fresh eggs, but have found the old hens to be more trouble than their meat is worth to butcher.

Produce, we have an asparagus patch and I am already craving some fresh asparagus but it won't be up until the middle of April. We have a friend with a HUGE garden who used to keep us well supplied, but they are farther away now and we hardly ever see them and get stuff. So we plan to put in a garden of our own this year.

I have a small herb garden and always have a few fresh herbs in the summer, and we also plan to put in some pecan trees this year and maybe almond trees too.
 
I quit doing this several years ago when I got so busy on the farm. But I am going to start it up again.
I made tunnels out of heavy wire(like you put in concrete). I bowed it and cut the ends and covered it with plastic.
It made 20 ft tunnels with stobs I could stick in the ground. They were easy to lift off so I could get to the plants and I could grow in the garden year round.
I also made tire mounds to grow and store potatoes- so I could have potatoes year round.
 
We produce all of our meat we eat. (chickens, beef, deer, fish) Thats not to say we dont buy chicken now and again from the local grocery store, but mostly self sufficient when it comes to meat. WE also raise our own eggs, and fresh garden vegetables, and apples, pears. but only enough to last about 6-8 months. I am interested in building a greenhouse so we could have those year round veggies.
My grandmother used to can at least 400 jars of vegetables or whatever so there was enough for the whole year.
 
we dont have a garden.but when my dad was alive he would plant 6 or 8 mater plants.an have all the maters we could eat.my bro plants a ggarden.so we get mters squuash an okra from him.we do raise our own eggs.our grocery bill is $75 to $125 a week.an we have 3 people in the house.
 
We try to raise a little garden every year but are not that good at it. Tomatoes, okra, collards, green beans and onions. My father in law raises a huge garden and gives vegetables to everybody. My wife freezes large amounts of beets, peas, green beans, and peaches. Our garden if more for enjoyment than anything as I figure you can buy most of it as cheaply as you can grow it. Some of it just doesn't taste nearly as good especially fresh tomatoes. I have no idea what the grocery bill is every month but I figure only about 25% of what you buy at the grocery is edible. The rest is just kitchen and bathroom stuff but all necessary since Sears, Montgomery Ward and Penny's don't send out catalogs any more.
 
Its confession time:

Many of my youthfull weekends were spent on the end of a hoe. Dad's garden was always 5 times bigger than it needed to be. After school each day I had to hoe a row. Every day of my life it seemed. After dark it was time to shell peas out of that big green bowl. It seemed to never end.

I vowed to never have a garden and so far all these years later, I haven't had one. The work didn't hurt me any. We kept everyone at church stocked with veggies too.

I also vowed to never own a cow. That vow was broken it seems :D :D

I can crawl on the backhoe or on the caterpillar and make enough nickels on a given Saturday to buy veggies for a whole year. Gardening in a labor of love that I have no love for.
 
backhoeboogie":3p3qx3i4 said:
Its confession time:

Many of my youthfull weekends were spent on the end of a hoe. Dad's garden was always 5 times bigger than it needed to be. After school each day I had to hoe a row. Every day of my life it seemed. After dark it was time to shell peas out of that big green bowl. It seemed to never end.

I vowed to never have a garden and so far all these years later, I haven't had one. The work didn't hurt me any. We kept everyone at church stocked with veggies too.

I also vowed to never own a cow. That vow was broken it seems :D :D

I can crawl on the backhoe or on the caterpillar and make enough nickels on a given Saturday to buy veggies for a whole year. Gardening in a labor of love that I have no love for.

That is what I figured. By the time you take what you are worth by the hour, those could be some mighty expensive gardens and livestock. I could save money by not having a garden and eat better and have a waiter bring me the food, as long as I work @ what I am good at. I guess money should not even be mentioned because most do it for other reasons. When it gets to be work and it is 100 degrees outside and the mosquitos are thick, sure would be nice pecking a keyboard in the air conditioning while waiting on the pizza delivery guy drinking a Bud Lime.
 
HerefordSire":2180o0hl said:
When it gets to be work and it is 100 degrees outside and the mosquitos are thick, sure would be nice pecking a keyboard in the air conditioning while waiting on the pizza delivery guy drinking a Bud Lime.

There is a little veggie stand on the road side enroute to the house. They grow most of the stuff they sell. 8 hours on the caterpillar on a given Saturday would buy everything in that stand and probably the stand too. :D ( I don't want to hear the "fresh vegetable" arguments since I get fresh veggies as is)
 
backhoeboogie":3a31vw5u said:
HerefordSire":3a31vw5u said:
When it gets to be work and it is 100 degrees outside and the mosquitos are thick, sure would be nice pecking a keyboard in the air conditioning while waiting on the pizza delivery guy drinking a Bud Lime.

There is a little veggie stand on the road side enroute to the house. They grow most of the stuff they sell. 8 hours on the caterpillar on a given Saturday would buy everything in that stand and probably the stand too. :D ( I don't want to hear the "fresh vegetable" arguments since I get fresh veggies as is)

But are the veggies organic and grown with certified organic seed! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: I know what you mean and you are right it is a labor of love and an art that need not be forgotten because you just never know.
 

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