Independence Days Update #2
Sharon May 11th, 2009
Short one today – internet access is intermittent at best, and I’m tired, tired, tired – besides the demands of the garden, had a big (and wonderful) party yesterday and guests stayed over so I was up until 1 am socializing. Plus we’re going bike shopping for Eli and Isaiah today. So just the facts…
Plant something: Tomatoes (a bit early but the pots and self-watering containers can be brought in and the few others will either live or not – I’ve got more 
), lettuce, chinese cabbage, collards, kale, scallions, onions, leeks, sweet peas, malva, broccoli, brussels sprouts, bok choy, arugula, radishes, carrots, snap peas, beets, dianthus, hollyhocks, mint, agastache, rosemary, geraniums, begonias, cranesbill, catnip
Harvest something – nettles, raspberry leaves, asparagus, dandelion, rhubarb, good king henry, lettuce, chives
Preserve something: dried nettles, raspberry leaves, made rhubarb juice, dehydrated onions
Reduced Waste: Sorted out the onion bin, composted the icky ones, planted some of the sprouted ones for early greens, dehydrated remaining onions. Told people who were going to compost 40 concord grape vines that they could move to our place, and happily!
Preparation and storage: Dug out bikes and got them ready for spring (I have hopes that this may be our first year with four actual riders – Asher is ready to begin with training wheels, and I’m hoping Eli will go to bike camp for kids with disabilities, and maybe we’ll be able to get him up and riding), determined new (to us anyway) bikes are needed by Isaiah and Eli, began hunting. Sought suitable dog – so far no luck. Sorted out winter coat situation, which resulted in much more closet space when out of size coats were removed.
6. Build community food systems. Aaron may have found a way to get a copy of _A Nation of Farmers_ to Michelle Obama – does that count? Otherwise, not much here.
7. Eat the food – nettles, nettles, nettles. My kids are wildly in love with the whole idea of nettles, and being able to eat those prickly things. We’ve eaten a lot of miso broth with soba or udon, nettles, and egg or tofu. A big hit here. Also, thanks to Chile over at Chile chews www.chilechews.blogspot.com, I was reminded that bi bim bap could be a staple. I hadn’t made it in a few years regularly because it was too spicy for the kids, so I made it only when we were eating alone. But recently I had an inspiration, and substituted hoisin sauce for the red pepper paste for the small people - eureka! I realize this is a kind of a “duh” thing, but now bi bim bap, if imperfectly authentic, is regularly back on the menu. And since I’d eat the sauce with a paper towel, it means that all leftover cold vegetables are fair game if there’s any sauce that happens to be lying around . I’ve had cold leftover veggies that way three days running for lunch. Yay!
So how about you? Remember, if you didn’t sign up before, there’s no deadline – just join in as you go!
Sharon
- Independence Days Challenge
- Comments(64)
My update is on my blog. I love this challenge, and the fact that I am actually keeping track of things because of it! Between my blog, my garden calendar, and my garden journal I might have a little better handle on things for next year.
I told my son that I am planting and gardening with the idea that I might have to feed not only myself and my husband but also him, his girlfriend, their new baby, and her mom this year if things keep getting worse. He was very impressed, and is actually thinking about getting a garden going at his place soon.
This week’s update on my website: http://smallvictoriesgreen.wetpaint.com/page/May+11+09
1. Planted Sweet Million cherry tomato with 6 year old son even though it’s still too cold here in the Pacific Northwest — we’re covering it at night. Same goes for mystery winter squash (started from seed but now can’t remember which kind it is). Son planted various seeds in his garden patch — don’t know yet what will come up.
2. Harvested some lemon balm, a few leaves of spinach, nettles.
3. Nothing preserved.
4. Reducing waste. Making a compost pile for yard trimmings instead of putting stuff in yard waste bin.
5. Prep and Storage. Nothing new to report — unless catching up on data entry in Quicken and balancing four months of bank statements counts.
