Independence Days Update: As the Snow Falls
Sharon December 7th, 2009
I haven’t done an ID update in a couple of weeks because of the Thanksgiving holiday (ie, I was gone for most of a week) and various other things, so this will cover a bit back.
BTW, some of you may have wandered over from the new site, and be wondering what the heck this is all about – the Independence Days project arose from a quote of Carla Emery’s (she of the awesome _Encyclopedia of Country Living_) in which she suggests that people wanting to grow and put up food do as she does – try and plant something every day in that season, harvest something every day, do a little preserving every day. We all know we’re not always going to do something every day, but the hundreds of people involved in this project are trying to do a little bit each day or week or month to get them a bit more food self-sufficient. Instead of staying home for a week and canning a truckload of food, and then saying “no, this is too much” we’re all just doing a little bit at a time. What’s amazing is that it adds up – and here’s where you get to post your update (or a link to your blog) and tell us what you accomplished this week, and let us see how it does add up.
There’s no formal sign up process, you just join in. We have seven categories, and obviously, not every one will apply in every season or to every person, but you get credit for everything you do:
Plant something: Whether seeds you are starting indoors or fall crops planted in your garden, you get points for everything you grow for yourself.
Harvest something: This covers things from your garden and wild foraged food and things you glean – this the food you take home.
Preserve something: This could mean a pantry full of glass jars, but remember, canning isn’t necessary to life. It includes the cold spot you put your potatoes in and the sun you dry your strawberries in, the cool place you put up squash and sweet potatoes, the mulch you cover your greens with in the garden, the fresh pickles you have on your kitchen shelf…you name it.
Waste Not: Reducing waste in all its forms is essential. Did you do something new this week – save something from the trash, reduce your own food waste stream, reduce packaging, mend something, compost or feed a creature with your scraps? This is important stuff.
Want Not: For those of us trying to build up a reserve of food in case of an extended power outage or an emergency, a job loss or so you can help others, adding a little bit to your pantry at a time is important. Tell us what you did, what good deals you found.
Eat the Food: What especially yummy ways did you find to eat the products of your garden, your freezer, your CSA, your farmer’s market?
Build Community Food Systems: Everything from sitting down with your neighbors to talk about storing food to putting in school gardens, bartering in your community, starting farmer’s market, or just telling everyone how great the food is. The more you do for this, the more resilient the system is!
We’d love it if you’d join us!
Right now things on the farm are quiet – the snow on the ground means a lot less digging around. We had about 4 inches a few days ago, and we’re still living in fairy-land. Unlike in populated areas, where the snow turns grey and dingy almost immediately, our area stays stunning until mud season in the spring 
.
We’re not yet cutting wood, really, which is the big project this time of year - Eric is too frantic with the end of his term for either of us to have time. The big project is watching for signs of heat on the goats. Since we don’t have a buck (and I think a buck is definitely in our future, since this is a PITA with 7 goats to breed), any sign of heat means we whisk them into our car and drive off to our friends with the boys. We thought that Bast, our adolescent goat, would come into heat this weekend, and had arranged everything to get her there. She didn’t. So we’re back to waving the buck rag (a piece of cloth that stinks of boy goat) past the goats every day. Wheee.
The other immediate project is the butchering of the turkeys that weren’t ready by Thanksgiving. If anyone in my general area (I’m about 45 minutes west of Albany, and could probably deliver to Albany or Schenectady) is looking for a heritage turkey for Christmas or Chanukah, I’ve got some – you can email me. They were really terrific last year.
Once the turkeys are out of the barn, life will settle down a lot – 15 turkeys is just too many in a winter barn. The goat babies are very excited about snow and its capacity for play, and so are the kids. I’ve bark to collect for my herb projects and wood to cut for next year’s burning. And once Eric is done with exams, we get to relax a little, clean the house, hang out and think seed catalogs.
Chanukah starts Friday, of course, but the great thing about Chanukah is that it is a minor holiday. The kids are excited, and there’s some minor getting ready, plus the kids like the decorations, but it really isn’t even remotely equivalent to the scale of Christmas for most Americans. We’re having one bash – a joint birthday party for Isaiah and Chanukah party, and after that, we’re going to take most of the rest of December as easy anyone with kids, a farm and a blog can.
Ok, here’s my update:
Plant something: I did plant a few bulbs and a couple of heads of extra garlic I had lying around on the 60 degree day we had last week.
