For several years now I've really been intrigued by the idea of closing the loop in our home food production systems.

And by that what I'm referring to is this idea of reducing the amount of inputs that I'm using on our homestead and trying to be completely self-sustaining.

Well, completely is a little bit of a misnomer, but as self-sustaining as we can and

not being quite so dependent on outside companies the feed store etc.

So I've had some success on this in a number of different areas primarily in the

garden. So here are some examples so you kind of know what I've been working on.

Number one I've been trying to save more seeds in my garden. Not all the plants because some are pretty tricky, but on the simpler ones like the tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, squash, I've been saving those back so it's reducing the amount of seeds I have to buy each

year plus it's allowing me to select for certain traits in my garden whereas

hopefully after a couple of years of doing that,

I'll start to have plans that are more suited for my climate.

Another thing I've been doing is I have been really

creatively shuttling seedlings around the homestead when I find volunteers and so that has really

allowed me to eliminate a lot of purchases at the garden store in the spring.

I've been doing this a lot with flowers, you know, I'm not a huge flower person, but I have some

merry golds, a strain of merry golds I've been growing for a number of years and they are prolific.

And I have a strain of cologulas that has

converged that I've been growing for a number of years and they kind of pop up all over and

so often they're in places I don't really want them so I've been practicing

really moving them around, transplanting them, putting them

in past, putting them in different places. And so this summer we had a lot of beautiful flowers

that I paid zero dollars for. I've also been doing that with volunteer vegetables. I found in my

raise beds and in my greenhouse I had some peppers pop up, some tomatoes pop up, I

...