6. Community food systems. Attended reception for two candidates running for city council. Told both of them of my desire for starting community food gardens in our suburb.
7. Eat the food. Baked four loaves of Oatmeal Bread (recipe from More with Less Cookbook). Tried cooked nettles for the first time. Not bad but I think I cooked them too long. I really enjoyed drinking the hot water they were cooked in with some honey. Inspired me to harvest more and try drying them for nettle tea. Also made my first fritatta (sp?) — with broccoli, homegrown spinach, onions and an Asian sauce.
Thanks everyone for some GREAT ideas!!!
I never knew you could eat violet leaves in salad or that you could make jelly from the flowers. I have a page of notes of things to try
)
Weekly updates at my website http://www.ecodesignandliving.com/2009/05/12/independence-days-challenge-post-2/
Highlight: traded sprouts for soap, eggs, and seedlings
I’m just joining the conversation here. Been meaning to for some time. So this first posting is things I’ve done this spring, not just this week.
Plant: My main effort of late is planting. My space in the local community garden I helped found last year is more than twice as big this year as last. I’ll be gardening there in 27 raised beds that are 4 X 25 feet each. Lots of vine crops for winter storage. Lots of garden time ahead!
I’ve started more than two dozen kinds of winter squash in pots, to transplant when the weather finally gets warm this year. (That worked great last year, when I did it because the new garden wasn’t ready yet.) I want to taste as many varieties as possible, to decide what I want to grow in the future. (Buttercup’s our favorite so far.) I plan to crossbreed a number of varieties this year and begin creating some new varieties that taste great, store well and do really well here in SE Wisconsin.
I’ve got a lot of heirloom tomato varieties started, that are presently in a friend’s greenhouse. And peppers, various greens, etc. Another special focus for me this year is medicinal herbs. I’ve got a bunch started, to transplant.
For others interested, I especially recommend Tulsi (Holy basil. See: http://www.organicindia.com/tulsi-facts-3.php#t21 )
and Ashwagandha (See: http://ezinearticles.com/?Ashwagandha-to-Enhance-Immunity-and-Stamina&id=488242 )
which IMHO all gardeners should grow for their great health benefits. (I have seed of both to barter.)
I started some peas inside this year and transplanted them out April 26/27. I had no idea that they’d have grown such a long, strong main root. They had about 6 inches of root and 4 inches of top growth at that point. It’s continued to be wet and cold and the peas haven’t grown much yet, but they look healthy. Vs the results of the pea seeds I planted directly in the ground, next to them, not one of which has come up. I presume those rotted. So, yay for transplanting peas.
Harvest: I was disappointed in the salsify I tried out for the last 2 years as it produced such small roots, but it went to seed last year and there are a lot in one corner of our small home garden this spring. I intended to dig them up and use the space for something else, but in the last two weeks that I was away visiting family they grew like anything. As a friend who saw them commented, anything that easily produces like that is a keeper. I’ve yet to try eating the tops, which at present are prolific and tender.
The French Sorrel is a real treat. I love the lemony tang.
The Salad Burnet is very tender and prolific.
Preserve: Just the egg shells I grind up to put on the garden.
Since this is my first time posting, though, I’d like to mention something that we preserved early this spring. Winter hit suddenly here last year, with cold and deep snow that stayed piled up along roadsides till we had a few warm, sunny days this spring. Right when that melt occurred, we noticed a dead deer in the median by the community garden. It looked like a fresh kill, so we called the troopers and got a tag to pick it up.
When my husband skinned it, he was surprised to find that the an area of hair on the side that had been towards the earth slipped off, indicating that the deer was not fresh. However, the meat was fine. So perhaps she was hit by a car the day that the snow and cold hit, and buried in snow all winter. The gut area could have stayed warm long enough for a bit of “ripening” before it froze. (Hunters gut deer immediately after killing them and open the gut area to cold air, to prevent this.)
