4 Important Reasons to Keep a Pantry ~ Guest Post by Kim @ Homestead Acres

Kim writes at Homestead Acres, a blog dedicated to all things homesteading, homemaking, and even a bit of homeschooling and news. Useful how-to’s and thoughtful posts based on experience!

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Our grandmothers knew the importance of keeping a well stocked pantry.  Over the years the practice has slipped for many people but there are many good reasons to keep your home pantry stocked.

 #1.  Versatility

If you have ever been in the middle of cooking and realized your out of one or more important ingredients you’ll know the frustration that can cause!  The time and extra money to head out to the store to pick up the needed ingredients can really add up.  Keeping staples on hand will help you to prepare quick and healthy meals for your family.

#2. Taking advantage of sales

Practicing pantry keeping helps you to take advantage of sales.  Grocery stores run loss leaders every week.  These are designed to get you in the door, in hopes you’ll buy “extras” while your there.  If you can start buying more of these sale items and rotating them in your food storage, you’ll save a lot of money by not paying full price.  You could also start keeping track of when your stores run their sales.  Many have schedules that they rotate on, this will help you predict when items you need will be coming up at a good price again.

#3.  Taking advantage of seasonal foods

The best prices for food are when they are in season.  This is because there is so much of it available.  If you can practice canning, dehydrating and freezing you can take advantage of this to store food for year round use.  You will save money by buying the produce at it’s lowest price, the quality will be the best and your home preserved food will taste better then preservative filled commercial food.

#4.  Preparing for disasters

No matter where you live natural or man made can happen.  We live in the snow belt where storms can shut down roads for a few days at a time.  Other areas are prone to flooding or hurricanes.  If you wait until an emergency has hit it is very difficult to find the supplies you need.  Many times IF you can make it to the store you will be met with empty shelves.  Just a few years ago we had one of the hardest winters for snow fall in our area.  At one point we were snowed in for a week!  When the big black out hit the Eastern Canada and USA our area was with out power for 3 days in a heat wave.  Many areas were out longer then that.   Knowing that we had a well stocked pantry with food and water gave our family peace of mind.

Food storage is a wonderful and practical tradition to revive.  It helps you to save money, gives you peace of mind and the ability to help others in need.

the middle of nowhere

Our home is planted in a big field, a decent walk’s distance from the nearest neighbor, on a side road in a not so highly populated town. Before we moved here nine months ago I made it very plain that I felt uncomfortable being alone with the kids without a vehicle. Not that I expected that to happen, but it was still an important issue. My one reassurance was that if we ever encountered a threat with a sick animal or a dangerous person, I would at least have my phone and a gun.

The first several months of living here, I had the advantage of summer and Papa’s frequent presence to help me adjust and become confident in our surroundings. By the time winter arrived and Papa returned to the workforce, I felt very comfortable on our land, with or without a vehicle (although one does come in handy).

Yet there are little reminders that keep popping up about how unusual a lifestyle we are living, and just how much we really are in the middle of nowhere. There is no sight of the road, or even a real driveway, from where we look out the window. We have no electrical lines, no underground plumbing, no internet or cable TV. If we chose to lose our cell phones we would be nearly disconnected from the world!

And it seems strange to feel like that this is life as usual now, that there is nothing odd about how we live our daily lives. I don’t concern myself with potential threats because I know I can defend myself and the kids and I know that the woods are not crawling with wild animals and bad people.

It is hard work dragging belongings up and down the 700’ hill when we can’t drive a vehicle on it (due to mud or snow), it is frustrating at times to deal with the generator because the fridge is buzzing, “charge me”, and I do sometimes miss the internet, but there are so many positive things about it that I enjoy.

I can send the kids out to run and they have endless space without having to think about traffic. We have privacy from neighbors. We can choose, for the most part, who knows we live here nad who doesn’t, and I get real exercise walking to the car and back (with laundry and children in tow).

