How Much Food Does It Really Take To Last An Entire Year?

well hello everybody it's Damian wanderback from Deep South Homestead in the sitting room here today guys it's scorching hot outside this is what we do in the middle of the day we come in we can look at our pond back here and uh our cabin our barn and all this stuff up here the high tunnels this is just a place for us to sit and reflect now today one and I were sitting around talking and we get a lot of comments on our Channel about how much food we grow yeah they want to know do we give it away and all these crazy questions so we want to kind of address how much it takes or yeah well first of all let's do it this way London I grew up two totally different Lifestyles you know I had two kids uh she had five uh my I was always a prepper or a homesteader type lifestyle one that didn't really come up in that type of hot lifestyle but we had Gardens yeah my parents had Gardens so I was used to the peas the beans the corn the Cucumbers the tomatoes um when I married my husband at the time his family grew more gardens bigger Gardens so he was used to the peas beans corn tomatoes and stuff so my children had that but we weren't ever really Preppers as far as prepping we just lived year to year with the corn and stuff the peas we were basically a lot like that I always owned a farm ever since I've been a young man I've Had a Farm of some kind I always had my cattle my chickens my Hogs uh my crops my vegetables and I was a very Avid Hunter I've done lots of hunting I took lots of deer every year uh I was an avid fisherman I kept the freezers in the summertime stocked with filleted bass and stuff like this catfish and all and like Wanda was talking about the peas beans and corn we had peas beans corn pork beef and you know chicken and stuff like that Venison and fish and all this was the way she and I both grew up supplementing our food source with outside food sources rather than strictly being 100 percent grocery store now my mine was we didn't have the beef and the pork and stuff we um we would have a deer maybe once a year um just things like that but we hardly ever had the meat so I would have to go we had a local uh slaughterhouse that I would go get beef and from and I always bought my pork my chicken all that in town I mean always so I always went to a grocery store we had hot dogs and hamburgers and pizzas and chicken nuggets and fish sticks and yeah my kids grew up on that kind of stuff with the peas and the beans and the mashed potatoes and stuff thrown in now we both were guilty in our younger age of falling prey to the system to a to an extent now we didn't follow into it a hundred percent but we did fall prey to the system I every week would give my spouse X number of dollars for uh groceries that was allocated into our income which is exactly what the system wants you to do now and ours I I used to give mine a hundred dollars a week to start with and that's what we had a hundred dollars to feed seven people and I would go to town and spend that hundred dollars and I knew what I needed to buy usually you'd kind of meal plan a little bit and you knew how many suppers you had to have breakfast and stuff and you bought according to that but now just like Wanda just mentioned every week it was almost the same thing over and over and over and over from the grocery store because you worked off of a budget and you had to make sure that your food fell within that budget which is exactly what the system wants you to do and as young people it was bred into us we didn't know any different it was a it was like a every wheat thing certain days a week usually Thursday or Friday accordingly because most of the time we had a certain date we went to town on Thursdays and bought groceries or we went to town on the Friday and bought groceries that was every week there was no getting away from that you didn't miss a week or you didn't eat and we never had prepped up anything other than peas beans and corn in the freezer uh in later years I learned to can and I would can a few things and have it in my pantry but I didn't count like I can now it we could have eaten all that in a month if we'd have just ate it solid yeah and we were a somewhat similar to that um I always had my own smokehouses you know I made my own bacon and I made my own sausage and all this type of stuff so buying meat in a grocery store has never really been a big thing with us now what I was guilty of was buying Seafood because being from the Gulf down here I would go once a year down to the boats and I'd get like two or three hundred pounds of shrimp and bring them home and we would de-head them and you know we put them all in the freezers and I had several deep freezes my whole life I've always had deep freezers canning was something we'd done some of but it was mainly water bath Cannon it wasn't it was like jams and jellies and uh tomatoes and green beans and you know stuff like this I mean we would use the green beans or pressure canner every now and then for green beans and stuff because it was easy it wasn't like it was a big deal now we never canned any meat oh that was something that we just didn't do because we had deep freezers and we was always told electricity will always be here so we were part of that system but now as one that I got older