We are not too sure on exceptions. We may make some depending on what the neighbors or we have. W/out killing our birds (eggs/chicken). We want it to be real at the same time and we do have powdered eggs and milk stored so we may utilize these and include them in our report. Keep in mind, we are not against buying during the experiment it's a learning experiment not a contest if we can make it 1 year on our own.

We do have a garden, and are expanding it greatly for next year. We are also planing 3 or 4 fruit trees in spring though they won't be producing anytime soon. We have dehydrated fruits and veggies too.

Again the experiment could go a few different ways here... we could utilize our stock or we could buy-new and just subtract from our inventory as if we were utilizing our stock (we don't want to drain our preps! hehe).

Whichever way we do it we want it to be 100% legit as we would only be cheating ourselves.

We do have a pet. 1 Dog, standard poodle, 55lbs. I am not sure his food consumption exactly but I do know 1 bag lasts him well over a month and we always have 2-3 on hand. He will need to get groomed every 5 weeks too, and we will continue paying for this. I have done this for a year myself so I know I can do it for him if we had to stay home and I had to do it. He has at least 8 active toys he has in use, and I have 5 to 10 more in packaging still from when petsmart moved and I was able to get 50% off, so other than illness or injury his toy and food stock would go 1-6 months pretty easily. I believe we also keep on hand 6 month of heart worm medicine, and soon flea/tick medicine.

Thanks!

Keep them coming.