Dharamshala the destination for the Dalai lama, alos bring in a lot of nefarious bagpack tourists who find it very easy to slip into the upper reaches of the mts into the villages and smoke their heads out. Also sleep and marry with the shepherds and l…

IDC – Week 7

Planted;

Lots; seedlings of fordhook silverbeet, mixed generic lettuce, cucumbers (green gem and lemon – heirloom varieties) and some white snapdragons for bed edgings. Noice.

Transplanted two eggplants from #1 bed into pots and the parsley plant transfered into another bed. With a bit of help from the chooks poo and a lot of digging, #1 bed should be ready for a mass planting – well by mass I mean 24, it’s a question of scale really – of strawberries. We live in one of Australia’s biggest strawberry producing areas, so might as well take advantage of it.

Harvested;

Sugar Snap Peas, directly off the plant, that’s about as long as they last with the little Miss eating them as fast as they grow, and we’re growing lots. Not much other then that, the usual suspects of course – herbs for the kitchen and silverbeet for the chooks.

Preserved;

Nothing this week. But I must get too and freeze our glut of passionfruit from Mr. Mac.

Prepped;

Nothing this week.

Managed;

I built my chookies a feeder out of a recycled (jumbo sized) dishwashing bottle. Why, because I am awesome. Also, more then a little pissed off at their ability to dump their previous feed dish all over the ground and waste food. Now I just have to figure out a way to make it mice/rat proof (ah yes, those snake attracting furry demons).

Got my pen and paper out, gathered figures and calculated the costs of raising and feeding chickens at chick, pullet and laying hen stages. They’ll cost us $26.60 each to raise to laying stage!!! Yikes! But worth it to have happy, healthy, ethically raise chooks I think – even if I could buy point of lay pullets for $15.95 – I wouldn’t want commerically farmed, cage raise, debeaked birds, thank-you very much.

Once they start to lay they should cost us just $4.30 a week and lay on average 34 eggs. I’m hoping to sell off a dozen free-range, ethical eggs for $3 each week, freeze some for the moult period and still be rolling in them for eating (with 2 mouths to feed). By my calculations the most efficient use of the chooks would be to bring new babies on and dispatch the old girls to my soup pot at 18 months. Yum!

Cooked Something New;

I have mastered custard creams which are indeed delicious, but since they are hardly made from anything in our garden, I don’t think they count.

So no, no I haven’t.

Worked on Local Food Systems;

I bought local strawberries from the market garden 2km up the road. Hardly a hardship, but supporting my local networks, non?

This is probably the one I struggle with the most, as I’m not a community building, working with others, localised type. I like to be a bit hermit-y and self sufficient as much as possible so this is difficult for me to think up ways to create positive change in this area.

I do continue to buy local (even over organic) whenever circumstances and budget permit.

Mr. Mac left some more passionfruit hanging in a bag on the fence (reverse local food systems at work again) – tah!

Reduce Waste;

Finally completed my compost bin and placed it in the ‘Greenhouse’. I watched a segment on composting on Gardening Australia on Saturday night and was reinspired to give it another go. I’ve used a plastic garbage bin with a lid, and I’ve cut the bottom out of it so it sits directly on the earth and drilled holes around the side for aeration. I think the mistake we’ve made previously is having the compost almost entirely made out of wet materials such as food scraps, with little dry materials to counter-balance it. So we’ve ended up with a soggy anerobic mess. From Gardening Australia factsheet on Clever Composting;

The proportions aren’t crucial, but generally for each bucket of wet material, it’s important to add a bucket and a half of dry material – it’s that simple.

So I’ve started collecting out-of-date newspapers from the shop next store and shredding them to put in the chooks night house. In the morning I clean it out and dump them in the compost bin as my dry waste component, layered with the wet waste in the form of vegetable peelings, kitchen scraps, etc… Hopefully it should work much better.

Composting, a brave new frontier indeed.

Learn a New Skill;

Composting!

Also, did alot of research and reading on natural alternatives for chook health care and about to embark on natural worming and prevention using garlic and apple cider vinegar. Now I just wait for the right moon phase to begin.

*ahem*

Yes, I am a little skeptical of the effectiveness. But will give it a go.

harvested: romaine and red lettuce, radishes, small salad turnips, eggs, cabbage, chard, lots of strawberries

preserved: not yet, but plan on going back to get lots more strawberries for freezing and jam

prepped/stored: amassing lots of soda bottles for storing water

cooked: our first entirely local meal: eggs, homefries with onions, radishes, salad greens

managed: used old bananas for banana bread

worked on local food systems: sought out local strawberry and blueberry farm with good ecological practices; bought some pork from a local farmer to freeze

Harvest: eggs, lettuce, red clover, lemon balm

Preserved: I bought 2 flats of strawberries from my farmer friend 1/2 mile away and made 10 pints of jam. Dried 5 trays of strawberries which turned into 1 quart.
Lemon balm tincture, lemon balm oil (mosquito repellent), a quart of red clover cough syrup.

