The Homesteading sites on Pinterest are really interesting to me.

 Thirty-five years ago, we lived in the country.  I was a part time worker, part time college student and full time mother.  We had a small kitchen garden next to the house for squash, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and greens.  We also planted about two acres of corn, peas, potatoes, okra, watermelons and cantaloupe in our big garden.  We raised chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl for eggs and meat.   We would feed out a pig or two, have it butchered and smoked for the freezer.   I would put down” two freezers full of meat and vegetables each year, plus canned over two hundred quarts of jams, jellies, green beans, homemade soups, sauerkraut, pickles and canned soup beef each year.  Our grocery list was mainly pantry staples we could not produce on our own:  flour, corn meal, sugar, coffee, tea, baking products, paper supplies, cleaning and laundry supplies.  When Hubby’s job moved us across the state, we became town dwellers and our gardening came to a halt.  Once we ran out of our canned and frozen foods, it was an eye-opener to purchase all the groceries we needed to feed our family of four. 

In recent years, we were fortunate to purchase the lots to the North of our home, thus giving me some garden space again.  I have harvested enough asparagus so far this spring to pickle three pints and have roasted asparagus.  Hopefully, this next week, I will get to put vegetable seed in the ground.  Our last frost date here is usually about April 19, so I don’t want to get in too big a rush.    Last year, we had an unexpected freeze one night in early April which killed almost all my tomato, cucumber and okra bedding plants in the green house.  I did not turn the thermostat on the heater up high enough to prevent freezing.   That freeze also got every bloom on my peach trees, not a single peach did we get.  Thank goodness, the previous two summers were bumper crops of peaches.   I am still using the peaches put down the previous year to make jams, butters and an occasional cobbler.  I know that the literature available says fruit is only good frozen for six to twelve months, but I have found that properly packaged and sealed fruit can last longer.   Yum Yum!