Starting my Journey

Where does this journey begin?
Well, that's a tough question, but I know that it really only has just begun. If I were to pin the earliest point, it would have to be my childhood. My mother loves to make homemade bread which is a whole day affair - freshly ground whole wheat (from an electric mill), hand kneading, shaping, rising, shaping, rising (yes, twice), and baking. She also stocked a year supply (plus!) of food which pretty much affected the way I stock my own cupboards even at college.
Also, my Grandmother pretty much raised her family of 7 children off their one-acre garden (of course, sugar, wheat, diary and meat products as well as occasional sweets were purchased at the grocery). So I grew up eating the best pickle relish and blackberry jam ever, thanks to her sharing her bounty.

A well stocked pantry
I remember my mother's grocery list being pretty simple each week, which consisted of the basics (milk, butter, eggs, and fresh produce for healthy snacking), a few specialty items for upcoming meals or events, and the list of items to restock the pantry. If the restocking item rarely went on sale, then we would just restock the few we pulled out of the pantry. If there was hope for a decent sale, the restocking items accumulated on the list for several months until the sale came and then we bought a few cases. So I grew up never wondering if we would have enough yeast for the dinner rolls, or enough vanilla for the spur-of-the-moment cookies. It was just common knowledge in my parent's house that if you ran out of what you needed, you just went to the downstairs pantry to get another one. I guess my mother kept the tally of what needed to be restocked because as a child, I don't remember ever having to write it down, yet they would often end up on her shopping list. And as teenagers, we didn't tell her when we were using up the instant-pudding packages for after-school snacks instead of the provided apples and carrot sticks. (Sorry Mom!)

One cupboard for a college student
So when I went to college, I always had at least a few cans of cream of chicken or mushroom soup (in lots of fast recipes I used) or instant soups for easy dinners (way cheaper than the cafeteria even if the sodium content was probably about the same). Or a #10 can of old-fashioned oats for making oatmeal instead of the flavored instant-oatmeal packets or bulky boxes of sugar-cereal. So a quick and healthy meal wasn't too hard (when a college student is feeling like being healthy and/or cheap), or I could easily double it for company or even change around my menu without having to visit the grocery again.

But a college student often has many roommates so space for multiples of every product was not possible. I did, however, keep some basic cooking supplies plus a couple gallons of water on the top shelf in my clothing closet. My roommate used her space for another 10 pairs of shoes, or something like that. So, it's totally possible to at least do something with very little space. You just have to plan for it and keep it basic. Plus, cooking basics can double as cookie-making supplies for a spontaneous visit to the boys apartments across the parking lot. :)

2007: Moving to a house
After getting married (2004) and starting a family (early 2006), a few years of apartment living started to wear on me. I wanted to have the fully stocked pantry my mother had, and I wanted to start living more principles of self-sufficiency. So a few months after my husband and I graduated college, and he accepted a job (I got my dream job of being a full-time homemaker, with a formal education for piece of mind), we started our house hunt. We bought our first home the summer of 2007. So from there is where I would say that MY journey officially began. The rest of 2007 consisted mainly of settling in, though a few preparations were made.

2008: Year-Supply of Basic Food Storage Items
2008 was the big year. I set aside $50-75 each month towards buying our pantry items. I cut back on a few luxuries such as prepackaged cookies, crackers, chips, pretzels, and sugary cereals. I spent more time making homemade oatmeal again (not hard, it just requires me to get up a couple minutes before the hubby who goes to work early) and the hubby agreed to eat out less each month. And hubby and I had pre-agreed that we would finish buying our year-supply of food with the bulk of our Christmas money and our food storage would be our gift to each other. By shopping around for the best prices and sticking to basic foods that have a long shelf life (flour, sugar, oats, powdered milk, dry beans, etc.), we were able to accomplish our goal! We also bought enough gallon containers of drinking water for our family for 2 weeks. AND there was enough money left to buy a FoodSaver vacuum packer and Excalibur dehydrator off CraigsList for amazingly cheap prices! (free online classified ads for the whole Metro area). Another CraigsList finds: a new propane space heater (with low oxygen sensor) for emergency heat (since we found out that our wood fireplace does NOT work as a good heat source).