I had doubts I would ever say this, but I welcome the frustrations that come with the joys, because I like living this way. It’s peaceful, it’s simple, it teaches me lessons I want to learn.

Now that we are half way through winter we feel confident that we will be able to stick it out the rest of the season (yay!). We have managed to thaw the pipes when it has dropped to -10 or -15 degrees overnight, and we figured out that the car is easier to drive on our roads than the truck, so Papa takes that to work in bad weather. This has also been a comparatively mild winter for us, which does make it a little easier for our first winter in a camper.

I can already feel the promise of Spring (only 41 days left!) and I know it will be a wonderful year, living in the middle of nowhere, right where we want to be.

The Big Change

Enough hinting, I’m ready to tell you AFN’s big news. I’m so excited! First, a little background.

 

Recently, some of our readers began coming forward and emailing us their personal stories. Let me tell you, I had no clue our little blog had become an influence on other families! I tell you this humbly, but it honestly shocked me when one woman said she and her husband bought 20 acres and a camper, in part because of the encouragement our story offered them!

Every reader here is so important to us. We really appreciate the small, but growing community we have found ourselves in, and hearing from you has inspired us to take this as far as we can.

What does this mean? Papa and I want to take the giant leap from basing American Family Now on a free blog to starting our own blog-style website! This would enable us to have more control over what our blog looks like, and what features and resources it has to offer you, our readers. There is but one little setback.

Neither of us are computer programmers or website designers, and when it comes to making a website of our own, we are in way over our heads. Believe me, we’ve tried other web pages in the past, and never got beyond a basic front page design.

With that said, Papa and I are always up for a challenge, so we have downloaded a program to help us, and expect to use WordPress hosting so we are familiar with the management aspect. I can’t give you a date when our new site will be open, but I wanted to let you in on our project for two reasons – so you can join in on our excitement, and so you can offer us ideas while we are in the development stage. Is there something missing from our blog that would make it more enjoyable or useful to you? Anything you would like to see more (or less) of? Here are a few ideas we’re working on.

• A page with how-to posts and videos to help you on your own homesteading journey
• A community page to help bring our readers together
• Sponsership and affiliate programs to support the website

We have even created a slogan, and a button you can share that express our family and our purpose for AFN, but you’ll just have to wait until the website is open to see them!

Papa and I have been tossing the website idea around for a while, but because of you we decided that 2012 is a good year to get started. If you have friends or family interested in a homesteading, off-grid journey, please share our blog with them. The bigger the community we build, the more helpful and supportive we can be for each other. Let’s do this!

why we dream of homesteading

Before we married, I volunteered at a nearby health center which was supported by a very large garden. Much of the food eaten by guests and workers there came from that garden. While the work was hard, I have special memories of the joy I felt in a good day’s work, and seeing and eating the fruit of my labor. It was healthy work and refreshing to the spirit.

Fast forward a few years, I was married with children, and my world view was changing. My eyes had been opened to the amount of control political entities had on our way of life, and we became concerned about potential effects on our family caused by impending economic and social decline.

In light of our values, our concerns, and recent acquisition of farmland by family, Papa and I began dreaming of homesteading.

A homestead with no electrical wires, sewage, or other additions considered standard, would inspire us to live simpler and enable us to be less restricted by government run programs.

A homestead would also provide excellent resources for raising and homeschooling our children, with woods, fields, animals, and building and gardening projects.

One of our hopes has also been that living debt-free on an off-grid homestead would give Papa the freedom to enjoy self-employed handyman work, which is what he really wants to do, and is also in line with our family values.

There are so many adventurous opportunities for families, lifestyles which promote hard work, and reward and protect the values of a variety of families, and homesteading does just that for us.

We just couldn’t help it!

There just too darn cute!

Papa brought home six more chicks today. After losing both runts from the last batch, we started thinking it might not be a bad idea to buy a few more to make sure we’ll produce enough eggs for us and to sell to family.

