Eight Sustainable Summer Goals

In our quest to be live a more self-sufficient life, I have set eight small sustainable summer goals for myself this summer. I want to learn how to do these things in order to create a healthier environment for our family and to know that I can provide my family with important essentials if I ever had to.

Learn to Make Our Own Skin Salves

My daughter has eczema and almost everything breaks out her sensitive skin. We do have creams that help her, but if I can find a more natural alternative that I can make myself, I will be happy!

This recipe from Camp Wander looks good.

Learn to Make Our Own Lip Balm

Mr. Simple loves Burt’s Bees lip balm. He goes through that stuff like crazy, but it’s not cheap. I would love to learn how to make something similar myself that he loves just as much.

I love Frugally Sustainable for all kinds of DIY sustainable recipes. Here’s a great recipe for lip balm at home!

Source Local Food Products

Finding real, local food is important to me. There is nothing like knowing where your food came from and how it was treated before it makes it to your plate. I am sourcing clean meat for our family, as well as finding locally grown fruits and veggies. I want to take the kids berry picking soon! That will be so much fun! When my hubs gets home from deployment, we are planning to buy a meat share from a local farm. We get our raw honey locally, and I plan to source even more products!

Dry My Own Herbs

I love having a little culinary herb garden. I want to learn how to dry my herbs so I can use them through the winter. I will definitely put this one into practice and try to store them in cute, little glass jars.

Learn to Make Herbal Teas

I’ve been drinking herbal tea for a while, so I think it will be wonderful to learn how to make my own herbal teas.

Learn More About Herbs in General

So this one goes along with the two mentioned above, but I want to learn more about herbs. They are so easy to grow and so useful to us. They make life more flavorful, they make life smell wonderful, and they can be used when we aren’t feeling our best. They are God’s medicine and I want to learn more about them!

The eBook Herbal Nurturing looks like the perfect resource to help me along in my herbal journey.

Plan Next Year’s Container Garden

We will still be renting next year, so there will be no in-ground garden, but I can start planning now what herbs and veggies I want to grow in containers and how I will use them. Having my husband around will be so much more helpful when doing this. He is so much better at caring for plants than I am!

Learn More About Composting

I probably should be doing this all along, but I really haven’t had any inclination to begin composting. I need to read more about it and figure out a system that will allow us to compost.

I found some tips at HGTV to get me started.

photo credit: Gardening in a Minute via photopin cc

Your turn! What are your summer goals? Tell us in the comments!

Happily linking to:

Encourage One Another, Teach Me Tuesday, Wisdom Wednesdays, Natural Living Link-Up