I store and dehydrate food. I've made soap, plan to try making cheese and hoping to start some smaller livestock eventually. Would love to start a friendship with others who are like-minded. Right now I am all alone in my endevours, my husband doesn't really understand what or why I am doing this.

Think it's very important to save money and take care of my family.

-- Helene (gherizz@netzero.net), February 27, 2002

Answers

You will find plenty of friends here. Many folks are interested in the same things you are. This place is a wealth of info!

-- ellie (elnorams@aol.com), February 27, 2002.

Hi Helen, fellow Canadian here, and new to this site too, hang in there you are doing a great service to your family, be proud of the steps you have taken so far, I would like to recommend the book to yout the tightwad gazette, you can order through your library, it has an excellent article about converting your spouse you will find helpful, but in general, dont do things for the recognition from him , keep in mind why you started to homestead for you. where in Canada are You? you can email me if you like to visit, I am in a little place called Marlbank Ontario, stick around these boards tons of help and good people too

-- pattie DeRoche (pattieroc@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.

Hey, fellow Canuck. This site is great. Ive been reading it for a couple months, learned tons and answered a couple questions. I've done meat and show rabbits, meat and egg chickens planted an orchard, large organic garden, etc. I've gone backwords and moved back to town, (parents needing more help.) Now Mum and I live together and I am going to replant, build a chicken tractor out of some saved rabbit cages and try to be a mini survivalist/homesteader on a large suburban yard. Good luck to you. Dont worry everyone thinks I'm a bit nuts too. I live outside Victoria, B.C. k

-- karen (karengrandmaison@hotmail.com), February 28, 2002.

My Mom used to do this: She never DID say why, but now that I am older I can add up the facts that she had a large family, the economy at the time was NOT good, and she had a large family (6 kids) to feed. Back then, people would have thought it strange to prepare for trouble by having food in your garage, so she didn't talk about it. If the kids brought up the subject, (we helped with the canning) she would say something like "why, I thought you LIKED canned cherries!". If my oldest brother, who was bolder than the rest of us persisted, she would just say it would cost a fortune to feed the family 2 quarts of store bought canned fruit a week, and she thought hers was better than store bought, anyway! She was right, to! Mostly, we accepted that she was trying to save money so that we could afford the occasional fun activity the family indulged in.

The best thing she did was to get my Dad to buy fruit from the farmers and put it in the refridgerator. She usually ended up with fruit that was too small to sell to the stores so we got a very good price on it. Anything not eaten at the end of a week was canned in a heavy syrup for winter desserts or turned into jam. Also, she raised tomatos in the back yard and canned them to turn into spagetti sauce later. We ate some kind of pasta once a week, so we used about 100 quarts of tomatos each year. In later years she experimented with drying fruit, fruit leather, and jerky, but that was mostly as treats for the grandkids by then.

-- Terri (hooperterri@prodigy.net), February 28, 2002.

Hi Helene! I am a Canadian also. What part of the country do you hail from? I am from eastern Ontario. Most folks think that my husband & I are crazy to even have a garden let alone all of the other things we do. Most quiry why? - when you could buy it at the store? We find the savings in grocery money is phenomical as well as the taste is far superior to the bought stuff. We also raise our own chickens (last year was our first time). We lost to the extreme heat 2 chickens & one just disappeared, out of 30 chickens. We have our own bush so we therefore heat with wood. We are proud of being as self sufficient as possible. Many may laugh at our full freezers & our pantry shelves lined with perserves & our root cellar full of potatoes etc. But in the tough times we are the ones who have the last laugh. When we had the ice storm here in 1998 we were cozy as two bugs in a rug what with our wood stove, wood supply, plenty of food put aside, oil lamps & extra lamp oil & a hand pump on our well for water when ever we needed it. Helene hang in there even if your husband doesn't think like you you will have the satisfaction of being free from worry whatever the future might bring by being prepared. Do you have a good recipe for laundry soap? I am looking for one.

Blessings to you in your endeavours!

-- Jan Sears (jcsears@magma.ca), February 28, 2002.

A friend of mine tells how her first husband would grouse constantly about her "hourding". Then he was laid off. It was several months before they had any money come in, but they didn't miss a meal. He never complained about it after that. Kim in CO

-- kim in CO (kimk61252@hotmail.com), March 01, 2002.