The whole idea is to get the positive sense of your accomplishments – it is easy to think we haven’t done anything to move forward, but in fact, we all do, almost every day.  We just think of accomplishment as a big thing – a whole day spent putting up applesauce or a hundred tomato plants.  The Independence Day project makes us count our little accomplishments and see that we are moving forward.  So for each week, tell us what you have done in the following categories:

Plant something: A lot of us were trained to think of planting as done once a year, but if you start seeds, do season extension and succession plant, you’ll get much, much more out of your garden, so I try and plant something every day from February into September.

Harvest something: Everything counts – from the milk and eggs you get from your animals to the first dandelions from your yard to 50 bushels of tomatoes – it all counts.

Preserve something: Again, I find preserving is most productive if I try and do a little every day that there is anything, from the first dried raspberry leaves and jarred rhubarb to the last squashes at the end of the season.

Waste not: Reducing food waste, composting everything or feeding it to animals, reducing your use of disposables and creation of garbage, reusing things that would otherwise go to waste, making sure your preserved and stored foods are kept in good shape – all of these count.

Want Not: Adding to your food storage or stash of goods for emergencies, building up resources that will be useful in the long term.

Eat the Food: Making full and good use of what you have, making sure that you are getting everything you can from your food, trying new recipes and new cooking ideas, eating out of your storage!

Build community food systems: What have you done to help other people have better food access or to make your local food system more resilient?

And a new one: Skill up:  What did you learn this week that will help you in the future – could be as simple as fixing the faucet or as hard as building a shed, as simple as a new way of keeping records or as complicated as making shoes.  Whatever you are learning, you get a merit badge for it – this is important stuff.

Ok, you can sign up in comments, publicize on your blog and tell the world – let’s see what we can get done!

Happy Independence Days!

Sharon

We are back up to 1 billionish hungry people in the world, and 1/3 of all food goes to waste worldwide.  Now I’d like to say that none of it went to waste in my house – after all, I’ve been writing about food waste and food security issues for years, and I really have tried hard to ensure that everything gets eaten here.  It does – by someone.  But the best use of my lentil-kale soup is really feeding the people in my house, not the chickens, and embarassingly often, some human food gets fed to dogs, cats, rabbits or goats.

A summit of farmers and food policy experts in Germany makes the stakes clear:

Consumers in rich countries dispose of 220 million metric tons of food waste every year, equal to the entire food output of sub-Saharan Africa, Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, told 64 agriculture ministers meeting in Berlin over the weekend.

“We must change our way of thinking, we must have more education, we must have discussion about best-before dates,” German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said. “Every food item thrown away is wasted.”

One third of the food produced in the world every year is lost or wasted, amounting to 1.3 billion metric tons, according to Graziano da Silva. As many as 925 million people faced hunger worldwide in 2010, based on the FAO’s most recent estimate.

In rich nations in the global north, the majority of food is lost not in the fields, but somewhere after it begins the process of getting to your table – in shipping, processing, at the store and in our homes.  In the global south most food is lost in the fields, due to lack of adequate capacity to process it.  Food loss in the global south could be reduced by very small increases in available resources – large scale dryer to dry grain crops damaged by moisture, dehydrators and collective refrigeration.  In the north, most of the food loss is *ENABLED* by our fossil energies – it gets freezer burned and tossed in the deep freeze, it gets damaged by fluctuating temperatures during long haul trucking, it isn’t pretty enough to sit out under flourescent lights or it turns green the fridge.  We use vastly more energy in our food system, waste similar amounts of food, but only after we pour fossil energies into it.

What does this have to do with the “eat the food” category of the Independence Days challenge?  Someone once observed to me that they found it harder to eat the kale, or get the green beans before they got overripe, or make sure they cooked with the organic vegetables they were buying at the farmer’s market than they did shopping or growing them, and I don’t think this is a unique experience.  Ultimately, the problem of managing the food in our pantries and our gardens and everywhere else is a task that requires an attention that most of us haven’t given in the same way that we may have given our attention to the learning curve of actually starting seeds or cooking.  We don’t want to waste, we don’t intend to waste, but the art of making full and good use of everything is one that we have not treated as requiring the same attention and thought as the rest of the food project.  There will never be a fully waste-less society, and indeed, our livestock are grateful for a little extra – but a little is what they need.

