Happy Farming . com

I kept all of our grocery receipts for 31 days in order to make a qualified guess on how much we would need to produce if we were to become self-sufficient and living from home-grown food. I multiplied the numbers by 12 to make an estimate for a year of food consumption. It was quite an eye opener… Here are the numbers for two persons for one year. These are the things that we have a decent shot at making ourselves:

659 pieces of fruit (apple, pear, orange, etc.)
200 tomatoes
141 cans of tomato puree
141 onions
94 cans of chopped tomatoes
71 small French loafs
71 peppers (capsicum)
59 litres of fruit syrup
47 packages of rye bread
35 bottles of ketchup
24 glasses of beetroot
24 cans of white beans

It seems like we should be focusing on growing tomatoes (or be more creative in our choice of food).

When I bought this property I threw out some old stuff from the garage, including a rain water barrel. I never thought I would be doing much in the garden, but now I regret that I threw it out. So today I borrowed a trailer and went and picked up a 1000 litres tank from a horse farm in the countryside.
It’s bigger than I imagined and we could barely lift it over the hedge. One tank of water amounts to about 40 DKK (8 USD) so it could turn out to be quite an amount saved during the season. It’s connected to the roof of the garage which is about 20 m2. There is height difference between north and south of the garden, so I hope no pump will be needed.