and we began to get a little bit wiser and realize how that we've been embellished and brainwashed to believe that we have to work a specific way uh like I'll give you for instance some people get paid weekly now uh as a young man I got paid weekly even though I owned my own business I got a weekly allow you know I got paid weekly uh I'm sure Wanda's husband was the same way got paid weekly now some people got paid bi-weekly yeah some people get paid monthly and groceries and commodities were bought accordingly if you got paid weekly you went grocery shopping weekly if you got paid bi-weekly you went bi-weekly if you got paid monthly you tried to buy one month and make it last all month you know you really had to budget out if you were going to survive now I'll be the first to say there was many many many many many times that ten dollars was all we had left after we paid her paid for a note on this and paid for a note on that and bought groceries bought groceries power bills gas for the vehicles insurances and stuff you know we had five or ten dollars left for a week we was look we were so young it didn't even bother us no and and lots of times I never had any money left when I bought groceries because I bought food and toilet paper see you had to get your toilet paper your soap shampoo yeah um if you had a kid in diapers diapers had to come out of that too you know because all this fit into the grocery budget yeah uh if somebody needed some new socks that had to come out that 100 bucks too yeah you know so with five kids I had to figure out okay who gets what this week and what can I get next week and you had to shop on sale big big shopper on sale right here um I would go buy all the sale items and see if there was anything anybody needed and I bought second hand a lot hand-me-downs we were grateful for hand-me-downs because that that helped but buying groceries was just something we did so Danny and I were sitting and talking about you know people asking us now we raise a lot of our food all our vegetables and our fruits most of our meat now um I don't know that we buy any meat other than I buy a pack of sausage occasionally when it's out of season and we're not making our own we would be out of season I buy the link sausage from a friend that I know that makes it but we don't buy meat right so so we buy just that what we need so we don't go to town very often so prices have skyrocketed since we were young yes and a hundred dollars would not even buy what we buy that's not even food you know um the the little things like salt and pepper and sugar and uh if if I want some chips or if we need toilet paper or shampoo or something like that you go in Walmart and come to open one bag out is 100 pounds now yeah used to a hundred bucks I could round the buggy over with a hundred bucks so everything's changed so how do we do our gardening now how do we figure what we're going to eat 365 days a year okay let's fast forward okay that's what Wanda just did she fast forwarded to the Future yeah okay we're we're way past back in the mom and pop stores now we're into the new generational type stuff there's tons of fad diets out there you know everything I mean I I hear so many different names for diets uh words that I don't even know with words like keto is that a word you know I mean I mean you stop you think about all that and then there was all these uh high carb diets people buy accordingly what did I eat based off of how much we burn how many calories we burn and now we run a true Homestead we burn a ton of calories now just like an athlete an athlete can't live off of just a few calories or their body will shut down on them and they have not had the energy and the strength and the stamina to keep going lots of people asked one tonight uh how do y'all at y'all's age y'all how do y'all keep doing all you do well it's it's based off of diet a lot about what we've eat three meals a day yes and we eat a couple of snacks a day so I have to but I have to figure in what we're going to eat all year long and and two it has to do and at our age with help yeah uh Danny When we married 10 years ago could eat anything I could always eat anything yeah so if I cooked it was not a big deal but since he had his gallbladder surgery and the in the things he's had happening in the last five years we have had to weed out all kinds of stuff that he used to would eat so I have my cooking changes which means you don't need things that you used to um you used to bake bread all the time I mean I was always baking bread then he went gluten-free because of his stomach and so I learned to bake bread from gluten-free recipes and then we figured out after a while even that was messing with him so we cut out bread all together if I want bread I buy a loaf of bread and stick it in the freezer and take a piece out when I want it but I don't bake bread anymore um we have our eggs so let's start with breakfast I've got to have my coffee so you know I'm buying coffee and creamer yeah for breakfast normally uh I have what's called low blood sugar issues um hypoglycemic and doesn't hit me all the time I'm reactive hypoglycemic uh mine will hit me at any given moment and I'm just gonna crash so what I do is I try to eat foods that help my blood sugar to stabilize and that usually in the mornings that's oatmeal