Harvest something: Kale, beets, parsley, sage, chard, arugula
Preserve something: Quince Applesauce, I attempted to mimic these great red cabbage/cauliflower pickles we had at Kathy Harrison’s house the weekend after Thanksgiving. Time will tell if I have succeeded.
Waste not: Went through the garden looking for hiding carrots and other roots to be fed to either us or the goats or bunnies, sorted through the apple bins and fed the wrinkly ones to various creatures, collected scraps for the poultry, the usual composting, mending, etc…
Want Not: Added oatmeal and brown sugar to storage, canned up a couple of pumpkins that were being discarded by friends after the holidays, began cutting up old fleece pajamas for a quilting project for the boys, collected Thanksgiving decorations from friends getting rid of theirs – the decorative corn was eaten by chickens, the pumpkins by goats.
Eat the food: Found a lovely spicy kosher sausage, and made a big pot of my favorite Portugese Kale soup with the greens, enjoyed our favorite cranberry-chocolate chip cookies, discovered just how often fresh chevre is with homemade raspberry jam on homemade sourdough.
Build Community Food Systems: Approximately 47,000 radio interviews for _Independence Days_, agreed to teach a couple of food storage classes, am planning some new projects that will be unveiled soon.
How about you? BTW, the next post up will have all the new blog info, but ID updates will stay over here, along with the food storage quickies!
Sharon
- Independence Days Challenge
- Comments(15)
Hi Sharon,
I’d love to join the Independence Day Forum you talk about above, but I can’t seem to find the link. Would you mind posting it again?
Thanks
ps-love te new site
We spent most of last week traveling to Memphis and Louisiana for the funeral services and burial of my grandmother.
Plant—Nothing planted this week.
Harvest—Nothing harvested this week.
Preserve—Nothing preserved this week.
Reduce Waste—We probably had more waste this week than in previous weeks. We used disposable plates, cups, and forks. We traveled over 1500 miles round trip. We used the most fuel efficient car to conserve gasoline. We carpooled with family whenever possible. We used leftovers in an effort to reduce food waste. We packed our own sandwiches and drinks whenever we could. We collected our recycling when we could. When the housekeeper at the hotel asked about cleaning our room, we declined until we had checked out.
My aunt brought me a large bag of hand-me-down clothes, which I brought home. It is so nice to have a new wardrobe!
Prep/Storage—I used coupons for buying a few items for out of town guests, and because some of the coupons were money makers, my father and uncle now have over a year’s supply of low dose aspirin which they both take. (Walgreens was having an Ecotrin deal last week).
We returned home to some plumbing problems. We are using a locally owned business to address those issues, as they are beyond our levels of expertise.
Building Community Food Systems—To feed the family members in both Memphis and Louisiana, we tried to buy from local places when we could. We bought BBQ from a local restaurant in Mason, TN (Bozo’s BBQ is fantastic if you are ever in West TN and want a good place to stop). We bought crawfish in Louisiana, and even though they aren’t in season, they didn’t have the muddy taste that they often do this time of the year. We were pretty pleased with those, as were all of the family members we served there. I don’t think anything we made this week was homemade, and I’m sorely missing home cooked food.
Eat the Food—BBQ, crawfish, lots of sandwiches, hotel breakfast buffets, Chinese food, and lots and lots of junk food—my stomach is not happy with the food I’ve fed it lately. I very much look forward to having some real food this week!
It does all add up & it’s very satisfying when some of those things come together for good & gives us even just a little less dependence.
This year we were blessed with an abundance of firewood, garlic & vension. We did get to can & freeze some of our own garden produce too. Also learned some new herbs & added a new herb garden.
As gifts at Christmas, I am making a greater effort in keeping with my values & giving many homemade goodies. Berry syrups & salve are two favorites.
We have evreything still in the garden that you listed Sharon. We are in the same zone 5 here in the finger lakes area of WNY. The chicken water started freezing this week!
I collect bits of kindling from our property as well as my neighbors hedgerows when I am out walking the field with the dog. It helps to get the fire going in the morning.
Always, always, I am composting here. I work out different piles in the many gardens. Neighbors on both sides of us add to the piles. they are a little interested, but mostly in reducing their trash to the dump volume as it costs per bag here.
Hoping to add goats to our one acre homestead, I’ve been studying that subject a lot. I wouldn’t be able to do it without the help of a few local, experienced goat keepers to help & the internet. I am still working out how to place them here & what kind to get. I prayed for a goat barn & had a pre-built chicken coop given to me instead! I am still praying about the goat barn, and the future goats.
