Self Reliance

So I have been really excited since we moved into this house about becoming more self-reliant.  There are many ways to do this but we plan to focus on a few key things that work for us.

 First we are planning to get out of debt as quickly as possible; right now this means paying off our car.  In the long run it means getting into a bi-weekly auto pay plan for our mortgage (as well as hopefully being able to make an extra payment every year).  Doing those things alone should help us pay off our mortgage at least five years earlier than if we made a traditional monthly payment.  Also along with getting out of debt we hope to re-establish a savings, most of which was used when we purchased this house.

Second, we plan to plant a garden.  I never really cared about having a garden until two years ago when I saw how excited Xander was by the idea of having plants of his own; since we were in a rental until late this summer we haven't had room for anything but strawberries and tomatoes but seeing how much the boys enjoyed growing them has inspired me to try something on a larger scale.  I plan to start our garden early this coming spring and hope that within the next three years I will be able to have a year-round kitchen garden established wherein we are able to produce most of our own vegetables.

The third, and last goal we have for ourselves on our path to being self-reliant is to increase our food storage.  I have been trying to start researching this in my "spare" time and I am mostly in the early stages of gathering resources but in addition to the church website here are some links to some sites I like.  This site has been reccommended to me by a family friend many times and seems to have a lot of great ideas.  Many of you may also have heard of Shelf Reliance from shopping at Costco where they carry their shelfs from time to time you can visit their site here, it is a great resource for planning out what you need as have user friendly food calculators, recipes, and tips in addition to selling the food and storage systems if you want to go that route.  Another site that I have enjoyed looking at has a program that helps you get started in a very simple way using checklists and worksheets which can be found or purchased on their website.  The last website I enjoy is a site that belongs to my "other" grandmother Barbara Salsbury who has written many books and is quite an expert on emergency preparedness; she also has a way of taking a subject that can often be boring to read about and making it interesting and even humerous at times. Well I love her and you can meet her by clicking here. 

I suppose that is all for now...please let me know if you have any suggestions that may help on my quest toward self-reliance.  I am particularly interested in local companies that use organic ingredients as that is the direction I would like to be headed down.  Also if you know of places that offer food grade containers, such as 5-gallon buckets, please share.  The same goes for gardening tips as I have never really done this before and am somewhat nervous that I will somehow find a way to kill everything I plant!