Provident Living

At the end of 2010, Blake and I set some goals for the new year. One of them was to become more self-sufficient and use the guidelines found on the provident living website. Before this, we had a very meager supply of food storage. Being college students living in an apartment and then a smaller home made it hard to really have much more than a few boxes stuffed under our bed. Now that we bought our new home last October, we've made it a priority to increase our food storage, live debt free, and find ways to be prepared in case of an emergency. It's no secret that teachers and police officers don't make millions (even though they should!) so these things we are trying to do are helping us in other ways as well. I've been so proud of Blake as he has made our food storage goal is #1 priority. He's the one who makes the monthly appointment to visit the food cannery. He's the one who has been keeping track of what we need and how much of it we need. We've been trying to get a year's supply of food for a family of 4. And 6 months into 2011 we are almost there! We have a year's supply of wheat, rice, dry milk, beans, quick oats, and potato flakes. We have a 3 month supply of pancake mix, onion flakes, dried carrots, macaroni and spaghetti. We're still working on getting sugar and some other things, but hopefully one more trip to the cannery next month should take care of it. We are also trying to stock up when a grocery store has a caselot sale on things like canned fruit, tuna fish, tomato sauces, juices, toilet paper and other needs.

We finished a storage room off of our garage so we would have enough space to hold it all. The wooden shelves on the right are where we keep the things from the caselot sale.

The biggest thing we are trying to remember is that we need to cook using our food storage. Not only does this help us save money, but it keeps the food from going bad. The last thing I want is to open up one of our cans and think "I'd rather starve than eat that!" So, this past Saturday I was brave and made some whole-wheat bread for the first time! Bread has always been intimidating to me. I was waiting for my MIL to come over and help me when I just decided to go for it! And really, it wasn't as hard as I thought, just a little time consuming. I don't think I did too bad for my first time, either!

I used our hand-grinder (A christmas present from at least 6 years ago that we had never opened until now) to grind our own wheat...I know, I'm turning into Little House on the Prairie

I also have to note that although the hand grinder wasn't terrible, today I went over to my MIL's to grind the rest of the can using her electric grinder. SO NICE!

I made a "honey-oatmeal wheat bread"

Yay! It's rising!

The finished product: the recipe made two loaves. It didn't rise as much as I wanted it to the second time, but I'm ready to try again!

Other things we've been doing: planted our garden. We have peas coming up and also corn and tomatoes.

put some grape vines on our lattice we built earlier this spring. This plant actually looks a lot bigger and healthier now than it does in this picture

And last, but not least we planted 3 fruit trees on the side of our yard. 2 apple and 1 apricot. Some of you may think we are going overboard with this food storage thing, but these 3 trees was AFTER I talked Blake out of planting SEVEN!

Next on our list is to get a sun oven so I can cook outdoors using solar energy. Can't wait!

PS- I'm aware that many of you will probably think Blake and I have lost our minds :) But if it's a good thing, why not do it?