and I eat oatmeal and I and my sweetener and oatmeal is my cane syrup that we make here ourself I mix that in with it and then we have the blueberries that we picked that we raised I put my blueberries because they're loaded with the anthrocyanes and different things in them that's good for the digestive tract and all and good cancer preventers and things of this nature and then I eat uh our home canned fruit along with it which has a lot of sugar in it well not necessarily a lot of sugar because we don't put a lot of sugar but it is does have a higher sugar content which would be our pears our figs um we did we did do some satsumas some apples um all these type things is is what he uses in first thing in the morning I use my coffee in which his oatmeal we do buy oatmeal because we don't raise oatmeal um but my coffee then we have eggs because of our chickens yes and he will eat an egg occasionally um well let me say something about the eggs I can't just eat an egg anyway because when you cook eggs in different ways the it has a different protein factor to it now I have to have protein basically every two hours because of the way my system works and I can't eat a boiled egg anymore she can't eat a boiled egg anymore because it really messes with our system I don't eat a fried egg anymore which she does eat fried eggs if I eat eggs because I have to I have to scramble them because of the factor the protein factor and how it reacts with the body in it so it took a while for us to figure these things out about our breakfasts in the mornings yeah and so he will scramble eggs when he eats an egg and it's our eggs so we know where they came from what they're eating we will do an omelette occasionally and um I like eggs and grits or I just have an egg and a piece of toast or a bagel sometimes I will buy Bagels what every two or three months I don't keep them all the time it's not something that I buy every time we go to town um so breakfast most of the time it's half and half of what we buy and what we raise yeah so even uh on the breakfast thing like they're like grits if we get grits from anywhere else usually they mess with my system yeah but if I raise my own corn and we make grips out of it I usually have absolutely no issues from it and so we have been raising our own grits and cornmeal for a while and we had our own bacon all year until a week or so ago yeah and we feel a little sad because we're out of bacon yeah but we had our own bacon and um usually we make some sausage yes and we have some patty sausage now so we can eat patty sausage for a while so these things are things we buy as well as things we raise when it comes to our snacks Danny loves his sweet potato dessert and I usually make that's usually what he has every day morning and evening that's that's his dessert but I will make muffins or something that I use corn flour yes we've learned that he can eat a muffin made out of corn flour so I add apples and some sugar and stuff that to sweeten it up so it's not like eating cornbread it's more like a flower you know like a little muffin um heat some fruit occasionally yeah um and then I will make something homemade for me or I will buy some kind of uh snack cake or something on occasion in town I just I'm not as big on snacks as he is he he's bigger he has to have his snack every day um but it takes a lot of food for breakfast it takes a lot for breakfast I mean people are asking us about oh well y'all can 30 gallons of figs how can you eat that many gallons of figs I go through a quart of figs every two days three days or something like that you know I mean and the pears I make a pair um salads so I our fresh carrots I shred them up and add pears to them and raisins now I have to buy the raisins yeah but the pears are ours the carrots are ours and so in order to keep some when we don't have fresh carrots outside I shred carrots and I put them in the freezer and so when I thaw them out I just take the moisture out of them and I make his carrot salad with our fresh pears and the raisins or I've learned to freeze drum and so I open a package of freeze-dried carrots and I make his carrot salad so that's another snack thing that he really likes yeah um but that's a lot of people ask us y'all have y'all raised so many carrots what do you do we can a lot we can a lot of carrots but we eat a lot of carrots I mean that's one thing everybody goes they don't understand how much that it actually takes for breakfast so when we lay our Gardens out we don't uh we don't try to figure out if we buy X number of seeds of this or if we buy X number of drawers of this how many pounds of this are we going to get how many pounds of that are we going to get or how many bushels of this are we going to get we don't work that way we just have certain size Gardens over here we know how many rows of what we're going to plant and that we know about what they're going to produce if we have a good year uh sweet potatoes we like to get around 600 pounds of them a year Irish potatoes or our red potatoes and white potatoes we like to get 250 300 pounds of them a year and everybody goes how did you eat that many potatoes well if you go back and check your diet and how much potato you have in all your diets everywhere you'll realize you eat that much or more and we run out every year