Official Poll: What are the products that you make/produce at home?

What are the products that you make/produce at home?

  • Home-made hygiene essentials (toothpaste, shampoo, hair gel)

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • Home-made cleaners (laundry soap, dishwashing liquid, detergents, etc)

    Votes: 16 53.3%
  • Meat

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • Eggs

    Votes: 21 70.0%
  • Milk

    Votes: 5 16.7%
  • Fruits/Veggies

    Votes: 27 90.0%
  • Jams/Marmalades

    Votes: 18 60.0%
  • Others

    Votes: 14 46.7%

  • Total voters
    30

Support

Almost Self-Reliant
Administrator
Joined
Oct 31, 2008
Messages
148
Reaction score
55
Points
193
As a self-sufficient person, we know that you try to produce or make as many products as possible to meet your daily needs. It could be as simple as making your own jams or as complicated as making your own soaps and detergents.

Please take a minute to complete this poll and tell us what products you make or produce yourself.

If your answer isn't listed, you can vote for "Others" and reply to this thread with your answers.
 

baymule

Sustainability Master
Joined
Nov 13, 2010
Messages
10,704
Reaction score
18,604
Points
413
Location
East Texas
We live in town on a small lot. I have hens in the back yard and a garden in the front. I can, dehydrate, freeze and make jelly. I butcher old hens and the occasional rooster from straight run chick purchases. I butchered 7 chickens a few days ago and canned 21 pints of broth. I picked the meat off the bones and froze it.

We'll be moving 160 miles north at the end of the year on some acreage. I'll plant fruit and nut trees, grapes, berries and a BIG garden!

Wow....this post was in 2014....We did move. We moved on February 14, 2015 which also happened to be our 19th anniversary. LOL

Hmmm..... We raise sheep, lamb is now our red meat. I raise a couple of feeder pigs every year, sell one to cover costs. Last year I sold both and wound up buying a 820 pound boar, Wilbur that I fed on soured corn, milk, boiled eggs and hay for 45 days before we took him to slaughter. In fact, I took 50 pounds of Wilbur out last night and ground it up for sausage this evening. Tomorrow I'll make stuffed sausage and my husband will smoke it low and slow on the pit with hickory wood.

We have chickens for eggs and meat. I have a chicken customer that I raise Cornish Cross for and their purchase covers the cost of what we keep for ourselves. I DO have that big garden now, but this year it was a pretty bad flop. We went into drought and I couldn't keep it alive, weeds galloped away and oh well. We pick elderberries and make syrup for flu and colds. We pick honeysuckle flowers and I make syrup for cough. We pick little wild plums on the fencerows and I make the best darned jam with them.

I keep the offal from the animals we take to slaughter and I can it for dog food. I take the chicken backs, necks, wing tips, hearts and can them for dog food. My husband mixes it with the kibble every night and the dogs inhale it. We have 2 Great Pyrenees, 1 half Anatolian,1/4 GP,1/4Akbash and 1 Great Dane/Labrador. So 4 big dogs that I now can quarts of goodies for!

We did plant 2 plum trees, they died. We planted two peach trees, we got peaches this past spring. We planted an apricot, nothing yet, a pear, we got a few pears. We got suckers that came up from the roots of a neighbors plum tree and planted them this spring, and they are still living. We planted grapes, but rabbits ate them. We have a patch of elderberries where we pick, that got mowed down by a power line crew. So we are going to go dig up a bunch and start our own elderberry patch. Elderberry pie is yummy.

there was nothing here but a doublewide. Nothing. We have cleared land, hacked out 20' walls of green briars, dragged, piled and burned. We built fence all the way around our 8 acres, cross fenced and hung gates, lots of gates! We have built a barn (or neighbor did) for the horses, a barn for the sheep, chicken coops, all the infrastructure needed for a farm. We had a 12'x54' screened porch built on the front of our house. We recently hired a forestry mulcher to clear about 3-4 acres and will be working on that this winter, getting it ready for planting grass seed in the early spring.

I don't make soap, don't crochet or knit, don't make air fresheners or hygiene products. Our focus has been to make our farm able to feed us, sell enough to cover costs, sometimes even make a little and be able to give and share with our daughter and her family. We have wonderful neighbors and are in a great place if there was a SHTF situation. One neighbor wants to drill his own well, we want one also. that is on the list, there are always projects on the list LOL. We work on our farm almost every day, steadily improving it.

That's what we make and produce at home, we raise our food!
 

Lazy Gardener

Super Self-Sufficient
Joined
May 14, 2017
Messages
4,626
Reaction score
5,876
Points
292
Location
Central Maine, Zone 4B
My biggest money saver is dump scavenging. Correction: shopping at the town mall! I bring back books, dimensional lumber of all sorts, some of it NEW!, windows, doors, and any other materials I can repurpose. Furniture. I once brought home a Moosehead night stand that had been tossed on the burn pile b/c it had a tiny cigarette burn on the top. (refrigerator shelving is a great resource: tempered glass for cold frames, metal shelves can be zip tied together to section off part of coop for broody area.) And wood chips, stable litter, compost: both rough and finished.