The only problem was, if we were going to buy more we had to do it soon because it will be harder to keep chicks warm once we move. It’s not like we can keep a big tub of chicks in the camper with a generator-run heat lamp over them!

Being a now-or-never decision we made up our minds to buy six more, and now we have four hens, four one-week-old pullets, and now six couple-day-old chicks that may have a rooster among them. This time Papa picked two each of three different breeds, but we have no idea what they are.

So what do you think? Aren’t they cute?!

DIY BIG chicken feeder

Building starter trays

Ah, yes it is time to start getting our garden stuff out and into action. This time we will be going full bore as if our lives depended on it. Recently we made an eBay purchase for 300 4″ plastic pots and plastic trays with 480 individual cells, and it was delivered to us all neatly stacked together taking up maybe a couple square feet. I sat proudly and thought to myself “Yeah…..we are gearing up for this homstead project” as I gazed upon our growing arsenal of self-relient STUFF. Yet, there was a nagging thought barking in my left ear saying “What are you going to do about getting these seeds started in time when you don’t have any trays to put the planters in, no money to buy them, and really have not a decent location to put it all at this point?”. To get this clear it was not Mama barking in my left ear but a reality check smacking me around!

So after kicking a few ideas around in my head I came up with a solution that would not cost more than $30.00 and hold 680 individual starter pot/cells. I, being king of cheap, decided to use a sheet of luan plywood , 1×4 #4 grade pine (my favorite solution for everything duct tape won’t fix), a few 1 1/4″ screws, and six trash bags to build my six waterproof trays. The day was 4-4-11 and I remembered, “ahh haa!” I had a Lowe’s coupon to get $10 off a purchase of $50 or more expiring that day. However, I did not want to spend an extra $20 just to get $10 off because it seemed too….something or other. Needing to start a fire I went outside to split some wood while pondering what I could do and still be finacially prudent, when “CRACK” the head of my splitting maul fell right off and into a slushy puddle. “Oops! That sucks!” I yelled, and looking up I saw Buddy staring through our door at me with this cunfused gitty look on his face. I went back inside only to have Buddy, trying very hard not laugh, start muttering some alien words describing what just happened. Agreeing with his laugh I too started laughing and said, “well I’m gonna be going to lowe’s. Who wants to go with me?”. It really didn’t matter who wanted to go because it was Girlie’s turn to ride with Papa anyways, so off we went.

The trays I built are 25″ by 33″ and 2 1/2″ deep and have a separated trash bag liner which is secured using staples. I dumped a gallon of water into one and found that it has about a 5/16″ water table height. This good to know for watering purposes. The tray also held water without a problem, even as I sloshed it around during the trip to the drain. Eventually I will most likely build some sort of greenhouse rack system for the trays, but for now we have something to start with.

40ish Days Left

The days are closing in to April, which means we’re only a little over a month away until we move into our camper on the property. Thankfully I can say that I’m getting very close to finishing up certain projects that have to be done before we leave. I have finished making curtains for the camper, I’ve only got about 10 pages left in Pal’s scrapbook to complete, and I’m ordering the proof of my manuscript on Monday!

Yesterday also marked the final wash day of our cloth diapers. I’ve already sold 10, and I put the remaining 11 on eBay (Click here to visit our eBay store and support our blog by purchasing your cloth diapers and wipes from us! Thank you!)

We haven’t packed anything we’re still using, but I feel better about the progress we’ve made in prepwork. This week we boughts sheets for our camper bed, and added the final parent picture, a clock, and an indoor/outdoor temperature gauge. And for the past couple days, Glen has been ripping down boards to make a picket fence with. Other things I consider progress are using up food in the freezer, and training myself to wash sheets and put them back on the beds in the same day so I can get used to using only one set per bed.

He doesn't look guilty, does he?

