Can it be done??? Time was, if you couldn’t grow it or it wasn’t shelf stable for 6 months when you went to town, it did not exist.
By most modern quasi rural standards, we are fairly self sufficient people. Yes, that is a very specific subset, but I’ll cling to it for purposes of this discussion.
We grow our own beef, chickens, and a huge vegetable garden plus herbs. But it’s all with help. The steers are usually bought and grown out here (the bull is working on correcting that though), the chickens are ordered as chicks from a hatchery up north, and the garden covers maybe half our needs by variety. We do get quite a few value addeds from the garden though, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, pumpkin butter, garlic scape pesto, etc.
A fantastic dinner is one where everything was farm sourced. That’s maybe once a week or less. A normal goal for me is about half of my ingredients to be from home. So let’s see how I stack up tonight:
Vegetable Beef Soup
✅ beef
✅ green beans
✅ tomato paste
✅ dehydrated basil. Of course there’s other spices but these came from me!
❌ red beans
❌ carrots
❌ onion (spring stash is gone. So sad)
❌ garlic (long story, so sad)
❌ potatoes (spring stash, also gone)
❌ Chicken bullion
Bread was made from scratch but had store bought everything except garlic scape pesto mixed in to the batter.
Ok so 40% home grown, minus some extra spices in the bought category. 35% then. Well damn. Try again tomorrow and maybe next year I’ll learn and plant more root vegetables. Except carrots, I give up on carrots.
Toby however, is dining on:
✅ farm eggs
✅ shredded venison (not raised entirely here, but I’m certain partook of my vegetable garden this year!)
✅ farm sweet potatoes
✅ farm green beans
❌ maybe 15% kibble.
All cooked specifically for him. I feel like maybe we got our wires crossed somewhere along the way? But, for a combined score of 60% farm sourced, I’ll keep him on my team.
So, to answer my initial question, yes, you can grow most of a grocery store. All you need is a dog.
Sourwood Hill 