Hello again – been a while. There is much to share, but I’ll stick to one idea ‘cause I think it is more interesting than a general update kinda thing.

I would like to share with you a great accomplishment of mine. For nearly a year now I have been eating almost entirely food that I grew, gathered or killed myself.


I didn’t grow much grain so the bulk of the protein and carbohydrates came from meat. I raised goats this year and they reproduce readily. I shot a deer with a crossbow. And there were many opportunities to scavenge meat from other people’s slaughterings. I came up with a new term for this type of meat gathering: a slopportunity. Get it? … anyway, I got some pig, chicken, moose, cow, lamb, ‘coon, beaver. Oh, and I did buy some bison meat and fat in the fall.. I forgot about that. But I’d’ve made it without that… Oysters & clams, bit of salmon …

I rendered my own cooking fat from the animals that came my way. They all worked fabulously for frying or baking but especially interesting to me was the chicken fat as it was liquid like olive oil at room temperature which made it great for salads. That was my one weak spot, I thought. But it worked out. ‘Coon fat was semi-liquid at room temperature and worked fairly well for dressings as well. I got into light-sautes for my kale salads anyway which worked well with any kind of fat.

It occurred to me that most animals gain weight for the winter. So when I ate, I ate as much as I could. I also wanted to eat as much fat as could possibly be deemed somewhat reasonable. It’s delicious. But I also wanted to know if it would make me fat to eat fat, as is the common idea amongst most people. It didn’t work. I still weigh the same as I’ve weighed since I was eighteen.

I ate a lot of potato, rutabaga and carrot hash for breakfast. I also ate a lot of stew at all time of the day. Stew is a complete food and it is delicious, nutritious and fairly easy to prepare. It works well on the woodstove, a slow cooking kind of tool. I also ate a bunch of nuts

I have bought some stuff that I ate, but that was just treats, not the stuff that was actually feeding me on a day to day basis. Even the bits of a meal that bring it up from mere sustenance to delicious I was able to get from the garden or field or forest. The deliciousness came mostly from thyme. But there was also some basil I dried. The previous winter I made my own salt from sea water (which I’m not sure is entirely healthy). But this year I was given a big bag of salt in trade for some work that I did for a friend.

It is hard to say how much work it was or how much ofmy waking life was consumed by food getting and producing… but I would guess that it was no more half a week, as in part-time work, three or four days a week on average. A bunch more time went into preparing this food every day. But you know: while much of it was chore-ish, the majority was just a part of living. Like sleeping. You have to do it, but it isn’t work, just a part of life. It’s like the the ol’ gatherer/hunter (h/g) quote, “we work four hours in the morning and then we make things.” The distinction is arbitrary. If you counted making things in my work load, I’d be a workaholic for sure.

So, the food self-sufficiency has been a goal of mine for while. And while it isn’t perfect (some of the animals I ate were fed with a lot of imported food etc.), I feel fairly accomplished. Life long learning though. It’s not so hard.

I’m looking forward to the next month or two: The Spring Dearth. This is the time of year where the winter veggies are rotting, growing and getting woody, or had to be harvested to get the garden ready for this years crops. I ate the last of my kale yesterday. There are a dozen potatoes left, two rutabagas, and a bunch of carrots. But I have preserved a lot of that stuff in ferments and freezers. So we’ll see. But I’m planning on toughing it out, and not buying any staple foods.

See you out there. Life is good.