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So, I'm on a homesteading journey, with the goal of becoming independent of the commercial food supply chain. I'm kind of like a prepper lite.

The property we moved to 2.5 years ago came with a forest full of edible plants, mushrooms, nut trees, and berry bushes. Last year I dabbled in veggie gardening with moderate success, though I mostly focused on soil improvements. I hunted/trapped a few critters, worked with their pelts, and consumed their meat. This year, I planted a bunch of fruit and nut trees and a shit ton of flowering native perennials to entice pollinators, deer, rabbits, and squirrels. I got into raising and breeding back yard chickens, and I'm learning how to feed them without store-bought feed. Their manure and bedding makes for incredibly rich compost. One mean rooster went to the soup pot. We get so many eggs that I've had to give them away, feed them back to the chickens, or water glass them.

Future projects include raising meat rabbits, more hunting, growing and canning fruits and veggies (right now I have been preserving plant foods by freezing them, and while that preserves the nutrient content better than canning, we're running out of room in our freezer and everything spoils if we lose electricity), installation of solar power and rainwater collection systems, implementation of natural pest control methods, farming fodder, grains, seeds, and insects for the animals, tapping trees for syrups, leavened baking with cultured bacteria (yeast, sourdough, ginger bug, etc.), selling eggs and specialty laying hens, and sending more unfortunate roosters to freezer camp. I want to grow cordage plants and learn how to turn them into baskets, rugs, and fabrics. I want to build a kiln and use the natural clay in the soil to make pottery. Maybe eventually some primitive carpentry/construction and glue-making methods so that if I'm ever unable to source zip ties, cinderblock, and scrap wood, I'm still capable of building and repairing structures...

But it's so weird. It's perfectly natural to obtain food this way. And yet we've become so far removed from our food sources that it's remarkably guilt-inducing to kill an animal for its meat, skin, and bones. It's weird to eat the eggs that we witness coming directly out of the chickens. (Some people are also grossed out that they are fertilized eggs, even if the embryo hasn't developed beyond a tiny white dot on the yolks.) It's even worrying to pick my blackberries and eat them after a wash and soak, as sometimes they still have a few harmless bugs on them that don't survive the drowning but aren't washed away, either. (Felt almost the same kind of weirdness about breastfeeding and preparing food with 'human milk,' like it's somehow wayyy weirder than consuming the milk of another species?!?)

I suspect I will get used to it eventually. I am an omnivorous ape, an apex predator... But man, sometimes it's a real mindfuck.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 3:37 PM, Thursday, July 30th]

I'm a cty-slicker, so I don't have much to offer. I am, however, very impressed.

I just saw a dr recommend freezing any fruit you don’t eat right away. It loses a lot of nutrition otherwise. So we have frozen fruit and my husband likes it partially thawed.

I'm hoping to one day get to your level (have a homestead - be self sufficient).

The killing animals part always made me wonder, I know I'll have a hard time with it.

(Random, but I did hear that raising rabbits for meat is the biggest ROI thing you can do with a homestead, if you're looking to also use it as an income source).

Use it as a gratitude practice.

I work in retail food, in particular with animal proteins. I'm also hyperwired for empathy toward animals. I wasn't sure I'd be able to even do this job when I started it two years ago. Here's my viewpoint:

1) Humans need protein to survive.
2) Every species is designed to extract energy and nutrients that were processed by other species. (Exempting those little thermal vent critters that can process chemical energy directly.)
3) Generally, if something's going to live, something else is going to die.

What the work has done for me is made me very, very aware that every cut that leaves our department was part of an individual animal that was born, lived and died in the service of keeping humans alive. So now I

A) Give thanks to that individual animal each and every time I eat meat.
B) Try my utmost to make sure that nothing is wasted. Last week we had a catastrophic failure with our cooling system and we sold our inventory at a loss rather than let it go bad and wait for full reimbursement from an insurance claim.
C) Support policy that reduces the suffering of the animals as much as possible.

The convenience of obtaining food (for people who have the money to pay for it, which is another topic) is completely taken for granted by most people. It is an unacknowledged miracle that we can walk into a store, fill the cart from an amazing variety of products, wave a piece of plastic at the register and roll on out week after week without ever having to kill and process an animal nor toil and dig in the dirt to grow and harvest plants, nor wander in nature to forage. I am of course speaking of where I live and work, I know there are many, many people in the world for whom food is scarce by unavailability and/or affordability.