Becoming More Self-Sufficient

At its core, the term self-sufficient relates to producing one's food.

Source:  Google.com

One of the easiest ways to achieve some level of self-sufficiency is to grow a vegetable garden and preserve the harvest via canning, dehydrating, etc.  There are those who take that further and have chickens for eggs and meat, dairy animals, other livestock for meat, fruit orchards, grow wheat for flour, bees for honey, and so on.

For the purposes of this post I'm going to focus on the vegetable garden.  Although we have our trials each year, we've been fairly successful at growing a good amount of vegetables and putting by what we can to feed us during the winter.  In that regard, we are achieving some level of self-sufficiency.

We use our compost bins and chickens to produce fertilizer for the garden.  I grow the majority of our plants from seed so we're not spending $30+ each year just for plants.  I have a good stash of canning jars so I haven't needed to buy any for several years.  There are, however, two aspects of growing and preserving vegetables that we are working at to become more self-sufficient. 

• Saving seeds
• Reusable canning lids

In the past I've successfully saved melon, pea, arugula and spinach seed.  We've planted our own garlic cloves before and this year we planted our own seed potatoes.  I've tried to save green bean and tomato seed, but they went bad on me.  This is definitely something I am going to focus on this year.  I hate having to buy seed every year.  If I can save seeds from the majority of what we plant and use those to grow our own seedlings, just think of the savings!  I hope to report on my seed saving success later this summer.

I've been lucky to have been gifted several dozen canning jars from my Mother-in-Law and other relatives and friends.  I pick up jars at yard sales and estate sales every year to help increase my stock at a minimal price.  They are rarely on markdown or even a good sale at the store so my stash is almost all used and that is just fine with me. 

One thing I do have to buy every year is those dang canning lids.  I have tons of rings that I reuse again and again, but the actual flat lid is something I end up having to buy each year.  I ran out of lids last year after tomato-palooza and had a hard time finding them in stock anywhere since it was late in the season.  Once I did find them I picked up several packages and decided to look into reusable canning lids.

I ended up purchasing a couple dozen Tattler reusable lids.  They come in both regular and wide mouth.  The instructions were easy to follow and they were easy to use.  You have to be careful opening the jars to keep the rubber gasket in tact and free from punctures, but we've been able to do that so far.  The rubber gaskets can be purchased separately, if they do get damaged.  I have water bath and pressure canned with them and they worked fine both ways.

The only issue I have found is labeling them.  Thankfully, not everything needs to be labeled - green beans and potatoes, for instance, are pretty recognizable on the pantry shelf.  Tomato products and other red things look similar though, so I had to do something.  This isn't the best solution, but it works so far.

I order through Amazon several times a year so I've decided to add a dozen or two reusable canning lids to my order when I can.  They ship free so if I can afford the extra $10 on top of another order, it's worth it to me.

If I can continue to add to my stock of reusable canning lids and successfully save at least green bean and tomato seed (our most used vegetables) this year, I'll be pleased.  I'm glad we do what we can to be self-sufficient, but I know we can always do more.  Hopefully these two steps will get us a little further along on that path.

Anyone else use reusable canning lids?  How do you label them?

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