Have you ever considered giving up on being SS?...Spoke too soon???

[Wifezilla]

Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you are the bug.

Sometimes a late frost wipes out all your apple blooms. Other times you harvest over 50lb of grapes from a single vine.

 

[savingdogs]

I look at the garden as part of my learning curve. So many of the things I'm doing now are new to me, how can I expect to be an expert when I've spent the rest of my life doing other things? I feel like we don't have any choice but to prepare, it isn't optional. However, I try to be choosy. For instance, I had no luck growing onions around here last year, everything got too soggy. Since I didn't really find a better place to plant them, I skipped the onions this year, because, mainly, a big bag of onions is really cheap at the store. So it seemed silly to spend a lot of effort on that. We do produce milk, eggs, cheese and meat and those things are rather expensive in the store. I hope that we will still be able to barter with other people no matter what happens and will be able to use what our place does produce to trade for things it doesn't, like onions. Maybe you should just concentrate on things that are working really well and practice a little more on the things that are not before you give up.

I think when we use heirloom plants in our gardens, we are going to see the reasons WHY hybrid plants were invented, they were crossing strains to improve things and hopefully make the best of both worlds, and also being ability to reproduce well. That doesn't make it less worthwhile to tryheirlooms though. We are used to eating fruits and vegetables grown over a huge variety of growing conditions around the world, some more ideal than others. To expect yourself to produce great amounts of anything the first years is probably a bit ambitious since you are stuck in one climate and it just takes time to learn all there is to know about being self sufficient, if it is even possible to ever learn about every aspect, which I doubt.

 

[Farmfresh]

Have you ever considered giving up on being SS?

I wouldn't know HOW to give it up!

Being SS is just ingrained into my being at this point. Even now when things have gone from hard to occasionally impossible with my health issues, I never think about giving it up. Instead I work on streamlining. Making the impossible be simply hard. I STILL have dreams of a larger place ... even as I am sizing down.

Every failure is a lesson. Every little success is a joy!

Besides that, what is the other choice? Somehow I just can't imagine living like those other folks do. How would I ever forget the taste of my own fresh grown tomato eaten warm in the garden, the joy of baby chicks, the humor of a spring lamb or the satisfaction of making a meal that I completely grew?

 

[sunsaver]

Store bought tomatoes? Disgusting! I wait all winter and spring for my own beefstake toms. Id rather eat something i canned, or just settle for what's in season, than to go back on the grid of corporate slavery. If i lived up north, i'd have green houses with wood stoves to keep my year 'round garden going. I think those who are failing at organic gardening should learn to trust us old hats with green thumbs. Watch garden shows on PBS. Read books. Real books from the pre-internet era, found at your local library.

 

[dragonlaurel]

I remember you are in the Pacific Northwest. That area has strange weather patterns as it's normal. So which crops do good will vary from year to year. Since you want to have plenty of home grown food, you'll probably have to plant a little bit of a big variety of stuff. Trading seed helped to have more variety and made friends too. You're a great person and I hope things get easier for you again soon.

If you're worried about germination rates- sprout a few and see how many come up. I think your seed was still good. I didn't have any problems with it although the bugs thought lots of my stuff was pretty yummy after it was up. :/
This summer my herbs have been doing way better than my veggies. I guess my bugs like their food bland. So I'm drying dill, basil, stevia and thyme now and using my garlic . . . and hoping that the fall planting will do great.

Even when you have an off day/week/year - you are always learning. Those lessons and skills will help later.

 

[framing fowl]

I can sympathize with you on the fruit trees. We're also on a small urban lot. The first year we were here, we planted pear, apple, peach, nectarine, and fig trees. The pear tree has done great every year with minimal pruning on our part. Every year some kind of bug gets the nectarines and they drip and then by fall, there is just the stone hanging on the tree. The peaches did great the second year, but every year after, we've had something different, curl, fungus, and bugs. The dwarf "apple tree" never has even had a blossom on it. I figure it was root stock that they didn't graft or the graft didn't take or something. The fig tree died because it was in a small microclimate in our yard that was a cold pocket.

We've researched what to do with all of the various problems. We've decided that for us, the peach and nectarine are now pretty ornamentals. The spray regimen it expensive and organic is much to labor intensive for us to keep up on. If we were staying on this property, we would actually take them out because they are taking up precious room. The apple trees -we got two new ones that are doing great. The fig tree is not being replaced as we're looking at moving next year. We also now know that when we move, the first thing we'll do is plant apple trees and plum trees, raspberries, and grapes.

