Home Made...once you get started it's hard to stop!

Often I forget how differently we live. My wife got
up at 4:15 this morning, just a bit earlier than usual
so she could finish making a batch of 'Lemon Curd".
We'd purchased a bunch of lemons and limes from the
discount produce rack at our local grocery store for
about $1. The batch took under a half-hour to make.
The other day she used a recipe from a '70's copy of
The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook to make
graham crackers. Both were, in our opinion (and several
others) much better than store bought. Sometimes we
buy cases of citrus from an FFA sale at school. I like to
offer to buy whatever is 'left over' at the end of the sale
and have gotten some great deals on cases of navel oranges,
grapefruit, and tangerines. Generally we eat or drink as
much as our bodies crave and then I juice and can the rest.
We keep the fruit in a cooler room of our home and when
we notice that one or more of the fruit is turning brown or
getting moldy it is time to process the rest. I just put 4 1/2
gallons of juice into quart canning jars and hot water bath
processed it. I used slightly modified directions from the
recipe in the "Ball Blue Book" of home canning. The juice
tastes almost fresh squeezed.

Why do this when I could just as easily have bought the curd,
crackers or juice in the store? First off it is cheaper; secondly
we know what is in our stuff (read the ingredients on the
graham cracker box and you will have trouble identifying
several of the ingredients...). Mainly we've learned to have
fun doing things for ourselves. This self-reliance thing is
addictive. I didn't stop my full-time teaching job to be lazy -
just to take a different perspective and do more things for
my family that were a direct result of our labor...in a way
a conventional job is taking you a step or two away from
independence. Some might say that it is a waste of time to
bake bread (I do this once or twice a week 2 to 5 loaves at
a time) when I could just go to the store and buy some...I'm
not condoning or condemning those people. However, I can
multi-task and get the jobs I prefer to do done while stuff is
being made around here. It is easy to write several hundred
words in my book on water supplies while the bread rises. Not
hard to caulk and paint whild the bread bakes. I can easily help
my daughter with her homework while I cut greenbeans up and
put them in canning jars. I can remove the jars from the canner
just before I go to bed and wipe and label them while waiting
for the coffee to perk.

We're trying to get as independent as practically possible. Is complete
independence possible or even desirable...I hope not! But it is
possible to live a bit closer to where the stuff you need comes from.
We don't have a mortgage on our property, we have very little debt.
This come about from not choosing to go through the 'middleman'
on a lot of things. Someone asked if I was worried about someone coming
to our place and demanding food or electricity in a societal breakdown
situation. I went down my hall and grabbed a 5 gallon pail of hard red
winter wheat berries and asked if they knew what to do with them to
turn them into edible foods? A blank stare was my reply..I've since asked
many people if they know how to cook from dry bulk goods and gotten
the same stare. Sure, take my photovoltaic panels...do you know how to
hook them up? I used to think that tall fences and ferocious dogs would
protect me...now I know that my neighbors will protect me because of what I
can do for them and teach them...it is a more secure situation, especially
in view of what I think looms ahead...