Anyway, we got a lot of meat from that deer. And I rendered all the tallow, which I am using to make soap. In Wisconsin one cannot sell products containing deer parts, but we can use it ourselves and barter it.
We scraped and salted the hide, too, but I haven’t gotten any further with it. It should keep, with the salt, till I “get around to it.”
There were two little fawns in the doe. Their tiny hooves were only the size of a pencil eraser, but perfectly formed. I thought that our cats would love to eat them, but they refused to, so I didn’t get to tell my friends that my cats ate two whole deer.
Many folks turn up their noses at the mention of roadkill food, but it’s far better than agribusiness meats. If you see a roadkill that wasn’t there yesterday, it’s free, fresh meat. In our state one must call the sheriff and get a tag for deer (free) or turkey (a fee) roadkill. Other critters are not supposed to be picked up, but many backroads folks don’t comply with this wasteful regulation. – Another regulation that needs to be changed to meet the needs of the times.
Reduce Waste: As someone else said, only the everyday stuff like composting, hanging laundry and hand washing dishes. And returning our pee and poop to the land.
Oh, and I’m using a bunch of saved containers for all the squash seeds I’m starting. Good to get them out of the cupboard. And it strengthens my conviction that all the other odd things I’m saving will turn out to be useful.
Two little towns nearby have annual town-wide rummage sales in May. I got a lot of great, useful stuff at the first of these last weekend. Including some free things that I noticed one family had left out in the rain, inspiring me to stop and ask if they were “to go.” Five genuine wood apple crates!
Other finds: A lovely, soft wool blanket in like-new condition for $3. A large almost-new Dietz lantern for $5. (I had to get a bunch of fake flowers out of it. It was sold as a decorative item.) A pile of great books for as little as 10 cents each. A stainless steel “nurse’s cake pan,” (Aka “bedpan,” that I could sure have used recently when I had an inner ear infection and had to remain immobile for a day, flat on my back, or experience the world spinning, my stomach turning inside out and my body falling over if I tried to walk. This got me to thinking…maybe we should all go to St. Vincent’s and buy things like a set of crutches, just in case?)
I picked up a section of good metal fencing from a dumpster at our recycling center, that I’m going to set up on poles in the garden, to grow beans up.
Is “reducing waste: the right category for rummage sale and recyling center finds? – I’m preventing these things from being wasted!
Preparation and Storage:
I continue to add to my library of books about gardening, sustainable living and herbal healing. (www.cheapestbookprice.com is great.) Plus interesting books from yard sales, to read someday when we supposedly have more leisure time. I love books. (I have a MFA in poetry.) We need more shelves!
I got a couple of thin, all-cotton, bright white long-sleeved blouses at a Goodwill store, to wear in the garden when it’s hot and sunny. (When will that be, anyhow? More rain and cold again this week….) The Arabian white robes inspired me. One is much cooler in hot sun if the body is shielded from it with loose, white clothing. I may open out the sleeve seams and reconnect them with a few pieces of ribbon or something, to get ventilation.
Somebody should design a gardening shirt along these lines. Think it’d sell?
Yesterday, permaculture expert Mark Shepard was here for 3 hours, discussing with us what we can do with this place that we did not intend to be living in by now. (Our permaculture farm community plans collapsed last fall just as we were about to move to SW WI and build the straw bale house I’d spent a loooong time designing. The partnership collapsed. Nice 120 acres now for sale there – with our savings locked up in it till it sells. Sigh.) We have 3 acres at our present place, but it’s mostly woods. However, Mark had some great ideas about how we can maximize our growing space, add an attached greenhouse over our present concrete parking pad, build a cistern in the basement, close off most of the house in winter, etcetera.
If any of you happen to live by beech forest, here is a great idea. Beech trees produce great quantities of seed, but only once in several years (It has to do with timing of spring frost.) and it’s small and scatters all over. However, you can collect lots of it if you make a whole lot of T-shaped units of PVC pipe (Yes, ouch. But they will be used for years and years. Handed down to the next generation…) Put caps on the ends of the top of the T. Leave the bottom open and set each unit at a slight angle so rain won’t go into the opening. Mice and voles will fill them with seeds, which you then collect and store. (Cold.) Mark pointed out that this does not create hardship for the critters, as they don’t need beech seeds to make it through winter.
