(AF) Moving Towards Self Reliant Living

Dave and I still have a long way to go to make it to total self-reliance, but we are both making lots of headway. I look so forward to the day we are finally there, or at least, close enough that we have most of our daily use needs from our own farm, and then use items from our farm in trade for the remainder few things we need.

As I was sitting down to this scrumptious dinner fit for a king the other day, I had to smile with great satisfaction. The eggs were from my free-range chickens (hee, hee, I finally found where the little darlings were hiding them, now they have moved them again, grrrr... ), the green onions were out of my little fall garden, and the fresh greens (locally grown) I received in trade. It was a wonderful, warm feeling of great satisfaction to know that the majority of my meal came from my own hands, was farm raised, and almost completely void of chemicals. Even the potatoes came from our local produce market.

So how could it have been improved? Well, we could have grown the potatoes ourselves (and will next year), the bacon could have come from our own pigs (Dave is working on getting set up for that, as my old hog pen is way too far gone), the vinegar drizzled over the greens could have been from our own apples (going to take awhile for that, but until then, maybe we will luck into some apples like we did the pears), and the butter I cooked the eggs in could have been from our own cow's milk. Oh, I look so forward to having a good milk cow and making lots of butter, yogurt and cheeses!

But for now, this was visual proof that we are making headway towards our goal and one very, tasty, delicious, satisfying meal!