except for our Irish potatoes now most people will tell me I can buy a five pound bag of potatoes and I throw part of them away okay that's not what I'm talking about when we say you have potatoes in your diet almost every box something has potato starch in it yeah of some sort so you're getting potatoes somewhere if you added it all up how many times do you stop and get a baked potato along with a steak how many times do you stop and get french fries with your hamburger uh that box of mashed potatoes that you picked up or any of your potato products hash browns uh the whole nine yards so you see you use potatoes without using a potato um any soups has potatoes in them um so you really are using potatoes way more than you think and so we have to grow ours and if I want potatoes then I have to have them on hand and so I can a lot and we eat fresh uh potatoes is one thing that will last for several months oh they last a long time so we get to eat fresh so if I want french fries I slice up a few potatoes and make french fries I've also canned french fries in a jar and that works out pretty good when you don't have fresh it's better than nothing yeah and then it's the same thing with anything else I mean it's like cabbages we know we probably need around 12 to 15 cabbages a year for us to be able to now we don't do the sauerkraut we don't do all that kind of stuff fermenting stuff and all that we just don't do that stuff but we do eat like coleslaw fresh coleslaw fresh you know we just love fresh cabbage and a lot of your brassicas we do the same thing with um all right we don't do all this freezing broccoli and all that kind of stuff we eat our stuff fresh we're trying to train ourselves to go back to eating in season yep now we do have lots of stuff that we've canned and that we've freeze dried now if you freeze dry it's almost like eating in season when you rehydrate it but we saved that stuff for when we don't have fresh yes so like our sweet potato Harvest is coming up in about a month yeah so we have run out of sweet potatoes fresh a couple of months ago two three months ago and then the canned sweet potatoes I use them off and on too while I'm still using fresh because we like sweet potato fries and baked sweet potatoes and stuff like that but I would use the canned sweet potatoes to make his dessert and so about a week ago I ran out of sweet potatoes and we still have at least a month till Harvest and so I have freeze-dried sweet potatoes I did when I was canning if I had some extra instead of trying to run the Canter a second time I would take and uh mash them all up put them on a freeze dryer tray and freeze drum so now we're using our freeze-dried stuff we don't stick this stuff up for 30 years no um my thought is if I need it it's there we're fixing to use it um when it gets time again for sweet potatoes to come in if I have excess I will freeze dry some more we will definitely be canning some yeah and and then we go like like our corn everybody looks at our cornfield goes man that's a big corn field you know oh well by the time you figure out how many is going to get lost to the weather how many is going to get lost to the animals and then how many you're going to actually Harvest to us see we don't use the tips of the Corn and we don't use the base of the Corn that all goes to the chickens we just use the center part the Kernel's out of the center of it and we actually shell them all off we put them in gallon Ziploc bags they go into the freezer and we don't when we grind cornmeal we don't just grind enough cornmeal for a year because cornmeal is just like any other meal uh like wheat or anything like that once you crack it up and break the germ in it it starts losing its nutritional value so we grind ours uh maybe say bi-monthly or something like that every three months or something we'll grind it up and put in the freezer for us to have our corn flour our grits or cornmeal and stuff like that we like corn flour more than we do anything else because when we cook fish which we have our own ponds here we eat a lot of fish we rather use corn flour on the fish we'd rather use corn flour on our breaded okra um no when she makes cornbread we get cornbread every day and you use a good bit of corn flour mixed in with your cornmeal because we don't like it to be real gritty yeah I've learned that the corn flour uh helps uh with the grittiness of the cornmeal um because when you mix both it gives it more of a almost a cakey like substance it's fluffy it's fluffier yeah and it it just goes further too yeah and then we have you know from the cornmeal we have our grits and stuff like that for our we want to do polenta if you want to call it that we we have all that stuff and we have our sugar cane which we use as a sweetener um we usually make at least one batch of sugarcane syrup a year most of the time too and some years we've made four and five batches but according to how much sugarcane we have and um I think last year we made two good batches we made two real good ones last year yeah and sugar cane is something that you can use in in place of sugar of sugar but it and you can make sugar but we've not done that we get asked this all the time no we have not made sugar but you can use it in place like of your desserts and different like you said in the oatmeals um you