One of m goals for re-starting the Independence Days project, then, is to be more artful in my use of food, taking full enjoyment from what we have and ensuring we don’t over buy, don’t miss the windows of opportunity for enjoyment, and that we make good meals from what we have – all of it, whenever possible

Sharon

I’m debating expanding the categories a bit to cover non-food related sustainability activities, but I don’t want it to get too unwieldy – I’d welcome thoughts on how to do so, or what you’d like to see.

I’m also going to push the “challenge” part of this harder and publicize it more – after all, this is just plain fun stuff, right?

Thoughts?

Sharon

Let’s just say that in upstate NY, February 2 does not start spring, not even a little.  On the other hand, it does mark the point that humans and animals both begin getting really annoyed with winter .  I don’t usually allow myself this luxury until March, but for some reason this year I’m having a little trouble with it.  Meanwhile the goats are just plain cranky – they want grass, dammit.

The good news is that around now is also when I start in earnest getting ready for spring.  First the seed starting begins. I’ve already put some perennials on to stratify and seeded a few early herbs and flowers, mostly just to make the kids happy – they can’t wait to get things in the ground.  We’ve got lupine seedling and yarrows, and tiny sage leaves sticking up.  But the onions will begin in a week or two, as will any perennials I’m starting early for first year bloom, and then we move on to peppers and eggplant, so there’s hope yet.

Meanwhile, Arava and Bast are at least starting to show their pregnancies (they’ll be the first to be bred) and the junior does meet the goat of their dreams in a couple of weeks.  I’m hoping all the information for joining my vegetable and herb plant CSA will be up by the end of next week, and the herb CSA will follow.  We’ve got chicks coming in mid-February (they’ll live by the woodstove for the first few weeks) and will be boarding a friend’s baby goat (she won it as a prize!) soon.  So things are going on under the surface.

Our first home visit from the social worker is Tuesday, so we’re cleaning the house and trying to look like we’ve got our lives together .  I’ve got the garden calendar underway, and am working on marketing plans.   It is a good time for cutting wood, harvesting barks and enjoying peace and quiet, at least if we ever get any .

We’ve used up a lot of last year’s preserves and root cellar produce, and more has to be used.  Now is the time when we count jars on the fingers of one hand, and try to save things for special occasions -the last jar of raspberry jam, the last of kimchi, the last of whole tomatoes, the last hubbard squash.  Such things are bittersweet – we won’t miss them once spring comes in but they remind us why late winter and early spring were called “the starving time.”  We won’t starve, but we do feel that it is worth experiencing the sense of not having everything outside its time, and enduring some minor privation.  Still, eating store jam is privation enough .

Otherwise, we’re mostly dreaming of the real spring – of the days when we start taking daily peeper walks and the first green shoots pop up.  But that’s not for a while yet – under our 18 inch blanket of white, things are waiting, and so are we.

Plant something: Lupines, yarrow, sage, snapdragons.

Harvest something: Eggs, milk, sprouts

Preserve something: Not a thing

Waste not: We’ve been getting rid of some old expired canned goods by mixing them into dog food, otherwise the usual composting and feeding things to other things.

Want Not: Seed orders!!!  Woot!!!

Eat the Food: Lots of veggies getting towards their end, the last of everything.   Lots of stuffed cabbage, too, since we’re on a kick.

Build community food systems: Gave a bunch of radio interviews on food and gardens!  Am arranging a kosher slaughter workshop for my region, and starting up my CSAs!

How about you?

The dreaming and planning is the more acute right now because so many of my other enterprises depend on this – particularly the bedding and native plant sales.  I’m hoping to have all the information about my seed starting CSA up within a week or two, allowing people to choose their plant varieties from a good, wide list (oh, heavens, I’ll have to buy more seed varieties…how…terrible!).  I’m also totting up what seed I have left from last year and making garden plans.  I’ll put the CSA information up as soon as I can get it all together.  I’m also plotting open farm days for plant pickup, and where I might do drop off in Albany, Schenectady and other local spots.

