Greetings from Manitoba

Hello all. I am a 41yo mother of two teenagers, and wife to a wonderful man that I have been with since we were 18. We live in Manitoba, Canada, in grain and cattle country, on a homestead where we raise our children, and grow a great deal of our own food.

I'm excited to find this forum, as many of the other preparedness forums we've found focus either on only profound events or on critiquing the masses, rather than on common-sense preps for events likely to affect regular families. While I don't discount the possibility of zombies (I've worked in government ) I think job loss, illness, or loss of the main breadwinner in a family is the much more likely EOTWAWKI event for most people in the short term.

We hunt, garden, raise livestock, tend an orchard, process our own food for winter storage, homeschool, try to live simply, and attempt to guide others when they express an interest in how we live.

Now that I've introduced myself, I'm off to explore the forums

 

Deer are VERY thick -- DH drives an hour and a half each way to work, and has to be very careful, especially in the early morning, that he doesn't hit them. They're a problem, but here in grain country, where they're eating grain pretty much exclusively, they're very, VERY tasty!

We also have wild pigs in the park nearby (a herd made up of escapees, actually -- very cool!) and grouse, etc. Lately, we've been hunting SKUNK... the dogs have been "done" twice in the last week, and MAY be learning their lesson as they've been sleeping in the garage. I hope so!

We get a couple of deer a year, and raise our own pork, chicken, rabbit, and goat. I have neighbours who raise cattle, and we barter for beef.

I raise most of our own veg in three garden plots -- the smallest is about 60ft X 70ft, and the squash, cukes, and potatoes are in a back field probably twice that size. We're "officially" a zone 3, but I think we have a little micro-climate going on here, because we grow things here that are rated for zone 5 or more successfully. I've learned that growing more of fewer things is easier than growing a little bit of a lot of things, so we've pared down our gardening to beans, peas, carrots, onions, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, several variety of squash, cukes, parsnips, beets, and greens. I typically grow one "new" thing each year, but gave this year a miss because just getting the garden in has been a challenge. We've been living in flood conditions since April -- most of the fields are underwater, and cultivating anything has been an adventure this year!

I have a small orchard -- four apple trees, three plum, and three cherry, and plenty of soft fruit canes -- gooseberry, raspberry, highbush cranberry, etc. We also have sea buckthorn and chokecherries growing in our shelterbelt. We pick hazelnuts and wild plums where we find them, and I harvest rosehips from the prairie rose bushes that grow wild everywhere. I also have herb gardens where I grow a lot of our own seasonings and tea ingredients.

We milk a neighbor's dairy cow that he rears orphaned beef calves on when he doesn't have any nursing, but buy cows milk when we need it. My youngest son doesn't like goat milk

It's always an adventure