Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Independence Days Challenge

1. Plant something - I'm going to count the peas, carrots, and radishes, but I hope to get more in the ground before the end of the week--I'll likely count that next week though. ;)

2. Harvest something -one lone tomato, cukes , kale

3. Preserve something -chopped up some puny looking onions and froze them for later use.

4. Reduce waste - Using newspaper as mulch and under new beds, cloth dipes for little one (we've used cloth for all 4 kids), but just aquired cloth "Goodnights" (Happy Heiny trainers with microfiber inserts if anyone is looking for good ones) for older child who is still not dry at night. They will easily pay for themselves if I want to look at it strictly from a cost standpoint.

5. Preparation and Storage - Ben's back is out of whack this week. We want to put together 1 more raised bed for the back yard, and possibly a smaller Mel Bartholomew (Square Foot Gardening)style bed alongside the outside of the back fence where weeds grow better than grass. Learning to use a pressure canner/cooker.

6. Build Community Food Systems - raided neighbor's grass clippings (making it possible for her to fit what was left in one bin when it normally took two!), talked to said neighbor about her own small garden (downsized in her later years, apparently). Hmmm, that means there's more good garden soil available in our sandy neighborhood. Maybe I should consider talking to her to see if she would be interested in expanding again if she had help! Shared a boquet of our flowers with another neighbor.

7. Eat the Food -Cukes seem to be loved by all, as they're being munched as they come off the one plant that is producing at the moment (I only planted one non-pickler, and the picklers aren't producing yet). Kale chopped up tiny in spaghetti sauce is apparently not highly detectable. And I made Kale Chips and thought they were quite tasty. I'm having trouble getting anyone else to try them as they look scary, but I'm going to try again tonight. This time, I'm going to use a little garlic salt to season.

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