No, no kitchen photos yet. Sorry. I am waiting on the builder to do the last 10%.
I thought I’d update on my progress on the self-sufficiency experiment. I wanted to become 100% self-sufficient in vegetables this year, and about 40% in fruit. Inevitably, I was over-optimistic. 
I am doing well on the vegies. I will be self-sufficient in onions, garlic, shallots, potatoes, carrots, silverbeet (swiss chard), leeks, capsicums, chilli, zucchini, pumpkin and probably beetroot. I would have been self-sufficient in peas save for the Great Freezer Disaster. I still have to assess the celeriac crop (it doesn’t seem to be bulbing up). I will also have enough fennel seed to last me through the next 3 lifetimes (I will never ever plant fennel again!). I will have about 60% of the beans I need.
I should have been self sufficient in artichokes, but, God save me, I loved the flowers so much I just let them all flower!
As for fruit – I have had a reasonable apple crop – enough for a bit of fresh eating and enough to make the sauces I need (mostly tomato ketchup), but not enough for the dried fruit I need for the year. I have a young lemon tree and this year I should get about 10% of the lemons I need from it. But otherwise the fruit has been a bit of a disaster as the melons never got off the ground (literally) and I was depending on them for dried fruit throughout the year. So the fruit side of it is not doing well and it is too late now to expect anything.
I have got enough pickled onions and pickles to last the year. I will be able to make most of the sauces I need from the garden produce.
I would have had enough elderflowers to make myself wine for the entire year, too, save the frozen elderflowers also went in the Great Freezer Disaster. (I may not have mentioned the Great Freezer Disaster; in early January I turned off the sodding freezer for no apparent reason save that I must have just walked by and flipped off the switch. Lost all my pea crop and all the elderflower crop I had frozen. I was, literally, distraught at the loss.) I have managed to get some dried elderflowers but have not yet made any wine with them.
I am preserving as best I can. Onions and garlic and shallots keep well, but (as you know) I am freezing a large proportion of the onions and they are going into my chest freezer which is kept solely for vegetables. Today I made a start on mashing up great vats of potato to be frozen as well. (If freezing mashed potato do not add milk, just loads of butter, pepper, and, my particular vice, enormous quantities of grated cheese.) If I have any potatoes left once the pumpkins are ready, then I will do potato and pumpkin mash mix, otherwise I will freeze mashed pumpkin (no additives, just mash the steamed pumpkin). I don’t keep pumpkin on the shelf as the variety I grow (Galeux D’Eysines) loses flesh rapidly after picking, so it is best to freeze them up almost as soon as you pick them. Carrots are also being frozen but I will have fresh throughout most of the year as well. I will have enough potatoes left growing in garden and compost for my roasts throughout the year. 
I am doing OK, I think. I also have loads of herbs in the garden, and for most of the, ahem, garden variety herbs I will be self-sufficient. I’ve managed to mostly remember to keep planting throughout the growing season. I will still need to buy in things like cauliflower and cabbage, which just haven’t managed to grow for me this year (mostly because I never planted out the seedlings!), and brussel sprouts as well, as my crop seems to be fatally attacked by pests.
I won’t meet my quota, but thus far I am pretty happy with what I have achieved.
This is the first time I have tried growing celeriac, so it is a learning experience for me. I rarely use celery save in things like stock, and I was attracted to the idea of the bulbs which (in theory) are easier to grow than the stemmed variety – I thought I could dehydrate them (although I have heard they are nice eaten raw and fresh with a little salt). They have amazingly luxuriant celery-like leaves – but, whenever I dig about a bit, no bulbs – they’d better hurry up!
The frozen mashed potatoes are not as nice as fresh, but will do, esp for toppings of things like shepherd’s pie and such.
It amazes me how you manage to grow and store so much of your own produce. My house-mate and I have only just started a vegetable garden (because I was so inspired by your blog). It must be such a satisfying experience for you to provide yourself with so much of your vegetable needs from your own garden.
Well done on being so on track with your produce quota. 😀
Congratulations on the terrific result, Sara. Considering that you weren’t up to full strength this year, you have done a really amazing job.
Is this the first time you have tried celeriac? I have never tasted it, but I love celery and I am tempted to have a go. Does it really taste a lot the same, or is it a poor relation, flavour-wise?
I lost a lot of my garden to storm damage this summer, so have been sulking in the sodding rain ever since, so I am truly envious of your bounty. 😉
wow that’s huge Sara! I wish I had the time and patience to have my own fruit/vege garden. I’m so envious haha!
And those mashed potatos sound delicious. I do love my potatos 🙂
Keep it up!
I think you have done amazingly well Sara, especially considering your health.
I will try freezing some mashed potatoes too after hearing of your success.
Well done Sara, especially on the onions! I think I might have a tiny nervous breakdown at the thought of cutting up 300 cups of onions. I have about the same amount of garden space as you, but have to feed six from it, and leave enough lawn for the children to run around on, so I look at vegie gardening as more of an education for the children, and a joy for me. Having said that, I am filling up the freezer with frozen stewed apples, and the cupboards with jars of dried apple. We have two trees planted six years ago, and they are always loaded, so it won’t be long for yours I expect.
That’s an impressive result. Did you grow the fennel solely for the seed? I thought you could eat the bulb as well, or is that a different plant?
I hadn’t thought of adding cheeese to mashed potato, must give that a try next time. Combining the pumpkin & potato in a mash reminds me of my mother doing that when I was a child, to try to get me to eat the pumpkin I loathed. She tried to tell me it was a special new type of potato that was coloured orange, but I wasn’t buying any of that :-).
Well, all that seriously looks like 100% to me 🙂 All your hard work in the garden shows. I am amazed at the various crops and how you can gather and store for the Winter.
A great effort! How much Fennel did you actually plant, as in, did you get all that seen from just one or two bushes, or did you go a bit overboard on setting up a fennel patch?
I planted about 8-10 fennel (the first time I have grown them) partly for the seed, and partly because I thought my onion crop wasn’t going to be very successful (ha!) and I could use the bulbs. Because I’ve got lots of onions, I’ve let them all go to seed – they produce many multiple flower heads per plant – it isn’t as if they produce just one flower and be done with it. Nooooooo. They are extremely enthusiastic flower producers. One corner of the garden is a gigantic mass of yellow flowers and literally hundreds of humming bees.
Hmm.. I wonder what fennel flavoured honey tastes like..
Congratulations Sara. I am amazed at what you have achieved.
You had the freezer disaster 🙁 I’ve had mice digging up my pea-seedlings:-( AND something large eatingth spinach
Sounds like plenty!
Fennel will readily self seed, it used to pretty much own at least half of Canningvale (a light iindustrial suburb of Perth). You might want to think about that and remove some of the bushes as they finish their flowering to save on some extra weeding next spring, lest you set yourself up for your own Triffid invasion!
You are doing really well, a massive job when you have been unwell.
We haven’t bought any fruit of veg yet this year and are hoping not to have to but I can see us needing more onions. We don’t eat anything fancy though just the basics for us.
I did have heaps of onions coming up but *someone* let the chooks out and they dug up onions and all the lettuce seedlings. Oh well, We just have to keep planting don’t we.
I love reading your blog, it is one of my favorites.
Barb.