He said beech seeds were one of the two foods first gathered/stored by humans. I wonder how they did it.
I buried some potatoes in my garden last fall and covered them with mulch, to see if they’d survive without freezing, as I know someone who leaves whole areas of his potato field in over winter and harvests it in spring. He told me it’d work if the potatoes have a minimum brix (sugar content) reading of 6. I got a brix meter last fall from Johnny’s and found that my potatoes read about 5 1/2. (There’s not a sharp line on the scale.) I just dug up a corner of the area where I buried the potatoes to check on them and found two perfectly good ones and several that had frozen. The good ones had not yet begun to sprout, which the seed potatoes in my root cellar have. But, the survival ratio’s definitely bad.
Build food systems: Our commumity garden has twice as many members this year as last, and is more than twice as many beds. Some of us ordered seeds and potatoes together. I offered seeds through Seed Saver’s Exchange for the first time this year. And got some good ones that way, too.
Last year a local lawyer arranged for our new community garden to pick up the tomatoes, peppers and flowers left from the high school ag class’s annual plant sale. I was so persistent in trying to discover what varieties of tomatoes they’d grown that this year the teacher made a point of saving all the seed packages. And this year they grew heirlooms! He called the other day to say we can have whatever is left after their second sale on Memorial Day weekend.
My husband and I were invited to give a presentation on the why/how of relocalizing food production (Ask for an e-mail copy of the text and/or resource “handout.’)at a sustainability fair and did some bartering with the folks who hosted us. They got some of my soap and other personal products and I got truly free range chicken and duck eggs and some wonderful coffee flower honey from South America. It doesn’t taste like coffee. It tastes just like you are eating ambrosial flowers! I’m putting a bit of it in warm water to drink when I get up in the morning. What a way to start the day. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime treat.
I posted a note on our local Freecycle website two days ago, asking for anything whatsoever related to gardening, for our community gardeners. Got a reply from a woman who has 4 boxes of canning jars she was about to take to St. Vincent’s.
I host several e-lists (Peak oil/energy, socioeconomic reality, environment, health effects of exposure to EMR/EMF frequencies, gardening/sustainable living…), some of which I send to family members. Two years ago my stepson’s emphatic response was that we were just being Chicken Littles. However, he just knocked my socks off by calling to say that he’s starting a vegetable garden in the yard behind his apartment building in Brooklyn.
I’m sending the folks on my e-lists info. about the Independence Days Challenge, and encouraging them to join.
Eat the Food: We are just coming to the end of the potatoes I grew and stored in the root cellar I created in the basement last fall. I kept track of how many lbs. of potatoes my husband ate, as they are a mainstay for him. From October through April, he single-handedly ate 100 lbs. of Adirondack Blue and Yukon Gold potatoes. Decided he likes the blues better, to my surprise.
We finished off the stored sweet potatoes and winter squash in March. Hence growing much more this year. (Sweet potatoes store very well if cured first and stored at the right temperature. The CSA folks we bought them from had never managed to store any, as they didn’t know that, so we got a good price. Now they may store their seasonal leftovers. But I have room now in the community garden to grow my own.)
I love wood nettles and dry a lot for winter. It’s almost time for this year’s to break ground and I note that we didn’t finish what I stored last summer. (You can dry the leaves until the nettles flower. After that, the leaves contain crystals harmful to kidneys.) I didn’t store too many. I just didn’t think to use them often enough in our soups, etc.
Wood nettles have a much nicer texture than stinging nettle. Great nutritional value. Also 40% protein, dried. The most of any leafy plant.