It has been 18 degrees at night and we are fighting the water system, which wants to freeze up. Blankets hang in the doorways of both hall, and most rooms are closed off. Winds have been intense but the under-built winter hoophouse is still standing!
Plant something: Some fava beans
Harvest something: Kale, broccoli, spinach, onions, garlic, chard, arugula, eggs, chicken, mizuna, bok choi, lavender, curly parsley, dandelion, cilantro, rosemary.
Preserve something: chicken, chicken broth
Waste not: the chicken was hawk-killed (our first attack from the air in our 25 years of poultry raising!), but I got there in time to salvage the deceased.
Want Not: gathered fifteen pickup truck loads (five cords) of very heavy pitch-laden pine logs from a utility line-clearing operation, with permission. What a windfall!
Eat the food: many loaves of acorn/apple/whole wheat bread, blackberry jam, potatoes, squash, dried beans, pumpkin, tomato puree, and dehydrated apples, plums, pears, tomatoes, greens, and zukes.
Build Community Food Systems: swapped dried runner beans and kale seed for walnuts, prunes, and prune puree.
It finally got really cold in St. Louis, MO over the past couple of weeks – first freeze after Thanksgiving, lows in the teens a few days ago.
Plant something: moved several small lettuce plants from the open garden to the cold frame. Put the windows on the cold frame, finally. It was just too warm until the past week to do that. We even opened the house windows the weekend before last!
Harvest something: the remaining radishes, leeks, lettuce, beets, and carrots that were in the open garden. Green onions from the cold frame.
Preserve something: the leeks and radishes went into the cold room (the space under the steps from the basement to the outside). Also put the remaining potatoes from last summer’s harvest into the same area. I know the gardening books claim you’re not supposed to store and replant potatoes, but we didn’t have blight this far west, and after all, potatoes were saved that way for years, otherwise we wouldn’t have them now. It’s an experiment. Even if we can only save potatoes for a few years before we need to buy new seed potatoes, that will be preferable to buying seed potatoes from Maine every year.
Waste not: put up the fence we obtained from my DH’s mom after his dad died last year (he was the gardener, and she wanted the fence and garden gone, so we took the fence), and mulched what will become more vegetable growing beds next year with leaves. Lots of leaves. Still need to collect more leaves for the compost piles …
Want not: nothing new that I can think of
Eat the food: made a salad with the lettuce and other stuff I harvested – it was so great to have a fresh garden salad in early December!
Build community food systems: nothing this week
Plant something: brown mustard, bean and broccoli sprouts
Harvest something: spinach, lettuce and leeks – may be the last of the greens for a while as we’ve had a cold snap with no protective snow cover
Preserve something: dehydrated leeks – wow did the house smell great after that
Waste not – we’re able to waste a lot less with the chickens around – brought down some left over stew from my sister’s that would otherwise have been tossed; went one month without having enough garbage to put on the curb!
Want not: Put up 25 lbs beans; put up 10 kg each white flour and sugar
Eat the Food: strawberry tarts with our strawberries. Oh. My. Salad. Butternut squash soup. WW crackers with homeground flour. Bean pickles. WW pancakes. Raspberries, raspberry syrup, grape jelly; peach chutney.
Build Community Food Systems: Don’t know if this counts but I think my sister is getting really interested in these things, though I certainly can’t claim all/most of the credit.
Saturday we harvested the thing that grew at the edge of the garden. I think it was a stray turnip that, being a biennial and experiencing spring in November, decided to go to seed. Whatever it was, the abundant greens filled a giant pyrex bowl. They were delicious, though the leaf stems were a bit stringy and should have been sliced finer. We will be eating from it all week. Perhaps I should save a few turnips from this years harvest to plant in the spring to see if we could get more then, when we really want greens.
Also, thanks to the very warm late fall weather in Maine, some grumolo chicories put out some little heads. We have dark red ones, light green ones, dark green ones, and some light green with maroon spots. They don’t keep well, so we’re eating our red and green Christmas salad right now. Some years I have covered them and gotten some close to Christmas, but they did it on their own this year. Since we just got 4″ of snow on top of record warmth, we may still have grumolos growing in a melt gap under the snow.
Well, officially it is summer down under but the weather is not always in agreement with that.
