Progressing with my suburban homestead

by David
(Near Baton Rouge, La. )

I am progressing with my suburban homestead by raising a portion of my vegetables, a lot of fruit and 10 laying chickens near Baton Rouge, La. I wish my wife would be more inclined to help me; what we could do with twice the labor!

I love your website by the way.

We live frugally considering my income, but do have a teenage daughter, so there is plenty of money flying out of my household. I have a 20 x 10 garden and two 4 x 8 boxes for vegetables. This is a reduction from what I normally grow, I am changing over to all 4 x 8 boxes with a garden mix but it is expensive and time consuming to do that.

I have so much Bermuda grass in my yard and garden so I am going to boxes to make it easier to handle the weed problem with that type of grass.

The compost from my chickens will go into the boxes next year. The garden mix from the landscape place is okay, but not anywhere as good as my garden with chicken compost in it.

You guys up north would be shocked at how aggressive some of my vegetable plants grow in Louisiana. I swear you can almost see them grow on a sunny day! The drawback is that we have a lot of bug pressure on the plants.

It has been raining in the afternoon for the last two or three days; I went to check on my squash plants, and have a couple squash twice the size I would normally pick them at. Got to check the garden everyday.

Today I blanched and froze about 5 quarts of snap beans. I thought I would never finish snapping those suckers. The squash casserole for supper was soooo good. I had too much cheese in it though.

I've got 5 Muscadine grape vines, 2 plum trees, 8 blueberry bushes, 6 thornless blackberry bushes, 3 grapefruit bushes, 3 orange trees. That is plenty of fruit for my family and it all comes in at different times of the year.

I am not sure what is going to happen in the future, so I am getting hands on experience, which I love by the way, and am also purchasing things I might need in the future as my future may be much harder than today.

I am one of those guys that is planning ahead, but I'm not crazy about it. I am thinking that life may be more expensive in the future, but not like Mad Max where it's everyone for themselves.

I have a lot of food, and even a fair amount of ammo. I am also a saver of money. There is always some sort of rainy day in everyone's future. I try to be positive, but I believe things look bleak right now, and I feel that my government is lying to me about how everything is okay.

Point in case, you can't borrow trillions of dollars you don't have. I mean, you don't have to have an advanced degree in economics to figure that out. The government is just kicking the can further down the road instead of dealing with our problems in a sober way. Just my opinion. The problem is the democrats and the republicans.

The post is not intended to be "all about me", but the post does show what I am doing at my place to be frugal and prepared for the future.