Sharon December 14th, 2009
We’re having an extremely welcome pause in the cold today and tomorrow, which gives us the time to do a bunch of things we really should have gotten to before, but didn’t. I’ve still got containers out in the garden that weren’t brought in, and fencing to put away, and the last of the root crops to pull (at least the ones not staying in the ground until spring). Much to do, all of it late – but that’s the story of our life.
The cold weather means moving over to winter management of the animals – we’re starting to dig into our reserves of home-grown feed supplements – sunflower seeds, pumpkins, corn and amaranth go to the chickens, the goats and the turkeys. We’re not independent of the feed store, but we do what we can to reduce our dependency, and try and buy local and organic otherwise.
Chanukah started earlier this week, and has been very pleasant. We were supposed to celebrate Isaiah’s birthday and Chanukah yesterday, but bad weather and a minor (and now fixed) dental crisis involving Eli meants that we ended up rescheduling for next week, at least on the birthday end. We had a quiet holiday celebration with two of the Grandmas and us and the kids, and it was lovely.
It has been a busy week getting ready for the holiday and also making the shift over to winter – just over a week ago, it was 60, so many of the last minute winter things involving sealing and tightening really don’t get done until it gets properly cold. With the start of the new blog and the end of Eric’s term with its flood of grading and exams, last week was rushed and we’re looking forward to a bit more quiet. I feel like I didn’t get much done last week.
I’m starting to look at the seed catalogs and dream of the next garden. I’m also plotting a low-budget, minimalist house rearrangement and some paint to pretty up two really ugly bits of my home. We’ve got a room that has become a junk room, and I’m going to move some bookcases in there, get a couple of big chairs off of Craigslist, and paint it a decent color (I miss Eric’s grandmother, but not her taste in taupe and baby blue home decor ;-)), and make it a more pleasant place to be. I’ve got bees on the brain and sheep as well, and am mulling over our farm plan.
Of course I’m not really supposed to be doing these things – instead, I’m supposed to be single mindedly working on my book. So far, this is not happening 
.
Plant something: Nada
Harvest something: Some kale and turnip greens, and a few turnips. Also rosemary, thyme and oregano from the windowsill plants.
Preserve something: Apple Quince Sauce, froze some fried cauliflower
Waste Not: Tried to make an eggshell menorah out of saved aracauna eggs. Destroyed eggshells and failed miserably . Otherwise, the usual composting, feeding things to other things, using up scraps…
Want Not: Picked up a big order of wheat, oats and dried fruit.
Eat the food: Latkes, latkes, latkes – yum! They are best, IMHO, with applesauce mixed with some quinces for that incomparable fragrance. We also made sofganiyot for the first time, filled with homemade jam – the raspberry is still the best, but the peach-almond was awesome.
Build community food systems – still doing a lot of radio interviews for _Independence Days_ – also, working hard on pushing poultry on a lot of people – I’m your poultry pusherwoman!
How about you?