Couple quits grocery shopping by growing their own food

By Ben Barry

A couple are self-sufficient, grow 95% of the food they eat - and haven't done a grocery shop in three years.

Katie, 37, and Ryan Krejci, an engineer, 42, got their first taste of homestead life when they started a vegetable garden in their first home together in 2006.

They then got a five-acre homestead in 2013, and started growing more vegetables - including potatoes, onions, squash, and broccoli.

After 10 years they left the city and bought a 240-acre plot of land in northern Minnesota.

Katie says 95% of the produce they now eat comes from the land they own - whether that be vegetables, fruit, chickens, or deer.

Katie said she gets frost most of the year, which is not ideal for growing vegetables.

So the couple will take advantage of the summer months to then freeze and package the food they grow for the colder months.

Katie, a content creator from Duluth, Minnesota, said: "We have been doing the homestead lifestyle since 2013.

"We are nearly 100% self-sufficient, but we still buy lemons and limes from the store, and I go to local farmers to get my milk and other meats.

"I love the homestead lifestyle because I have full control over the produce, and I have full trust in what I give to my family.

"Especially when I am learning about the junk that is put in the supermarket produce nowadays.

"I feel so much connected to the earth and being a human."

The pair had their first small veg patch outside their small townhouse in Kansas City, Missouri - their first home.

Katie said: "It was my husband's idea to start a vegetable garden - that is when I fell in love with it.

"As a dietitian, I really embraced the nutritional benefits, controlling what we are growing, how it grows, and the nutritional properties involved.

"We were there for a few years before deciding we needed more room and got a five-acre homestead in 2013.

"Even at that point, it was never a goal to become a prepper or self-sufficient."

Speaking of how they source food now, Katie said: "We can hunt deer a few times a year and we forage in the woods.

"A lot of what we have done with the 240 acres is leave it; 90-95% of the property is wooded.

"We just want to leave it as a wilderness paradise for wildlife and have natural land for foraging.

"There are some cleared areas where we have gardens, chickens, and fruit trees."

Because of the weather conditions, Katie takes full advantage of the summer months and will freeze her produce for when she can't grow.

Katie said: "We only get a couple of months of growing fresh food, so food preservation is huge for us.

"I do a lot of canning, freezing, freeze-drying - most of the year we eat food that I have packed away.

"A big bulk of the food we store is vegetables, like potatoes, butternut squash, onions, and garlic.

"We have a lot of tomato products for pasta or pizza sauce, and we have a big apple tree, so we have dried apple slices."

Katie enjoys getting her produce from other farms in the area.

She will also go to the store once a month to get necessities like toilet paper, but she hasn't done a grocery shop in three years.

Katie said: "I don't want to be fully self-sufficient, but it is something that is still evolving.

"I do enjoy connecting and supporting my local farms.

"I still get raw milk from the farm down the road; I trade my eggs for the milk they have. I do the same when I get pork and beef.

"It would be so cool being self-sufficient but really isolating."