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.

Thanks

http://supermomnocape.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/sweet-potatoes-will-indeed-grow-in-containers/

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).

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

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.

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.

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.