We have been growing a garden in the backyard for a few years now.  Mostly tomatoes (yummy yummy), squash (yellow and zuchinni), and cucumbers.  We've tried some other things with mixed success.  Corn has been tough for us as well as melons.  I figure our soil is the main reason for the failure of the melons (plus this years drought).  My granddad always told me you couldn't grow melons on blackland clay.  His farm was on sandy land and he always kept us stocked in cantelope and watermelons from his garden.  But as an adult, we decided to try it on our blackland piece of ground. 

My husband has really added a lot of organic material to our garden plot.  He has put in compost (we made most of it, but he bought some mushroom compost to add to it), green sand, peat moss  and aged manure from both the chicken coop and our pasture animals (horses, donkeys and a goat).  In non-drought years, our tomatoes and squash have always overflowed our own use, so we end up giving away a lot.

But there is a way to stretch your harvest and that's canning!  When I was a kid, all the families canned to some extent.  It might just be pickles or easy water bath, or if you were my great grandmothers, it was anything that they could can with the help of a pressure canner.  These were people that raised families through the Great Depression.  They had to grow their food or they went hungry.  All of the great grandparents were farmers and farmer wives.  There was no choice but to can their food, especially since our part of rural Texas didn't get electricity until after World War II.  They went through an amazing period of history with the innovation and betterment of life.  But despite the advances in food preservation, they always kept on canning. 

Now I see the benefits of their wisdom.  You can do so much and honestly the environmental impact for those of you looking to be green is larger than you can imagine.  Think about all the resources to get a simple can of fruit to your home.  It's picked some place warm and then has to get trucked to the processing plant, then canned, then trucked to your store and then you tote it home.  But if you grow your own peaches and can it at home, then you've really cut down on the impact.  Plus you know what's in the jar.  MMMMMMmmmm, home grown peaches were always a favorite. You can start on your journey toward self sufficiency by canning.

I like to do what I can to make the world a better place to live.  We can change the world one step at a time.  Here's what I'm doing these days:

• Cloth bags for the grocery store (bye bye paper and plastic)
• Growing my own tomatoes
• Buying what I can locally
• Slowly replacing LED bulbs  for all my old bulbs (pricey!)
• Walking when I can, riding my bike some too
• Carpooling when I can
• Turning off the lights when I leave the room

It doesn't seem like much, but every little bit counts.