We haven’t used up our frozen strawberries, either, and it’s almost time for this year’s first crop. The Chinese classify strawberries as cooling. Maybe that’s why they just don’t appeal to me in winter. What to do? I guess we should eat them in between the June crop and the August one.
Can you post the link to bi bim bop? I cannot seem to find it.
Finally got an update/report posted. Maybe today I can get finished reading through everyone else’s updates, too…
Oops, not getting too much time on the computer, so I’m a couple of days late. Oh well!
Planted: Not much, maybe some carrots and a couple of basil plants.
Harvest: Radish seed pods, chard, dandelion, mustard greens, arugula, lettuce, spearmint, lemon balm, greek oregano, eggs
Preserve: Dried the above herbs.
Reduce waste: Compost/feed to chickens kitchen scraps & yard waste, saved yogurt, milk, and tofu bins for some unforseen future garden need, hang laundry….as someone else mentioned, “the everyday stuff”.
Prep & Storage: Washed buckets for our first Azure Standard order–400 pounds of food–and stored it, got tons of recycled organic potting soil from a neighbor, sorted yet more clothes & fabric for future reuse. Does printing out the list for bug-out buckets count?
Community food: Continued to work on planning my pet project in this arena; made first bulk food order with several other neighbors (and met one that is also a regular reader here….yeah!)
Eat: grazed garden greens, cooked dandelions, chard, etc., made sourdough.
On my blog!
sorry for the late comment,b but a little hand-surgery got in the way.
Here’s our list for another week of the Independence Days Challenge:
Plant Something:
Planted potatoes and chard. Weeded, planted MANY shasta daisy divides along our fence line. Planted the annual flowers by the front steps. Transplanted tomato, luffa, butternut squash seedlings to bigger pots.
Harvest Something:
Harvested herbs for drying.
Preserve Something:
Made a batch of power bars and packaged for the freezer.
Reduce Waste:
Made a tote bag out of some fabric scraps and remnants.
Preparation and Storage:
Purchased a few medical supplies to add to our emergency supplies.
Build Community Food Systems:
Bought eggs and meat from a local farmer. Making this a weekly habit.
Eat the Food:
Baked some sour dough flat breads. Very good. They’ve been added to the regular baking list. Made a few batches of cabbage slaw, one with home-made mayo, yogurt and cider vinegar and the other with dried fruit, olive oil and cider vinegar (no mayo). Both delicious warm
Hey all.
I’ve finally got the guts to join up, maybe it’ll make me a little less slack, maybe it won’t but its better than nothing.
Sharon I love your blog and all your insights, keep writing!
Plant something – well last week I plated a bunch of herbs; sage, rosemary,chives and thyme, hope they all come upas its a bit cold.
Harvest something – lettuce, and an odd mix of herbs for a sandwich.
Preserve something – nothing.
Reduced Waste – I’m cleaning out my room and have a stack of paper which will probably get made into mulch or be used in the fire. All the clothes and still good stuff wll be offered around to my friends too before being put in a garage sale or op-shop.
I also collected all my permanantly dead socks which are useful to clean things with(like windows), you put your hand in, run some water over and rub in a little soap.
Preparation and storage – well my birthday is this week and I’ve asked for a grain grinder and a new set of goat hoof trimmers s that probably counts.
Build community food systems – I was watching “The story of stuff” when my brother came in and then he went back and watched it from the start and he seemed pretty concerned and was all for a change so i’ve got something to build on now.
Eat the food – Mum made a batch of “rubarb champagne” and we’ve been having the rubarb pieces boiled up with apple for desert and on breakfast. I’ve been making porrige for breakfast for a while now.
For each person I put in 1 handfull rolled oats, 1/2 handrull nuts of seeds and about 1/2 a piece of fruit.
I only just cover it with water and boil until its all mushy (nicer than it sounds) then eat it with honey and milk.
Spring has brought me some of the best looking tomato plants this year!!! I’m so excited to see what it looks like in a month!!!
I have been adding gardens like these around the paver patios we build.