Archive for September 30th, 2010

Independence Days Update: Running Behind

Sharon September 30th, 2010

I have such a long list of things I need to do this autumn.  We haven’t gotten our firewood stacked.  We only have half our hay in.  I haven’t set up the row covers for the fall crops.  I haven’t even ordered my garlic (pickin’s are going to be slim).  I am firmly, wildly behind.

This is often the case as the holidays finish - the difference is that generally speaking I’m caught up in September and panicked in October, and this year the holidays came early.  The good thing about this is that I have October to catch up.  The bad thing is that because they came early, I feel further behind than usual.  But Simchat Torah is tonight, and that’s the last of the celebrations.

The garden has mostly petered out - we harvested most of the summer crops, and all that’s left is the winter stuff and the occasional ripening tomato.  The corn still has to come in, and I haven’t dug the potatoes, sweet poatoes and turnips yet, but that can wait.  I have some winter wheat and cover crops to plant, but that will take time.

I’m so busy with other work that really, a lot has slid.  I haven’t harvested everything I should have - but somehow the jars and shelves are filling up anyway.  This is the good thing about a little bit here and a little bit there being part of our life - spates of discombobulation don’t have as deep an effect as they used to.

And we’re having fun - despite the fact that I’m prone to worrying about what I haven’t done, we had a lot of guests, laughed a lot, ate a lot of good food, celebrated, made new friends, played with old ones and have had a lot of joy.  So I guess I’m ok with running behind.

Planted: Nothing

Harvested: Tomatoes, hot peppers, squash, carrots, lettuce, kale, collards, wormwood, beets, potatoes, milk, a diminishing number of eggs, eggplant.

Preserved: Made some milk into cheese, pickled some hot peppers, made some kim chi

Waste Not: Nothing special, the usual composting and feeding things to other things.

Want Not: Eric and I both got badly needed shoes.   Ordered the kids chanukah fuzzy pajamas.

Eat the Food: Eggplant everywhere - baba ganoush, strange flavor eggplant, parmagiana, with pomegranate molasses.  Also many apples.

Community Food Solutions: Did three talks on local food production.  More coming!

How about you?

Sharon