On the home front: I've planted a small orchard apricot, plum, juneberry, elderberry, pear, apple (have grafted 2 trees, and intend to do more next spring), grapes, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus. Most of the trees are just now getting to the age of bearing fruit. I have a prolific garden and HK mound, planted some veggies in my flower bed this summer. Have added wine cap mushrooms to orchard and BTE garden. I can produce from my garden as well as apples donated by friends. Keep a flock of chickens for eggs, and some meat. Hope to add some ducks in the spring, while decreasing chicken flock size.

I love building projects. Have made 2 story CP coop, 2 tractors, a 8' x 8' CP high tunnel, stone retaining wall. Love doing tile work. Built 2 incubators. Currently building 4 RBs for the garden.

I make a plantain/Jewel weed/sage salve that is helpful for all skin conditions, but is advertised for treating poison ivy rash. Expanding my herb garden, and hope to make more skin products next summer.

We use very little pre-packaged/processed foods. And I hope to move further in this direction. Made a pot of dog food last week.

We burn wood.

I make laundry detergent, and have been making my own dish washer soap. Make some kitchen cleaning products. Hope to use some herbs to develop scented cleaning products.

On the bucket list: rag rugs, basket weaving.
 
Last edited:

milkmansdaughter

Super Self-Sufficient
Joined
Jul 31, 2017
Messages
1,308
Reaction score
1,541
Points
217
Location
Alabama
@flowerbug , we make our own compost and fertilizer and worm beds too. The year before last, we found an ad advertising free 2 year old hay. It was over 30 of the big round bales, some already starting to break down. We brought back every bale he had and used it all over the property. I made sure that it had not been sprayed with an herbicide. That stuff really brought in the worms! We've been working for the past 3 years to increase the number of worms here on the property.
We've lived here for 3 years. When we got here, the property had been sitting vacant for several years, but already had 2 pear and 1 apple trees, 2 black walnut and multiple pecan trees, some VERY old and overgrown grape vines on old rotted trellisses, garlic, and lots of clover and flowers. We've since planted about a dozen more fruit trees, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, mint, asparagus, kiwi, more flowering plants, bee balm, and lemon balm, trying to add a few more plants every year. We've converted a large area of grass into a garden, added free range chickens and now ducks.
Eventually, we hope to add bees, sheep, and possibly rabbits, turkeys, or an oçassional winter pig (pigs are not currently legal where we live). We're working with someone my husband knows to see if we can raise a few head of beef (or pigs) on his land. We enjoy fishing. We hope to add our own mushrooms. I've grown them before.
With everything that was already here before we arrived, we are years ahead of where we had hoped to be by this time. I feel like God was preparing this property for us before we were even born! :D
I've made my own toothpaste and laundry soap in the past, and have done a few things with essential oils. But we have a friend who makes all that so I get them from her.
I've made homemade butter, yogurt, and cheese in the past but I dont have a source for raw milk right now. I hope to do that again when we get sheep.
I had a sourdough starter for years when we lived elsewhere, and keep thinking I'll get some started again here. I haven't done so yet. I occasionally make my own bread, but we don't eat a lot of bread now.
We're always busy with something around here... Always hoping to learn and implement more.
 

Mini Horses

Sustainability Master
Joined
Sep 2, 2015
Messages
7,074
Reaction score
14,468
Points
352
Location
coastal VA
See you are checking out all the old threads. Lot of info in them!

I do occasional feeder pig for meat, chickens for eggs & meat (+sell eggs), goats for milk (occasional meat)...and I make butter, yogurt, cheese, kefir,& soap; have plum & apple trees, wild blackberries & elderberries, garden some. Gardening plans for a larger plant this year -- if weather & work allows. :old Didn't last Spring ..RAIN!!!!!

Goats, chickens & a garden....you have a complete & varied food source.:) I can, freeze, dehydrate & store winter hardy items.
 

flowerbug

Super Self-Sufficient
Joined
Oct 24, 2019
Messages
6,174
Reaction score
11,729
Points
297
Location
mid-Michigan, USoA
@Lazy Gardener have you tried doing anything with purselane yet? it is edible but also seems to be goopy enough to be interesting to try (like aloe perhaps). i've not done anything with it other than eating some of it or mostly just using it as worm food (weeding and burying).
 

baymule

Sustainability Master
Joined
Nov 13, 2010
Messages
10,704
Reaction score
18,604
Points
413
Location
East Texas
Thank you for the lovely compliment! We are currently on day 3 of making and smoking sausage. I updated on Baymule’s 500 pound Boar thread, but here’s a picture!

E4B01136-9045-4A07-AEA2-1FF7E082F02C.jpeg
 

Britesea

Sustainability Master
Joined
Jul 22, 2011
Messages
5,676
Reaction score
5,732
Points
373
Location
Klamath County, OR
@Lazy Gardener have you tried doing anything with purselane yet? it is edible but also seems to be goopy enough to be interesting to try (like aloe perhaps). i've not done anything with it other than eating some of it or mostly just using it as worm food (weeding and burying).

I purposely allowed some purslane to survive in a few select areas of our garden. We love it for salads- and it stays fresh in the fridge for way longer than lettuce does.
 
Top