More Than a Hill of Beans!

Today was a good day!  It was a fairly uneventful day, which around here equates to a good day!

One of our main focuses the past several weeks has been harvesting almost five acres of beans.  They finally got that all finished up while we were gone on safari and we were pretty happy with the harvest.  We ended up with 21 sacks of nice looking beans!  That’s enough to get us through about a year, without having to buy beans, which (like everything else) have gone up significantly in price recently.

Since we got such a good harvest, we decided to turn around and plant beans again!  Today, we got about two acres planted.  You may be wondering why we would plant more beans, when we already have enough to get us through a year….

We are really working toward becoming self-sufficient where our food is concerned.  With the recent addition of two big green houses and some drip irrigation lines for a pretty good sized garden, we are now planning to grow a variety of foods year around.  We are hoping to sell our surplus, with the profit going back into the farming budget to buy seeds, hire tractors, hire casual laborers, etc.  Eventually, we should be making enough profit to cover the costs of other foods, which we buy at the supermarket; rice, sugar, flour, bread, jam, etc.  (That’s a ways down the road, but is our ultimate goal with the farming project!)  So, with that said, if we can get another 20 bags of beans harvested this year and sell them at the market, the proceeds will go a long ways toward getting us operating at a profit!

Besides the hassle and expense of buying vegetables in the market, it’s also a little bit scary because you don’t really know what you’re getting!  It’s not uncommon to hear of people who have become very sick (or worse) because of eating veggies that they didn’t know had recently been sprayed with insecticides!  It gives us peace of mind to grow our own food!  We are already enjoying zucchini, cucumbers, bell peppers, spinach, kale, pumpkin, butternut squash…. Onions, carrots, tomatoes and many other yummy things are not far from being ready!  It is exciting!

GIGATT!