This past year has been a rough one for me because I love being out in the garden. Last year I had 3 days a week to devote to projects. This year I was working 2 full time jobs so a lot of stuff had to be put aside out of necessity. It almost felt like I had quit and it was quite a source of frustration and I kept trying to do too much to make up for it. But, during that time, I started playing around with fermenting because that's a quick prep and then you leave it. I was also able to get in a lot of reading and come up with new projects that we will tackle.

The way we look at it is look at all of the things we learned. We also try not to be too emotionally tied up in a project so if it isn't working, we can get rid of that particular project and move on.

 

[valmom]

I guess this question goes back to why you are SS that was on another thread. I do the things I do because they give me satisfaction and I enjoy it, not necessarily because I really think I can be self-sufficient. Unfortunately, it really does take a community of humans working together to actually get all the pieces right to be sufficient- as a group! If we all lived in the same town we would have a kick-ass community!!

My garden sucks- it is shady (anyone know shade loving veggies??) it's on a hillside, and I don't LIKE gardening! My SO's 3 sisters garden is doing great (she likes gardening). (my garden has tomatoes and peppers- I thought the spot was sunnier than it is- and winter squashes, and beans for drying). So, we will have corn, squash and beans from the 3 sisters this year it is looking like. No tomatoes for our home made pizza On the other hand, my kombucha is good and growing and delicious, and my yogurt is yummy (even if my SO won't eat it!) and my laundry detergent works great, and I LOVE making soap And I am trying my hand at dehydrating things, too- even if I have to buy them cheap at a local farmer's market instead of growing my own. The Dehydrate2store website says you can dehydrate soup! (seems a bit extreme to me!) Our fruit trees have only ever had fruit on one Fuji apple tree. The Mac apple, the two plums and the grafted cherry have never even had blooms. But they attract lots of Japanese beetles that the hens love for breakfast and dinner treats
And, I love fiber! My alpaca fleeces are slowly turning into yarn and I have so much hand spun brown sheep wool that I am sick of the color. I am thinking about a small table loom to supplement my daughter's child fixed heddle loom for scarf sized material. I can clothe us, keep us warm, and keep us clean, even if I can't feed us!

Our hens are also residents for life, and are now 6 years old- that's why we are raising 6 more chicks in the house who are so stinkin' cute! One of our hens is still laying almost an egg a day at her advanced age We are mostly vegetarian with the occasional local beef hamburger. Not by my choice, but it helps keep peace in the house if I limit my meat- even though SO says I don't have to. The horses- OK, they are a money sink and a waste of time now that I no longer have time to ride much. My horse time is just keeping up with taking care of them, but I'm lousy at selling, and 4 of them are un-saleable anyway. The bees, well, they are a first year experiment that I hope aren't failing. We'll see about them if they fail I may not try again. They are much more worry and time than I thought they'd be. (I spent last night awake worrying about them :/) Maybe I need wild bees to pollinate that I don't have to worry about them- although one of the reasons we got a hive was because of the collapse of the wild bees.

So, I guess it is a matter of picking the things that you enjoy most and cut your losses on things you don't enjoy. SS is accomplished in little steps and ideally need a community of like-minded people around you to teach and support- and trade what you can't do for what you can!

 

[Naughty]

i am new to the SS ideas - and will probably never be totally independent. But every new thing i learn - makes life a little cheaper and more fun - there is a lot of pride to me to be able to do things for my family.

I am a single mom on limited income - the more I learn about ways to do things healthier and cheaper - the better!

Plus the gardening and chicken habit are doing wonders for my weight lol

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

i am new to the SS ideas - and will probably never be totally independent. But every new thing i learn - makes life a little cheaper and more fun - there is a lot of pride to me to be able to do things for my family.

I am a single mom on limited income - the more I learn about ways to do things healthier and cheaper - the better!

Plus the gardening and chicken habit are doing wonders for my weight lol

As long as you remember that it is strictly impossible to be independent, you will be fine.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Crops fail on a daily basis at the commercial level, but we only see a small ripple effect, due to the huge amounts that are grown.
Trying to do absolutely everything all by yourself is actually asking for failure along the way.
We require each other on various levels.