Challenge Day 1

Basket of fresh produce picked from the garden this morning.

Breakfast:

Eggs - the obvious choice for the first day of my challenge. I like mine cooked over-easy.  I'm feeling grateful for having a non-stick pan in which to cook them, especially since I can't use butter. Honestly, I didn't miss the butter one bit this morning! I also enjoyed a few cherry tomatoes and a few slices of cucumber on the side.

We have a variety of chicken breeds in our coop, which gives 

us a nice array of colored eggs to choose from each morning.

Lunch:

I find salads to be the easiest thing to eat for lunch because then I don't have to cook!  Today's salad included mixed salad greens, beet greens, cherry tomatoes, orange snacking peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, and green beans. I also added some leftover roasted chicken from dinner a few nights ago.  Once it was all assembled, I thought it looked a little dry without any dressing.  So, I got creative and blended together a handful of tart blueberries, a few strawberries from our freezer, and  a tablespoon of maple syrup. It was a perfect solution!

This huge salad left me feeling very full and satisfied.

Snacks:

Despite the huge salad I had for lunch, I was hungry a few hours later.  Since I was working in the garden, I picked green beans, wax beans and cherry tomatoes to snack on.  I also had a hard-boiled egg before dinner.

Dinner:

I cooked a large, whole chicken tonight so that I could use leftovers in all of my meals this week.  I seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning.  Normally, I might mix those spices up with some olive oil but since I can't use that ingredient during the challenge, I just left it out.  I also cooked up some green beans and corn on the cob from the garden.  Again, I omitted the butter. Interestingly, I found that I didn't even miss the butter and it allowed me to enjoy the natural flavors of the food a bit more.  My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I only ate half the chicken on my plate. 

It makes me so proud to see a plate full of food that we grew ourselves!

Summary:

I would consider Day 1 to be a huge success! I could happily eat these meals daily but I don't want to get bored by eating the same thing.  So tomorrow, I will try and vary my menu a bit and see how creative I can be in the kitchen!  

The Challenge

I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to only eat food we grow or produce on our own land for the duration of one week.  I think we have a good variety of foods to complete a full diet.  I will allow myself seasonings, such as salt and pepper.  However, I plan to be very strict in every other way.  My family has some reservations about fully committing to the challenge. For now, I'll try it on my own and convince the others to join me next time!

My protein sources will be eggs from our egg-laying flock of hens and chicken from the Cornish Cross broilers we raised this spring.  I have plenty of vegetables growing in my garden, as well as a great variety I have already canned or frozen from earlier in the season.  Two of our blueberry bushes are still ripening and we have 8 apples on one of our young apple trees.  I am most limited in my source of starch.  We have lots of sweet potatoes, but those aren't ready for harvest.  So I will have to rely on a handful of Yukon Gold and red potatoes to be my main source of starch.  

A typical harvest of vegetables from our family garden.

There will be some challenges to overcome this week.  I know that I will miss eating dairy.  I like cheese in my eggs and I enjoy butter on my potatoes.  I also think it will be hard to cook without a source of fat.  I usually use butter or olive oil for sauteing vegetables and cooking eggs.  I also plan to eat salads for lunch every day, but I will not have a normal salad dressing to eat with it.

I'll be honest, it will also be hard to go without any processed food.  While I am always working to reduce these in our home, they often sneak in and I often indulge.  I hope this experience will help us further reduce the processed food in our home and help us all to "grow clean" in our food choices.  

How We Got Here

Beautiful harvest basket from our home garden.

Over the past several years, our family has spent endless hours changing our backyard into more usable space.  We bought the house when I was pregnant with our first daughter, which was over eight years ago now. Every inch of the yard was covered in flowers, bushes, trees, and weeds.  There was literally not one blade of grass or open space left to be planted.  When we started clearing the property, it was not with the intention of growing our own food.  We simply wanted more open space and a nice yard for our kids to play in.

When we first bought the house, there was no open yard space for vegetable gardening.

My first garden was an 8x4 rectangle, planted in the shade of our backyard.  The soil was thin and mostly devoid of any type of plant-growing nutrient.  It was clearly a bad location for a garden, but it was all we had available at the time.

As our two young daughters got a bit older, we had more time and energy to devote to gardening, a hobby that was quickly becoming a passion.  Year by year, we slowly transformed our yard into more usable space for gardening.  We cleared forested land, brought in sand and compost to mix with our mostly clay soil, and installed underground drainage to address flooding.

Over time we cleared the land, added compost and started a proper vegetable garden.

While working to improve our land for vegetable gardening, we also added apple trees, cherry trees, blueberry bushes, grape vines, and a strawberry patch. We have a flock of egg-laying hens and this year, we raised our first batch of broiler chickens for meat.  We even make our own maple syrup in the Spring.

Despite all of the improvements to our land and the expansion of our garden, we still consider ourselves to be very novice! Most of our learning has been the result of making mistakes first.  Matt spends his spare time watching YouTube to learn about the care and maintenance of everything on the property.  I spend my spare time preserving and preparing all of the food we now produce.

Sometimes we enjoy the thought of being "homesteaders" some day.  For now, though, we will continue to add to our family farm and try to learn new skills to make us more successful!

Our current garden, complete with a fence, automated irrigation and weed mat.