Harvested: Shallot greens, lettuce, chard, cauliflour, cabbage, strawberries, white currants, fava beans, globe artichokes, kale, elder flowers, mint, salsify seed, eggs. Should have been harvesting peas but having their climbing frame fall over repeatedly seems to have killed a lot of the plants, for some reason
Planted: Planted out the last of the pepper seedlings, some in pots so I can try overwintering them. More cucumber, pumpkin and squash seedlings outside, started a few more inside and some basil. Sowed most of my maincrop climbing beans for drying and bush beans (green beans and dry beans).
Preserved: Dried some elderflowers for tea, then sampled them – not that thrilled with the flavor, think they’ll definitely be reserved for medicinal purposes only.
Waste not, want not: Have been taking leftovers to work for lunch all week. Made and froze vegetable stock from gone-to-seed leeks, asparagus stumps and onion trimmings.
Temperatures have been in the 20s at night, 30s and 40s during the day; supposed to get down in the teens the next couple of nights — very cold and dry for here. I’m still hoping for snow this month.
Plant something: nothing.
Harvest: the town I work in started a winter market that I’m very excited about; it has fresh produce! So – CSA vegetables; leeks, broccoli, spinach, shallots, tomatoes and persimmons from the market, and last week even raspberries and strawberries; eggs; herbs from the garden (where my vegetables are frozen solid, since I neglected to cover them before the cold hit, and I am crossing my fingers hoping they survive).
Preserve something: Cider-sweetened apple butter; vanilla pears; almond pears, tomatillo salsa, pear liqueur, dried rosehips.
Waste not: More items to thrift store, or to give away on Freecycle, as part of the gradual clearing out. We didn’t have enough of those styrofoam vent blocks for the house, so DH cut more out of styrofoam packing material that had arrived with some tool or other.
Want not: Added some water to my storage. Beautiful new work coat and sweaters from thrift shop.
Community food systems: writing about the market produce and the best items to take to the food bank. Telling everyone I know to go buy market produce. Finally managed to get frozen plums to a friend I’ve been saving them for.
Eat the food: roasted vegetable pot pie, homemade membrillo, prune and quince tart, pumpkin cookies, butternut squash enchiladas, pizza, wild mushroom gravy on whole wheat biscuits, butternut squash, apple and leek gratin with roasted broccoli and homemade olive and thyme focaccia, homemade yogurt.
I’ve been super busy with work, so haven’t been keeping very good track of ID activities… but here’s a top-of-my-head overview.
Plant something: Multi-graft citrus & stone fruit trees, lebanese cucumber, heat-resistant cos lettuce (aka romaine), parsley.
Harvest something: 2 kinds of purslane, silverbeet, mixed lettuces, parsley, mint, basil, rosemary, oregano, beans, and our first tomatoes for the year.
Preserve something: Partner has brewed big batches of both regular and ginger beer. I have big plans for cherry jam – the bigger, less expensive boxes of 1 or 2 kg are just hitting the markets. Cherries are a big thing for Aus Xmas celebrations.
Waste not: Usual composting & recycling. Recent roadside scavenging has yielded a large trellis for my cukes, a terrific large glass storage jar and a vase.
Want Not: Bought vast amounts of faux meat on sale – not my favourite, but a good compromise for summer bbqs, and quick shared meals with omnivorous partner.
Eat the food: Made fabulous vegan paella, plus lots of salads & other meals embellished with home-grown greens. Finished the last of my homemade jam – hence the cherry plans.
Build Community Food Systems: Lots of gardening chats… otherwise very little non-work related interactions at all
In Virginia:
Still trying to get the leaves raked and composted, and working on terracing the beds in the garden (the beds are terraced but have no support right now.) Also trying to catch up with the sauerkraut making – little by little. We played music at a local farmer market – local craft event. Lots of fun and friends. The weather is getting colder and we had a power outage tonight (just a couple of hours). I emptied the rainwater storage today. I don’t want it to freeze solid.
Plant something: 3 fava bean seeds (it’s an experiment – planting them this late). Also some crimson clover – although I just read that it doesn’t survive really cold weather – guess I’ll see. It’s already up – I pre-soaked before planting
Harvest something: collard, kale, mustard, wong bok , pac choi looks beautiful, parsley, burdock (yummm), daikon, arugula, mizuna, broccoli raab, turnip, misoto rose radish (I love these!), turnip greens
Preserve something: sauerkraut, kimchi with daikon and ginger, applesauce, kombucha, and making more vinegar from apple peels
Waste not: continued mulching the garden with spent brewery grains. seems to be holding the soil on our steep garden beds. Put up another small hoop house to cover one of the beds (the weather is getting down to 22 these nights. snowed on Saturday.
