Happy Friday, everyone! I hope the week has treated you well and the coming weekend is divine!
Diving right in…
Plant something: Believe it or not, I have not planted a single seed since last week. We hit a bit of a cold snap…rain, snow, grey grossness…for a few days and I was reminded that we still have a ways to go before we can plant seedlings out into the yard, so I took a short break. The weather has shifted back to sunshine and warmth again, so the sowing will definitely commence this weekend. Right now I already have so many little seedlings started, it feels kind of ridiculous. I just have to remind myself that, really, it’s not 😉 Especially if we want to grow well over 200 pounds of food this year. My gift of grow lights has been just amazing and I am continually blown away by how much better everything grows under them. Now, I just have to practice my patience in actually planting everything out into the garden. I might need more shelves…
Speaking of shelves, I did open up some space on one of my grow light shelves by transplanting one of our tomatoes into a Chair Planter so it can be moved in and out of the house depending on what the weather’s doing.
Harvest something (from this weeks Harvest Monday post):
- Lettuce = 2 ounces
- Chard = 2 ounces
- Spinach = 3 ounces
- Kale = 6 ounces
- Eggs = 34
Preserve something: I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about food preservation in all of its forms. Here are some of my thoughts…I’d love to hear yours. We generally buy dry organic pinto beans in bulk and then pressure can 7 quarts of beans every couple of weeks. We eat a lot of beans in this house, partially because its part of the culture of Santa Fe to eat lots of beans (as part of the main course or as a side dish), partially because they are yummy and partially because they are a cost effective/cheap protein. Now, the dried version will keep longer, but the canned version is more convenient. Next, take beef. We purchased 1/4 cow a few months ago and have stored it in our chest freezer. It is awesome to just go into the garage and grab a steak or a pound of beef anytime we want, however, if the electricity went out, we’d be screwed. Last weekend we made our first ever batch of beef jerky (you can read about it here) and are keeping it in the fridge simply to ensure that it’s safe (we’ve never made beef jerky before, so we’re trying to play it safe). So, our meat is well preserved in the freezer as long as the electricity stays on (which has never been a problem, but…well…that doesn’t mean it will be guaranteed to never be a problem), but if it’s jerky and still in the fridge, is it better preserved? Does it need to stay in the fridge? Hmmm…So, I guess my thoughts have been generally about which preservation method is better for each item? I don’t know that I know the long term answer for that. We are blessed in this country, at this time, to have several options for preserving our food, but I wonder what would be best if our circumstances changed?
Anyhow, that’s enough of that for now. Please feel free to chime in with any thoughts or opinions you have 🙂
- 7 quarts of pinto beans
- 2.24 pounds of steak into 12 ounces of beef jerky
- 3 pints of pickled golden beets
Waste not (beyond the weekly composting and kitchen scraps to the chickens): This week I thinned our lettuce in one of the hoop houses and decided to give some to the chickens as it was a bit bitter. They liked it just fine.
Want Not:
- We purchased two asparagus crowns this week that we will put in the ground this weekend. Asparagus is one of Tool Lady’s favorite vegetables and even though we own’t get a “real” harvest out them for a few years, we’re both pretty excited to put these guys in the ground!
- We also received our order of 10 pounds of German Butterballs from Seed Savers this week. They are chitting in the laundry room 🙂
Eat the Food: Beyond eating canned beans and a few other misc. items from the pantry and red chile, green chile and beef from the freezer, we also made a few loafs of bread. In addition, I made beet bread and beet cake for the first time. I’d call both of those items a fail. The cake was a bit too salty and the bread was too moist. Both of these recipes will be tweaked and tried again because I still have hope for them 🙂 The beets used were not homegrown, but I have lots in the ground that I am very excited about. I am trying to grow golden beets this year from pretty old seed that was gifted to me…I am hopeful I’ll see some germination because I think they are just beautiful and delicious!
Build community food systems: I have had several conversations with friends over the past week about starting small gardens, trading seedlings and the importance of learning how to grow veggies and build a community around food and hard work 😉 I am considering hosting a small gathering of like-minded friends and acquaintances to a get together soon. It seems that we know several people from different parts of our lives that could easily come together and have a lot to talk about in the way or urban farming and gardening and full on farming. Plus, it sounds like a lot of fun 🙂
Skill up: We learned how to make Beef Jerky!