More 2008: Rotating Food Storage & New Garden
We started incorporating our food storage items into our meal planning. We bought a quality electric wheat grinder so we can save additional money each month by making a lot more things from scratch.

Summer 2008 we started a raised garden. The husband was not interested in doing lots of weeding, but once we learned about Square Foot Gardening we were hopeful that we could enjoy fresher-than-fresh strawberries and tomatoes without much weeding required. Our oldest son turned 3 that year and he ate most of the tomatoes right off the vine before they could come in the house. The same thing happened to the strawberries we planted. Our new raspberries wrinkled up and died, despite watering. I later learned that our soil is very clayey and they did not have proper drainage. The raised bed vegetables did great, thanks to adding new good garden soil.

Even more 2008: All is Safely Gathered In, just before the Storms
In mid-December, we had some pretty bad snowstorms here. Hubby grew up in Wisconsin and I in Idaho, so we weren't out of our element (no driving though, because the other drivers don't know how to handle it). But the Portland Metro area is not used to this stuff! They don't have the snow-plow fleet that other places do. We had just finished up buying our year supply of food, and bought a big bag of hot cocoa mix with the leftover money. Two days later we had the freak storms that left many home-bound and stores closed. We sipped our new hot cocoa and felt pretty proud of ourselves. So what if our toddler didn't get lots of fancy toys this year? I don't think he really cares anyway. That $3 Clifford dog in like-new condition that is bigger than him is probably his favorite gift anyway. At least we kept power (some large sections in nearby cities lost power for at least a few days) because we learned that our wood fireplace is more for looks than for heat.

2009: Expanded Garden and CHICKENS!
For Mothers Day 2009, we splurged on a KitchenAid mixer to aid in making our food storage a significant part of our regular menus. The KitchenAid was bought refurbished from the company and I earned half of the purchase by buying and reselling a couple KitchenAid accessories on Craigslist. The wheat grinder and mixer have already paid for themselves in all the muffins, rolls, and bread that I've made for the family (I was starting to feel some tendinitis coming on from all that hand kneading which started from my piano-performance days many years earlier).

We also bought 5 pullets (young female chickens). We bought them 5 weeks old, so they were already past the fragile baby stage but we still got to enjoy the peep-peep-peep in the kitchen while they grew in a large tupperware container under a regular lightbulb for a couple weeks. In fact, hubby really misses the nostalgic peeping and looks forward to when we can get little chicks again (but we plan on keeping these ladies around for a few years if they do well).

We expanded the garden and planted extra tomato plants exclusively for the children. I tried container gardening on the porch, including a small lemon tree. The container plants were all pretty much a failure. The plum tree that came with the house did not produce very well this year (or all the squirrels ran off with all but a few) and it needs some serious pruning.

Winter 2009 I took an online gardening class in the hopes of learning how to better care for my garden without using chemical aids (being "green" is great, but mostly it's that I'm cheap). I learned so much! But I don't think I have the confidence to tackle that plum tree yet. Hopefully it does better next year.

We also added two 55-gallon water storage barrels, with a drinking-safe hose to use as a siphon. Now we'll have water to cook with, wash dishes, wash clothes, and wash ourselves if there is an emergency. If we do ever need to use the 55- gallons, we'll refill our 5-gallon (with pour spout) and 1-gallon containers for easier use. I'll need to see how often I should refresh the water, but it should be good for a while.

2010: Goats? We'll see...
Chickens doing well. 2 of them kept laying all winter. They all survived our 2 days of snow. They're actually pretty hardy if given sufficient shelter. This next winter I might try putting a light on a timer in their house. It is actually the number of daylight hours that signal their egg production, but their breed has a lot to do with how well they lay (we have 4 different breeds).

I would love to have a couple backyard dairy goats so I am learning a lot about that. I am fully allowed to have chickens where I am, but I need my neighbor's permission for "livestock." Inside Portland itself (Multnomah county), you're allowed 3 chickens and 3 small goats without a permit. So if you have a yard, you can have them. My county requires certain set back from neighboring houses. I am good for the neighbors on the back of my house, but the side neighbors' houses are too close. I obtained tentative permission from the neighbors by assuring them that I'm doing all my research up front and am still waiting to make my decision. And that if the goats were ever a problem, I would get rid of them. So, more on that another day. My toddler is begging to see his pet chickens again now that he just woke up from his nap...