Subsitance Living

Subsitance living, by definition is growing, foraging or taking from nature only what you need to live, or sustain life. That is going to be how for the next year I plan to live.

It all started by watching the show Yukon Men on Discovery channel. The show follows 4 men in Tanana, Alaska, a small village in the yukon on the Tanana and Yukon rivers. If you have not seen the show I highly recommend it. In the show the 4 men hunt and fish for the bulk of their food, not only for themselves but for their families as well. This got me to thinking about all the things I had done over the past year and how I could incorperate this into a larger experiment.
And to be completely honest it was also inspired by a half joking comment I made to my wife about moving to Alaska with the kids and living there full time. Her response was, "Well show me that you could even do it here in Vermont, I don't think you could."
So I took the challenge. Along with my gardening projects I will hunt or fish all the meat that my family eats for the next year. Starting on March 1st. She did allow in her challenge two supply runs to Costco for bulk ingredients that would carry us through the year.
The list of supplies I purchased are;
100 lbs of flour
100 lbs of sugar
20 lbs of coffee
16 lbs of butter
50 lbs of red beans
20 assorted boxes of pasta
20 peppers that I cut and frove
20 lbs of carrots that I cut and frove
10 lbs of broccoli
16 lbs of ground beef to get through to the thaw
4 whole chickens
20 lbs of salt
5 lbs of pepper
80 lbs of rice
24 cans of cut green beans
20 cans of corn
5 lbs active yeast
All of that cost 375 dollars, and if my calculations were correct should make it through to mid/late summer when I will do another run but without buying any meat. I was successful at getting 2 rabbits so far from hunting and used them to make a large stew and a large pot of rice and beans. I have also learned to make my own bread in the oven.
So lets see how this goes and wish me luck. I will make a seperate post about the first week of this experiment soon which as you can see by the date of this post is fast approuching.