How We Harvest Weeks of Food Supply From Our 1700 Sq Ft Garden

hey y'all Jill here and welcome back to Whispering Willow Farm today's video is one that I shot the other day when I was needing to buy groceries now we get asked a lot how do you know how to grow enough food for your family do you actually grow enough food for your family are you supplementing from the grocery store what does this look like and the truth is for my family of five we are primarily I would say about over 80% growing and raising all of our own animal protein um all of are vegetables the things we're having to Source out is raw milk some additional fruits how we're buying grains and things like that from Azure standard um but other than that my backyard is my grocery store which is really convenient and so the other night we needed groceries and so what did I do I grabbed my basket I headed out my back door and I harvested weeks worth of food we are harvesting right now over about 50 lbs a week of food we grow on succession so we're growing year round this makes it so convenient for my family and while yes it takes planning in the preseason I am having to start seeds I'm growing varieties that thrive in my climate and my environment but there is nothing more satisfying and more gratifying than literally walking out my back door and shopping for my family of five every single week so I wanted to do this fun video and share with you guys how I'm harvesting weeks worth of food for my family Right Out My Back Door and hopefully it encourages you guys too that if you are wanting to also become less Reliant and more sustainable and honestly just know where your food comes from there's nothing in my opinion scarier than going to the grocery store because you don't know how it was grown what's been sprayed on it sometimes even when you're buying organic you have to really trust um that it is what it says it is and so how I can just ease my mind make sure I'm growing the cleanest food for my family in a way that aligns with my values that I feel good about is to do it myself and there is nothing nothing better than that so let's grab our Harvest baskets and let's head up so first up let's head to the fruit section you guys these are first year strawberries and we have been so impressed at how well they have done we bought these starts from a local farmer who just raved about them and we have definitely understood why this is my sweet little June's favorite job every single day is to go outside and harvest strawberries I would say our biggest a nuisance right now is to make sure that we get them before the ants or the rain turns them to Mush but we are harvesting so many obviously we're eating a whole bunch of these freezing for smoothies and I've thrown some in the freeze dryer of them you did we need a bigger bowl a bigger bowl yeah no doubt she's impressed so now let's head to get some blackberries but first I noticed these little snap peas on the trellis Nathan's inside making the kids salad for dinner so I thought I'd Harvest some of these real quick just to add with their dinner uh we're not getting a ton of these but we are getting a nice little handful which makes it nice honestly just for fresh e in or to quickly throw on top of a salad or something along that line I'm not sure I we grow these again they weren't really my favorite but we'll do a quick neram Harvest as well because these taste so good and they are absolutely beautiful on a salad so let's Harvest some of these real quick take them inside pass them off to the kiddos to go with their dinner and then we will continue on our Harvest now these blackberries as you can see are absolutely massive they produce in the summer and they also produce in the fall which is great they came from Stark Brothers and we have just been so pleased we really don't have a huge issue with the birds or any other sort of pest obviously we could do a lot better at trellising them but it doesn't seem to be affecting their production whatsoever so again we're eating a lot of these seasonal fruits that were growing strawberries blackberries some raspberries right now we're eating blackberries every single day but we're freezing a ton of them they're great to go into smoothies we're also freeze drying quite a bit because my goodness they make for a delicious snack so we're going to be here for a minute hope you enjoy just when you thought we were done just kidding okay really are we are wrapping up let's grab some quick time to go on our sourdough we'll Harvest some herbs later but real quick let's take it inside and wait see what we have I have been trying to compare and see what the price is in the store for organic fruit based off of what we are growing here at home so you guys can see here I've got over a pound and that was over $10 worth of blackberries now Nathan went out and harvested this head of lettuce for dinner but let's pass through the flower aisle as we go to the produce but don't worry we already harvested several bouquet this week are these not absolutely beautiful I'm telling you nothing beats it all right so now let's talk about cucumbers we have so many cucumbers we grow the same variety every year because well why wouldn't we we are yielding so much off of these plants these are called the Katrina cucumbers much like any grocery store run Mama's got to stop and take a little snack but these are the Katrina cucumbers I buy them from Johnny seeds because we are buying organic seed they're expensive you guys I mean I'm talking about like $29 for a packet of 15 seats however I am harvesting over in peak season so right now 10 to 20 lbs of fruit off of these every single day and I only have 12 plants planted that is more than enough we'll do multiple successions so you might be asking what the heck are you doing with that many cucumbers well my kids happen to