Growing your own - Feast or famine?

Here's an old post from July 2011 that I thought you might enjoy reading again :)

Since we have started producing our own veges, eggs, beef and chicken meat I have noticed that we get used to making our own and have been reluctant to buy these items when our own production levels are low.  This means we usually have either too much or not enough of some things, but its just become a way of life for us.  Sometimes if we don't have any of a particular food, we just go without, but we don't even think about it now.

When we are milking our cows, we usually have too much milk at first, which is lovely, because I get to try making cheese without worrying too much if the end result is a disaster!  The other week I made feta, too much feta, which neither of us particularly like (it was just an easy cheese to try) so I started looking for recipes to use it up.  I found this lovely recipe for chicken meatballs with feta in the middle.  This would use up feta, chicken mince from our own chickens, silverbeet from the garden (instead of spinach) and cream from Bella.  All I needed was one egg.  So I went to talk to the chickens, who have not been providing a very consistent supply lately (maybe 2-3 eggs a week).  They didn't look very interested.  I went to the supermarket for the weekly shopping and stopped in front of the eggs.  I picked up the only free range eggs option ($5 for half a dozen) and read everything on the carton.  But I couldn't be sure if the hens were happy or well-fed, like ours are, so I put it back.  I just couldn't bring myself to buy any eggs, I was prepared to make falling-apart meatballs rather than buy those unknown eggs.  When I got home, the chickens had laid ONE egg for me!  So my meatballs were a success and I was so glad that I didn't buy any!

For me and Pete, the animal welfare aspect of food production is the most important thing, so we don't like to buy chicken or eggs, knowing what meat and laying birds go through, and we know we shouldn't buy pork that's not free-range either (so hard to resist!).  Sometimes we seem to just live off our own beef for weeks, but its doesn't really worry us.  At the moment we have so many beans I can't give them away.  I've started feeding them to the steers and the roosters just to get rid of them!


Its funny how you get used to making do with what you have, going without, and using things up, when you make it/grow it yourself!  Do you do the same?

Note from 2017: we never seem to know what glut to expect next, currently its eggs and beans :)  You will see from my lunch recipes that I just use up whatever we have.