We still don’t know exactly how we’ll fit all that we want in the camper. Going from 700sq ft of living area plus storage to less than 250sq ft and less storage area will be interesting, especially since we won’t be able to close in the decking until we have the cash to put on a roof. But there is qute a bit of room under the camper, in the storage space that’s under the kids’ beds, so if we’re creative I know we can do it.

nothing says boyhood like a homemade robot!

Our seeds arrived this week! I’ve packed a list of them along with a few herbal books in my labor bag so I may be able to pick out a few recipes while I’m assisting my next client for my summer/fall herbal parties. Some of the herbs and veggies do need to be started indoors soon, and it will be tricky balancing that with the move, but Papa and I are excited to get started with gardening! I love seeing little plants sprouting. Oh, and look what my grandparents (who used to own bees) gave me recently! Nothing like four and a half pounds of beeswax to get an up and coming herbalist excited!

Speaking of which, Papa and I were talking over our cups of coffee yesterday morning about all the work we have lined up for the summer. As my friend Jessica@FarmFresh pointed out, we should be creating a life we enjoy, instead of one we need a vacation from. That’s how Papa and I view this transition to homesteading. We will have work to do, but it’s healthy work we want to do. We want it to be fun, rewarding, educational, and enriching.

The days are counting down, but we’re more and more ready every day!

Camper Update #2

Papa has been hard at work on the camper. This week we managed to paint the livingroom/kitchen area, although we were unable to go with the stripes idea. Wainscoting and curtain rods have been installed, and I purchased enough material to make curtains for both the living area and our bedroom. The kids will have individualized curtains made from material I already have.

The paint job was a rather risky process because we’re painting ontop of vinyl, but I’m so glad we’ve done it because it really does make the place feel more cozy and less plastic. I can’t wait to see how the curtains turn out, but I’m going to keep working on the second rug and get that finished up before I start the curtain project. One thing at a time!

Why the New Look?

If you’re one of our faithful readers, you have already noticed the design change of our blog. The big question is, why did we do it? Were we simply bored with the old look or needing something to do? Not at all! The primary reason was to design the blog around our goals for American Family Now. Making the blog more intentional will hopefully make it easier for you, our readers, to understand what we’re doing.

In action, American Family Now will not appear much different. Posts I write will still be eclectic in feel, a combination of topics ranging from family life to survivalism, because I enjoy writing about them and I enjoy reading more ecclectic blogs myself.

At the same time, making this blog more intentional means we will be more focused. I like to rant and ramble, and while such posts may be interesting to read, we both hope this blog will become more of a resource to families who find themselves in a similar financial situation, and those families who want to start a homestead.

I’m excited to announce this blog will now truly be a joint effort between Glen and me! Because we are pressed for time, but want to share our journey with you, I’ve recruited Glen to do some writing as well. His perspective on the projects we’re doing and preparations for homesteading will be a valuable resource. Please support his efforts with your comments, writing is not really his thing!

Another big change you’ll see is our names. Our real names are not a secret (otherwise we’d have to change all the old posts), but from now on you will know us as Papa (Glen), Mama (Naomi), Buddy (Nemo), Girlie (Daphney), and Pal (Atlas).

And now to explain some of the new features you’ll find here. At the top of the page we still have the Who We Are page, the Store, and our Favorite Internet Reads, but we’ll soon be adding another page for questions and answers. Here we will try to answer some of the questions we would expect to hear about why we are moving and so forth. If you have a question you don’t see answered already, feel free to leave it in a comment at the bottom of that page. At some point, we also hope to have a page to share our sponsers with you.

You will also notice that we have moved our widgets to the left sidebar instead of having them at the bottom of the page. This is for your convenience in finding more resources. On the sidebar you can find links to the posts our readers view the most (automatically updated once a day), topics of posts we write so you can look up subjects you’re interested in, a subscription button so you can stay updated on our goings on, and access to other places you can find Papa or Mama on the web.

Welcome to the new American Family Now! Please subscribe if you haven’t already, suport us by visiting our store, and make sure to let us know what you think of the new look! Thanks for stopping by!