love cucumbers so we are eating fresh a ton these are great when we're outside working or just cold snacks in the fridge for later but the bigger ones we're juicing so we're juicing a ton fresh eating a ton we're also fermenting and I have also been taking some of these and supplying a local Juice Shop so that's one of the ways that we're consuming a lot of our vegetables is by juicing it if you go to the store and buy organic juice a lot of times it's filled with fillers and stuff I do not feel comfortable with like extra sugar and things I can't even pronounce and so these big cucumbers are great to juice with some celery some carrots can throw in some back some blackberries we've even been adding some of our relight salt just to mix up the flavor so it's a great way to utilize our produce and then we're also saving money cuz we're not having to buy these juices from the store so while you can Harvest these bigger which the bigger ones we save for juicing we actually prefer to harvest them pretty small for fresh eating and especially if we're going to be pickling them they just keep Crunch and taste a lot better but you guys check out this Harvest oh doesn't look like the tomatoes are ready yet so we'll check back next week to see if we can yield anything there but now let's move on to celery so I just mentioned what we're doing with celery primarily we are juicing this it goes great with the other things that we are growing granted we will chop some up and put it in a salad all day long but for the the most part this is to cut down on our cost of having to buy fresh juice they do great here in my zone they're very productive instead of harvesting the entire uh stock of celery you'll notice I'm just removing the outside stems by doing this it's going to allow the plant to last longer and I can continue to harvest off of it longer so this way I'm just going through snipping off those outside Gathering a few bunches and we'll take it inside to add with our juice for the next week week all right it's time to pause get my Affairs in order otherwise there's no way I'm going to be able to carry this backx kit inside so literally I just am rubber banding these which whoops looks like I should have picked another rubber band so there's one nice bunch of celery I'm going to go through Harvest another one just because I know if I were to go to a grocery store how many bunches I would need to make the amount of juice that I would need to make to last my family for the week check out how beautiful that is you guys how stunning all right let's go drop this off and we will continue our shopping spree while the colab is ready to harvest I'm not ready to do anything with it so we're going to keep that until next week and instead I'm going to harvest some heads of lettuce look at this beautiful butter crunch head absolutely beautiful We'll add that just to last us for the next few days but as you guys can see here we are definitely not short on lettuce I'm growing varieties that can with stand our Arkansas heat and I'm also planting them in multiple successions to ensure we have enough I'm just grabbing a few onions here we wanted to do a quick pickle just to go with some of uh the dishes we're going to be cooking in the next week or so so just a couple of these that we'll do a quick ferment on and then let's talk about these radishes we're eating these every single day with our salads maybe we're just eating them fresh with some homemade ranch dip but we absolutely love these we'll go through and do a big Harvest and put them in Cold Storage right now we're just harvesting enough for our weekly meals so in into the basket it goes and we will take this inside as well check out all of that beautiful food back inside can't forget about the sourdough bread I make several loaves a week and so now I wanted to go through and actually weigh and figure out how many of these cucumbers did we Harvest you guys it was quite a lot and friends just like that we were able to harvest weeks worth of food for my family of five D Right Out My Back Door but here's the kicker while this food will last us weeks we are harvesting this much and more every single day now the food area that we're growing in is only 1,700 Square ft 1700 square ft is feeding my family five year round with ease like I said I did Harvest weeks worth of food but we are literally harvesting this every single day just this morning I harvested 20 PBS of cucumbers I am harvesting multiple heads of lettuce every day literal buckets of spinach we are harvesting radish carrots and beets and putting them in cold storage and we'll pull from them for fresh eating to ferment and to think that the tomatoes and the peppers haven't even come on yet you guys we are harvesting so much food now while we are growing in 1700 square ft and able to yield this much this Harvest I showed you guys was off of two 3x 48t long beds was the majority of this Harvest and then maybe about 10 ft of cucumbers so what does that tell you guys you do not have to have a large space to be growing a lot of food and I hope this was a testament to that but if you guys have any questions make sure you drop them down below and be sure to like And subscribe thanks y'all I'll talk to you soon

Channel: Whispering Willow Farm

Views: 55,621

Keywords: raised bed gardening, square foot gardening, backyard gardening, growing food, organic gardening, self sufficiency, organic garden, organic growing, small scale gardening, self reliance, self sufficency, harvest weeks worth of food, feeding a family of 5, feeding my family of 5 without the grocery store, how to grow your familys food, food storage, how to grow food for your family, self sufficient backyard, feeding a family of 5 on a budget, growing food for a family of 5

Id: QLU9yN_pL5s

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024