Independence Days Challenge is hosted by
Sharon @ The Chatelaine’s Keys
I’d love to see what you’ve been up to! If you’d like to join in simply leave a link to your Independence Days post and I’ll pop on over! If you don’t have a blog, feel free to let me know what you’ve been up to in the comments below!
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I have to get some grow lights. My seedlings are pale, wan things in the window.
I have always wondered how people preserved in the old days. I know salt was used, but what about canning? There were no pressure cookers, so what did they use? I have a copy of a few very old cookbooks. One is The White House Cookbook, and in it they tell you to put a layer of egg whites over the jars. But what if like me, you have no access to fresh eggs?
Kind of like the question I always pondered on infections. How did they deal with it sans antibiotics?
Very interesting! Yes! I wonder if there are certain skills we could re-learn? You know, if we’re talking about long term electricity loss (you, Zombie Apocalypse type stuff), our pressure canners just aren’t going to cut it!
Antibiotics are on my list of wonders as well. I really want to learn more about natural remedies/medicinal herbs, grow them and learn how to use them. We’re lucky to have all the meds we have now, but I’m not certain they’re the healthiest options, now and into the future 🙂
Oh, and yes, I highly recommend getting some grow lights if you can. They have been absoultely amazing!
well done for getting featured there a while back – those pallets really are a brilliant idea! Im sure you got a huge spike in traffic! isn’t it exciting when that happens!
I want some of that jerky!!! you guys always seem to do so much with your weeks, I must get off my butt and go garden for a while… thanks for the inspiration xx
Ha! Thanks Astra! We are pretty busy! Sometimes all I want to do is lay down and take a nap 😉
I always mean to accept these challenges and post about them on my personal blog (kayoz.typepad.com), but I don’t get to it, so…
Plant something: I planted out some silverbeet this week, and some poor little nasturiums that had been sitting in their seedling pot all summer. And I *mean* to plant out the rest of the my winter greens today… a little late already, but hopefully it will be okay.
Harvest something – I harvested some rhubarb last weekend, and of course herbs every day just about. Oh, and some zuchinnis – nothing much else growing in my garden this year 🙁
Preserve something – I stewed up that rhubarb and froze some of it
Eat the food – well, I ate all of the rhubarb I didn’t freeze, plus I used some of it in a zuchinni chocolate brownie I made. And I used zuchinni in just about every dinner this week!
Build community food systems: Hmm, this one is not such a gimme. I did commission and publish an article this week on local food security, in which the writer (NZ sustainable communities writer Angela Christensen) talks about local food and building community, does that count? (It’s on sustainablesuburbia.net).
Skill up: This is not a gimme either. I started reading about different battery options for off-grid solar power systems. I experiemented with a zuchinni chocolate brownie recipe, but I didn’t perfect it yet. And, I’m working on getting better at cooking from scratch with only the ingredients in my home. How’s that?
BTW, I just came by from ApronStringz – hi!
Hi Kirsten! Thanks for popping over and participating in the challenge! Sounds to me like you’re doing wonderfully! Did you get your greens planted out? It seems that this time of year I always *mean* to plant things in the garden, too…
How do you stew up your rhubarb to freeze it? Is it simply blanched? Or do you stew it with seasoning, etc? I think this year just might bring us our first real rhubarb harvests and I’m hoping to have enough leftover after all the pie making I intend to do to preserve some!
Thanks for turning me on to sustainablesuburbia.net! Good stuff! And yes, I do believe it counts 🙂 As do all of your Skill Up items!!! Like I said, you’ve been busy!
Hope you’re enjoying your week!
Wow! Your first picture! What a stem heavy and healthy! I hope this plant will give you a lot of tomatoes!
Ha! Thanks! I hope so, too! 🙂
I love that more people are connecting with their communities. Since I’m the only person in my circle of friends who seems to be doing trying to have a farm on a suburban lot I’ve found http://www.meetup.com to be a wonderful resource to connect with others who have the same interests. Each community will have different groups, I’m lucky to have a permaculture, herb gardening, urban poultry, foraging and a few other groups that I can connect with others who are passionate about growing their own food. It seems my life is like a spider web, everytime I go down a new path I see it is usually connected to other paths I’ve explored. It’s wonderful.
Yes! Truly wonderful! Thanks for turning me on to meetup.com. I will definitely check it out! We’re lucky to have a few friends that are into urban farming and gardening that we can chat with, but I do find great pleasure in meeting new people and seeing that we’re not alone in our little adventure 🙂