could put it on biscuits and stuff but I don't make biscuits anymore so I don't eat it on biscuits anymore but if I made made a biscuit I have syrup for it um so we have a sweetener um Yeah in our and even going back with the cattle and stuff like that cattle's for us play a multi-facet um thing here on our Homestead uh the cattle keep us from having to do any bush hogging on the property we because they eat all the fields down and we may have to get out and Bush Hog some weeds off because there may be a few weeds that they don't eat yeah but the cattle also produce milk and from the milk you get your Butters and you get your cheeses and all this type of stuff and it's just it's just an all-around win-win like the corn when we start taking the corn Shucks and the the corn stalks and stuff like that we throw all that in the cows love that kind of stuff sweet potato vines when we Harvest all that kind of stuff the cattle eat all that stuff it's feed for the cattle uh a lot of our garden stuff we throw over into the cows pea Vines and peanut Vines and stuff like that you throw all over into the cows they love that kind of stuff and our chickens love anything else old vegetables old vegetables any of the ends that you cut off they like if you have a jar of stuff that goes bad or comes unsealed you can feed it to your chickens um some people worry about the that it might be damaging to them but a chicken eats almost anything the chicken is nothing but a tame buzzer they eat anything they'll eat dead stuff out in the yard they'll eat anything that they come across that'll eat a lot um so we feed the chickens a lot of things uh pigs are the same way yeah when we had pigs you could feed them about anything they would eat whatever you fed them lots of sugar came um yeah that was stalks and stuff yeah um so the pigs would eat um there's no waste on the homestead I guess that's what we're trying to say along with the food we don't really have any waste to our food system because if we have bad vegetables they used to go to the Hogs they still go to the chickens now we don't feed bad vegetables to the cows no because cows don't necessarily eat them but if we have uh pears that start going bad and stuff like that now the cattle will eat that kind of stuff and so we have a lot of fruit trees but now we do have to fight the animals for not only our vegetables in the garden but our fruit trees the birds love fruit trees so we recommend that you not just plant one something plant several because you're feeding you and every other creature that lives in your area yeah and a lot of people say I can't believe you have so many fruit trees everywhere and we plant more every year because you lose a tree off and on to weather or like some of our trees the deer come through and rub on some of the trees and break them over so you're going to lose a tree there um the birds get the the berries or they get the figs or then we have the pair sometimes something don't get a pair yeah the peaches we've seen squirrels run across the porch with peaches so you're you have a lot of animals you're dealing with too with your fruit but we like to have fruit we've grown our own pineapples we have three or four no right we have four right now they're growing growing um and that may not sound like a lot for a year but if you space it out you don't eat pineapple every day we usually slice it and freeze it yeah and uh we'll take out a slice or two for us and we'll Grill it or we'll just eat it fresh about once a month and you'd be surprised four pineapples go a long way a long way um then you boil the rinds on that I wouldn't advise boiling rounds on one from the store because of all the chemicals that they put on them but we don't put any chemicals on ours so one that actually boils the peelings and all down and makes some of the best pineapples juice oh it is so good the pineapple juice is good for pork and stuff like that you can pour it over it and bake your pork in it like a pork roast it's amazing it's amazing and um but you can also drink it yeah and so it's good for you so it's healthy and we'd have our uh satsumas and things like that usually have some oranges now every year changes because one year our orange tree will make abundantly and the next year probably we don't get any or we get a few um one year we'll have quite a few peaches in the next year none so we never know exactly what we're gonna have as far as fruit so whatever we have that's why we preserve as much of it as we do we don't give it away because next year we may not have it right now if our kids come over we may share with them but we don't go hunting people to give our food to we share with some neighbors and friends as they come through yeah um but that's where we are with our food system and how we get through a year of food well just I guess some of the best advice we can give you is figure what you eat in a meal for a day break down what's in each individual part of your meal and multiply that times 365 based on how much you ate that day and you'll be surprised I mean there's times that we had over 3000 jars worth of food canned and we thought well we're set and that only makes it for a year and you'll run out of stuff and you go like how did we eat that much but then you start figuring three meals a day 365 days a year and