Self-Reliance

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have been counseled by the prophet to be as self-reliant as possible. Two major themes of self-reliance are gardening and food storage. Now that we are in a house with a garden plot and a huge garage, we are trying to heed this counsel even more fully than we have in the past. We are super excited about our soon-to-be garden! We got started last Saturday (not two days ago, but a week and two days ago) when we went to C&N Nursery to buy seeds. Then we went to Home Depot and bought a indoor garden starter kit. Last Wednesday we went to work planting our seeds. Levi thought it was pretty cool and he was a GREAT helper!

Sam planting seeds.

Levi perusing our seed selection.

This starter kits (by Jiffy) are the coolest, and they are really inexpensive. It come with a tray of small flat discs. Then you add warm water and wait. After a few minutes, the discs turn dark brown and swell up to 1 inch high peat pods. Then you plant your little seed in the pod.

Daddy with our best little helper.

Sam did some work on my dad's business computers. So with the money he earned from that, we decided to really get our food storage up and running. In order to have a functional food storage (where the food doesn't go to waste because it gets too old), we decided that a food rotation system was essential. We ordered this one from shelfreliance.com. We googled for a coupon code and ended up getting 25% off plus free shipping. It was great! Then a local grocery store was having a case lot sale, so we got some canned vegetables and fruit. We are still working on stocking up on everything we need.

I just had to post this picture, because this is our life in a nutshell. :) A friend told me that we looked like we had it all put together... boy, are we great actors! We just try to make it through one day at a time, and love the little moments as they happen.

Levi love, Love, LOVED putting the cans in. In fact, anytime we are in the garage he tried to rearrange them... this might defeat the purpose of a rotation system.

Even Brinley got into the spirit of self-reliance... she relied on herself for entertainment! We were able to get lots and lots done because she played all by herself. She is turning into a very happy, content baby.

Levi and Mommy... proof that I was there, and it wasn't just some phantom taking all the pictures!

p.s. Here is a little food storage tip that I came up with all on my own and I think is pretty brilliant (toot! toot!-- that's me tooting my own horn). I came up with 10 meals that I can make primarily out of nonperishable items, and then listed out their ingredients. Those are the food items that we are storing...stuff that we'll actually eat and know how to use! Then, the goal is to have atleast one of those meals each week to rotate through the food storage. Anytime I go down and get a can of corn, I come up and put corn on the shopping list. After shopping, I put the corn into the food rotation system. That way, we are sure to rotate through our food, but we won't use it all up and then have to go buy a huge load again. Pretty smart, huh?