Want Not: bought a big bag of lentils and ordered more rolled oats. I’ve been eating a lot of both since the weather got cooler.
Eat the food: chicken soup with local chicken, burdock from our garden and pac choi from the garden. delicious. Made a miso soup and added homemade kimchi.
Build Community Food Systems: traded one of our music cds for local chicken (frozen).
It’s been months since I posted an Independence Days update and this isn’t really an update but a description of our success in growing sweet potatoes in containers. We’d never grown sweet potatoes before and weren’t at all sure if they would grow well or produce anything in containers.
http://supermomnocape.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/sweet-potatoes-will-indeed-grow-in-containers/
Would you post the chocolate chip cranberry recipe? Pretty please? Or do you just add cranberries to regular choc chip cookie recipe?
Thanks
Independence Days update—
Plant something: Planted 2 rows of garlic in October. Otherwise, didn’t plant a fall garden, as late summer and most of fall were taken up with building a chicken coop and chicken run, and acquiring and learning to care for 8 chickens. With winter setting in, we’re finding our care process and the coop need a little tweaking.
I’m already thinking ahead to next year’s garden—how and where we can expand, and what we could grow to feed the chickens on our 1-acre plot (which includes our house).
Harvest something: With the garden put to bed, we have potatoes and onions in the root cellar and beautiful garlic in the kitchen. Discovered a glut of hickory nuts dropping into our yard from the neighbor’s, and gathered a bunch. (Getting the nutmeat out is tedious, though. Still have a bit to go.)
We didn’t spend as much time as usual this fall cutting wood because of the coop project, but fortunately purchased a couple of cords earlier in the year (hopefully for next year) and we still have on hand what we gathered after last December’s ice storm. We have spent some time this fall filling the woodshed with cordwood and gathering and storing kindling.
Preserve something: In the pantry we have only one jar of dried beans, and half a dozen jars each of canned peaches and pears, as well as big jars of dried parsley, oregano, and basil, with smaller jars of dried black raspberry leaves and mint. Also have a few jars of black raspberry jam. Have loads of blueberries and black raspberries in the freezer, where we also have some zucchini bread. (There are only two of us.) In addition, I brewed some peppermint schnapps and black raspberry and peach liqueurs.
Waste not: Our new food-scrap routine is that discarded edibles go to the chickens as part of their daily ration of “goodies,” and inedibles (like science projects from the refrigerator) go to the compost pile. Scrap paper and cardboard get used as fire-starters in the wood stove.
My husband gathered all the dead leaves in our yard and shredded them using the lawnmower, and I’m using them as litter in the chicken run.
Want Not: Making an effort to make my own bread and treats regularly. Also occasionally make some of the things we seem to buy frequently at the store, such as coffee syrup and baking mixes. (I’m not always successful, due to limited time.)
Eat the food: I’ve finally started to do some menu planning earlier than on my way home from work at night. Will make food preparation a whole lot easier, and will help me use leftovers more effectively.
Recently made some great seafood chowder using the frozen broth from last summer’s steamed mussels.
Build Community Food Systems: Co-founded a relocalization group this year, whose biggest initiative was a community garden. We also held educational programs about organic gardening, seed-saving, and using herbs.
Kind of a bad week- My mom went in for knee surgery, so have been doing double duty here and at her home- taking care of her cat and putting up christmas decorations; prepping the apartment for when she gets home (hand held shower head, buying frozen food she can just pop into the microwave, etc.) so not a lot of play time for me. Mom got a total knee replacement- or as my uncle said “What’s a joint like you doing in a lady like this?” (See where the sick sense of humor comes from?)
1. Plant something: nope
2. Harvest something: Some sprouts
3. Preserve something: Apple cider jelly
4. Reduce Waste (recycle, reuse, reduce, repair or compost something): Put 4 resin patio chairs and a student desk out by the curb for “Free- Cycling” the chairs went the first day- the desk is still there, but will be donated to goodwill or maybe I have another use for it- we’ll see
5. Preparation and Storage: mope
6. Build Community Food Systems: Went to a meeting with fellow SUBU members on starting a garden for the residents of Burien Heights, a low income apartment complex nearby- they have around 2500 people living there, and lots of space for a community garden!We are going to work with the boxes they have, and give them four of ours from the BIAS. The other four are destined for the High School (the one I dropped out of!) We will be doing all this on the 12th.
7. Eat the Food (cook or eat something new): some stuffed french toast stuffed with homemade apple cider jelly, some sprouts in salad, pumpkin puree in pumpkin soup