a lot of people go oh you don't have to have that many meals a day if you burn the calories like we do sweating from we start at 5 30 in the morning outside till dark at night when the weather permits we're burning probably four to five thousand calories a day each one of us and you've got to replace that in order to keep your strength up especially the older you get now when you're younger you have a lot more stamina but the older you get lots of people go oh you don't need as much food that's not true you actually need more food when you get older than you do when you're younger in order to keep your metabolism going and so you know if you think about it 365 days a year and you have to produce every bite of food that goes in your mouth and we just told you we don't produce every bite of food that goes in our mouth when we produce I'd say if we had to just calculate it at least 75 percent because there is a a portion that we we buy so if you had to do every bite of food what would it take for you to have enough for 365 days a year or do you have something fresh you can eat in season 365 days a year now Danny and I are blessed we live in the Deep South we are in south Mississippi yes we can raise something 365 days a year yeah whether it's growing season whether it's the fish in the pond he can go out and Hunt we do have our our cows and our chickens so we have meat we have our rabbits we can breed rabbits and we can't have our meat so we don't worry so much about meat anymore um we can raise our brassicas in the fall and the winter we have high tunnels so we can grow something we usually always have garlic chives and onion chives available um carrots we let our carrots go this year for the we we just quit eating fresh carrots from the spring so we've had fresh carrots for a while um we usually have something in the garden or something on it the high tunnels have made it where we can grow something to eat year-round now without having any breaks or anything I mean like last year we had tomatoes all year yes you know it was just wonderful all through the freezes in the winter and everything we still had tomatoes so it takes a little doing and it takes a little preparation when and you gotta watch the weather like now it's so hot that I took all the tomatoes out of the high tunnels we have no tomatoes no cucumbers no nothing in the high tunnels anymore because of white flies but if you watch your high tunnel like you need to and pay attention you can raise Tomatoes this time of the year um it's just according to how Vigilant you are yeah and uh we had them in the field so we weren't worried um but you need something 365 days a year you got to have something to eat 365 days a year so how much food would it take for you and remember the oil statistics was two acres per person the new statistics from the agricultural department is 9 000 square foot of garden space per person because of the technology we have today the supplements we have to put in the soil to read mineralize the soil and re fertilize the soil and stuff like that we can boost a lot more production from a smaller area so stop and think about it 9 000 square feet of gardening per person per year is what it takes to raise enough food so guys I hope that today I know the video May went along but there's so much to talk about it we didn't even we just scratched the surface okay because food covers a lot food covers a lot and two we didn't even get into all the chemicals and the preservatives and the craziness that they're doing lab meat and all this stuff and it makes you almost afraid to go to the grocery store now right and even with bread the the changes they're making in bread yes has has me to the point that I told Danny I said I don't know that I'm going to buy bread anymore it's toxic yeah it's not even fit to eat maybe that's some of my health problems is that I am buying a loaf of bread and eating a bagel occasionally and stuff so that could be you know health problems that you have that you don't have to have I guess is what I'm trying to say remember what they used to say the whiter the bread the faster you're dead so anyway guys we got to get out of here thank you so much for sitting with us and enjoying um time and fellowship together I hope that today the video was a little bit educational uh and show you a little bit why a lot of people ask us about our food we thought we'd share about while we grow what we grow why we try to put up the quantity that we put up and just give you a little heads up about what it takes to have enough food to last for a year and then if you have a crop failure you still have a little bit the next year so thank you guys once again from Deep South Homestead

Channel: Deep South Homestead

Views: 72,506

Keywords: Deep South Homestead, homesteading, homestead life, food for a year, how much food do you need, how much food do you need to grow to feed a family of 4, how much food do you need to survive, how much food do you need for a year, how much food do you need in a day, self sufficiency, homesteading lifestyle, homesteading 101, why do we grow so much food, why do we can food, why do we can food pantry, food storage hacks, food storage ideas, food storage prepping

Id: u_nut7ZjObQ

Length: 37min 37sec (2257 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023