Stored: I got my bulk Azure order this week, pantry is filling up!
20 heirloom seed packets, 25# oatmeal, 25# pinto beans, 25# whole spelt flour, 25# white spelt, 1 gallon of olive oil, 25# real salt, 2# baking yeast, 20# brown rice pasta,
1 case of 24 cans wild salmon, 1# cinnamon, 5# arrowroot, shortwave wind-up radio, 2 gallons of food grade hydrogen peroxide, 1 gallon of local honey, 5# local beeswax,
12 boxes of 12 canning jar lids, 300# of barley for chickens, 50# of organic chick starter, 50# of animal feed kelp.

Local food systems: weekly local gallon of raw milk from my farmer neighbor, 2 flats of strawberries from another farmer neighbor, bought a gallon of honey and 5# of beeswax from beekeeper about 5 miles away. I made arrangements with her to get 20 more pounds when the harvest comes in.

Learn new skill: none

Cook: I sprouted wheat berries and added them to my bread recipe, good!

Blessings,
~Traci

Plant something – Holy smokes. Transplanted tomatoes into 5 gallon pots (then fertilized them with some liquid gold ). Transplanted three kinds of squash starts into tire planters. In one of the big raised beds transplanted lacinato kale, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, two types of broccoli, and cabbage. Transplanted four borage plants in with the beans and corn. In the second large raised bed transplanted three types of cabbage, brussels sprouts, collards, two types of kale and two types of broccoli. Hopefully I’ll get the root crops planted this week. Happened to notice a lot of bug eggs on the lower sides of some of the tranplants and have now done the egg check and squish twice. I think they are root maggot fly eggs since everything in the beds right now is from the brassica family.

Harvest something – nothing, not even wild stuff although the chickweed is starting to be enough to gather up and try making pesto.

Preserve something – froze filets of 18 red salmon.

Prep something – built a second large raised bed from concrete blocks and filled with purchased top soil and compost with help from Richard who lives upstairs. Next year we hope to augment the beds with compost made right here. Fertilized with liquid gold everything we’ve planted so far except for beans and peas. The improvements are noticeable!

Cook something – With too much vegetable matter in the fridge from previous CSA boxes, I made stir fry from pak choi, baby onions, young garlic, zucchini and baby white turnips. Threw in some garlic chili paste and traditionally fermented soy sauce. Yum!

Manage your reserves – Trying to figure out what to do with all the CSA vegies I’m starting to get. I’m on the verge of buying a pressure canner and looking at renting sausage making equipment. For the fishing trip, I took some apple and pear slices I dried from last year. My monthly bulk organic food order arrived but I haven’t picked it up yet.

Work on local food systems – I’m not sure this counts but I discovered the local butcher supply store and now I’m in love. Every kind of knife you might want, pressure canners, smokers, grinders, my oh my. I’ll be back soon!

Learn a new skill – The big event of this past week was set netting for red salmon. I met up with a friend with a friend to help out with fishing. First I learned about which permit to get plus getting a fishing license. Turns out the set netting season for red salmon is not quite two weeks. You can also fly fish and dip net for salmon as well at different times and places. The place for the best set netting is along coastal areas where the salmon migrate to get back to their spawning streams and rivers. Lots of folks were out all along several miles of beach. We had one net but some folks had up to three. My friend had his set up to a winch on his truck so he could get the winch to move the net in and out of the water. Once the net comes in, the fun begins. Getting salmon out of the nets can be challenging. Some thrash around so much you’re not sure which side of the net they started on. Once you get them out, you have to bleed them (squeamish alert!) which requires pulling out one of the gills. The bled fish get put in a big bucket of water during the cleaning part. I learned something really valuable – wearing a rubberized rain suit or foul weather gear is essential if you don’t want your clothing or any part of you other than your hands to smell strongly of fish. Cleaning is another bunch of fun (squeamish alert!) and involves heading and gutting. And wrapping my head around killing the fish by severing the spinal column still makes me feel really sad. Once headed and gutted, the fish are put in a bucket of cleaner water where they are washed off, then the tail tips are chopped off (this is a requirement from the permit – this prevents restaurants or stores from buying subsistence caught fish) and the fish are packed spine downward, in rows with their abdomen cavities filled with ice. Shaved ice is supposedly the best but I wasn’t able to find any so crushed ice had to work for me. I also learned that since these salmon were caught in salt water, they’ll actually last longer in ice than ones caught in fresh water. It was two days before I learned how to fillet them and they were just as fresh as when they were caught. Today was lessons in filleting and while I was getting the hang of it sort of by the time we ran out of fish, my friend Michael was having a harder time of it. Course he didn’t come along for the fishing part so only got to deal with partially processed fish. The friend I went fishing with has been doing this for many years so I learned bunches of stuff from him. Next up is learning to smoke the fish and then can it. Now I know what to expect for next year!

Kerri in AK