Where do we start?

When my husband (then significant other) bought his house it had been a rental that had sit for almost 2 years vacant.  Needless to say when he moved in we had a lot of fixing up to do.  Once that first spring got here we mostly did vegetables in pots on the deck and had a small garden.  The next spring we moved up to a larger garden where we grew a wide variety of vegetables and the husband did can sauces and made fresh salsa on a regular basis; we had too many tomato plants and had to do something with them.  We are now on the larger scale.  Late last fall we added a flock of backyards chickens that we call the “ladies” and each one does have a name with one rooster ,Bert, that I am still trying to decide if we keep.  A green house where the husband is now setting up hydroponics and working on building a small pond for a variety of fish that we have not decided on yet that we can use to feed the family.  We have started all of our own seeds indoors under grow lights in a small basement bedroom.  We plan on growing the size of the garden some and maximizing the space in both the garden and the green house.  I am also looking into adding a medicinal herb garden somewhere on the property and start to use it for minor ailments for my family.  Even though we live in a suburb we are working on how to be come as self sufficient as we can and trying to pay off all our debt as quickly as we can so that we can then save enough money to buy a homestead in the county where we can do more of what we want.  I decided to write this blog because from doing research on the internet I am sure there are a number of people out there that want to start doing some of the things that my family are doing and would find our ideas and ideas helpful and maybe even insightful and humorous.