A very small greenhouse that I found on Amazon, to put out in the back yard garden. Hopefully, it will give us a little head start at growing a vegetable garden here at home since our growing season doesn’t really begin here in Idaho until mid-May.

My husband, my daughter and I have thought about planting a big vegetable garden for years, but we travel so much with work in the spring and summer, we didn’t think we would have time. But it looks like we will have plenty of time this year to grow a garden as we don’t believe we will be traveling anywhere anytime soon.

Here in Idaho, we are under stay at home orders from our governor due to the Coronavirus for a minimum of 21 days. After that amount of time, we believe it will still be a long time before we can return to our normal activities like grocery shopping, going out to restaurants, traveling and camping.

I had already been isolating myself at home for a few weeks before the order came down from our governor. My husband and I could see that it was going to get worse here in the United States after watching what was happening in other countries.

Multiple autoimmune issues – Type 1 diabetes, pancreatectomy, Lupus (SLE), and a compromised spleen puts me at a greater risk of complications for viruses and infections. Because of these health complications, I have always been advised that I will always need to take extra precautions to keep myself healthy. I know how to keep my hands clean and limit my exposure, eat healthy foods and get plenty of good rest, but this Caronavirus is so different and so new that there was no question that I need to isolate. I am healthy right now and my family has been here with me as well, working from home to limit the exposure and thank goodness they are healthy too.

My biggest concern is keeping my Type 1 Diabetic blood glucose levels normal (70-100 mg/DL) and my inflammation down. I have been doing well with blood glucose by staying on a strict ketogenic diet and that also helps me keep my inflammation down. I am eating good nutritious low carbohydrate whole foods to help keep me healthy and hopefully boost my immunity. I am also staying completely away from processed foods and industrial seed oils like vegetable and canola oil that cause inflammation.

Keeping good food in the refrigerator, in the freezer, and the pantry is more important right now than ever. I had been making and storing a lot of food over the past few months that was to be used on RV travel trips with work and for pleasure. We won’t be traveling in the RV for a while so we have all of that food available that would last us for a month or more.

There isn’t a lot of need for things from the grocery store right now, but fresh vegetables don’t last forever and getting groceries delivered from our regular store has become harder these days because of the huge demand and because people are being asked to stay home and limit trips to the stores.

After two weeks at home without shopping, I started getting to the bottom of my vegetable drawer and I started thinking about the huge gardens that my parents and grandparents grew. They were part of the “victory garden” generations that grew extra fruit, vegetables, and herbs for the community during the depression and WW2. People grew vegetables in flower gardens and different communities even used city parks and vacant lots in town as places to grow vegetables for the benefit of everyone. Not only did it provide food, but it helped with morale and mental health.

Both of my parents were born and raised during the great depression years. They learned early on how important it was to grow a garden that helped feed the family. My grandparents and my parents raised beef cattle, milk cows, sheep, and chickens and always had a large garden every summer. I grew up in a household that didn’t have much money, but we always had good healthy food on the table – mostly in part because of my family’s garden and the meat that was processed in the fall.

My parents and grandparents made sure that the family had plenty to eat from the garden during the summer months and then we canned and pickled vegetables and meat to help feed the family through the winter months. There was a great deal of generous charitable giving also. The family gardens helped to feed extended family, friends, and neighbors who were struggling.

I started to realize that we could benefit from our own garden this year. We have had small gardens in the past and have done a lot of deck gardening. We have a lot of knowledge from our parents and grandparents. Fresh food from our garden seems to be a safer option than having it delivered to us from hands and sources that we aren’t familiar with. So, why not grow our own food as we go through the next few months?

We plan to grow mostly low carb vegetables that work with our ketogenic diet but plan to grow other vegetables like corn and peas that are easy to grow here in our climate. We may not eat much of the higher carbohydrate vegetables, but I know others that may enjoy and benefit from them. Our own little version of a victory garden.