ecobites

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

What do YOU want to accomplish this year?

Here are more goals....

Food:

Plant a load more vegetables and herbs this year - to do this we need to extend our garden

Preserve more food by drying, bottling and freezing. Need to experiment more with bottling - sauces etc.

Household:

make all our cleaners, soap, shampoo etc

Overall : learn to make do with what we have, mend and repair + remake clothing etc.

i need to get more into preserving food, too:)

We have just started bottling, too. Loads of fun.

we live as self-sufficiently as possible on a large plot of land in a nice bush setting. this to many folk sounds the ideal way to live. it is, too, but to live this kind of lifestyle you must be prepared to put a lot of time and energy into it, and at the same time enjoy most of your labors, for doing practically everything yourselves certainly uses up your time and energy. so with that our goal this year was to scale our lifestyle down somewhat. we still keep a cow, goat a few sheep, chooks, we now share a market stall each other week, make cheese, butter and yogurt, preserve and freeze garden produce.

A greenhouse was this year's goal and aquaculture (done)l. If you live in a region of the world with harsh winters, then a greenhouse will be essential for food self-sufficiency. Obviously, a greenhouse alone is not a strategy for full food production unless it is a large facility. Typically it can be viewed as a compliment to other gardening methods.

Indoor growing is typically done with grow lights and hydroponics. Some people have sun-rooms in their homes which can basically act as a fancier greenhouse.

Indoor hydroponics. This method of growing is certainly not the cheapest way to produce food, yet it is a steadfast method especially where weather and other elements can hinder food self-sufficiency. Indoor hydroponics requires grow lights such as LEDs, CFLs, or HPSs, along with tubing, drainage, fertilizer and ventilation. However, even a small space can produce fantastic yields for leafy vegetables, herbs, tomatoes, sprouts, and much more. To make this method fully off the grid find the most energy efficient grow lights possible and think about getting a solar generator to offset the electric costs.

How did your goals go? We have especially enjoyed our bottled fruit. i am pleased to say that our little small scale acreage is producing us with enough eggs, fruit and veg, chickens, goat and cow milk, soap. This year my goal is to start a market stall and get more commercial with our produce.