All six of the senior does seem to be settled now, with breeding due dates from early April to early May.  The junior does (last year’s babies) will be bred in February for July kidding.  Among other things, I’m curious if the reason we’ve had so many singles (when Nigerian Dwarves are generally famous for multiples) is that we’ve been breeding out of season.  Someone suggested to me that they had more babies in season, even though they breed well year round.  Curious to experiment – not so much because I want more babies, but because singles are actually harder to deliver than twins or triplets since they tend to be bigger, with much bigger heads. 

I’ll breed the rabbits in February as well for spring kindling.    I’m also awaiting my poultry catalogs, since I need to replace a lot of my older layers. I’m also thinking of purchasing an incubator – we’ve had uneven results from setting hens, particularly with the duck eggs, and I’m looking for greater control and consistency.  If you have one, do you recommend it?  Which one?  Also, has anyone tried crossing Speckled Sussex and RI Red chickens to produce a sexable (males are white, females speckled or red) dual purpose bird?  I’ve used Sussex in my crosses before, but not in this combination, and have had it recommended to me.

There’s a lot of management of food this time of year – making sure that the apples that go wrinkly get used first, and that any carrots that go soft go to the rabbits and goats.  Some of the squash that don’t keep as well are coming to the end of their season and need to be cooked or dried or frozen.  I make some applesauce and can it now and again, but mostly this is a quiet time, and the jars proliferate like mad on the shelves as they get emptied out.

Besides the seed and poultry catalogs, there are the bee catalogs.  From one thing and another last year, while I spent much of the winter planning to, I never got bees.  This year, Eric asked for them for a 40th birthday present from his Mom, so now we’re getting our act together. I’m not sure his Mom was totally ecstatic to give him tens of thousands of bugs for his birthday, but she’s convinced he really does want them!

The big project right now is cleaning out and decluttering.  Oh, and recluttering. Our decision to adopt more kids made me realize that I should probably stop getting rid of all the stuff Asher has outgrown – for so many years I kept every size clothing from newborn to well, now 18.  I was thrilled when Asher finally outgrew it and I could get rid of most of it, but of course, the odds are good that at least one if not both of the kids we adopt will be smaller (even if not younger) than Asher – the kid is huge, with 2 inches and 1 lb being all that separate him from his 2-years-older brother.  I’ve given away a lot of the 2-4t stuff, but I’m saving what I’ve got left, and stopping putting away all the board books and the younger kid books.

The first home visit won’t be for a few weeks, but my goal is to get the room any new kids will move into basically set up, not to presume too much, but just because we’ve got the space and I might as well move what’s going to be in there anyway in earlier.  I don’t have beds for kids – I’ll have to keep my eye out on Craigslist for some bunkbeds or something – but I already have the dressers (bed and a dresser for each kid is required) left over from Eric’s grandparents, and I can move some of the extra kids’ books and beanbag chairs and things in to the room.  I have to buy a door, though – for some reason that front room never had one.

The room the kids will be moving into had been a guest room and my sewing and yarn space – I have *tons* of yarn, since a store near me went out of business and the proprietor (a friend) sold a lot of it to me for 10 cents on the dollar or less.  I’ve barely been knitting this past year – I spent so much time sitting in front of the computer that it was hard to organize myself for sedentary activities, but cleaning out and moving the yarn around has me excited to knit again, and lord knows, the kids can always use more hats and mittens!  Particularly since Asher likes to wear mittens in the house, which doesn’t exactly contribute to ease of location later.

Ok, onwards:

Plant something: Nada

Harvest something: a few greens out from the snow during the warm spell, mint, rosemary and lemon verbena from overwintered indoor plants.

Preserve something: A few jars of applesauce, dried some willow bark, froze some extra squash.

Waste Not: Well, I’m working on using up all that yarn!  Otherwise, the usual managing stores and feeding things to other things.

Want Not: Replaced two winter coats – Eli’s because he’s grown *again* – his coat was fine in October, but his wrists were hanging out by December and Isaiah because of an irreparrable zipper.  Got everything from after holiday sales.  Also stocked up on spices.

Eat the food: We’ve been letting the kids choose meals and help cook, so we’ve eaten a lot of good stuff lately.  I forgot how much we all love stuffed cabbage.   We made shishkebabs with grilled marinated root vegetables and tempeh, and more conventional ones with chicken, and rice pilaf.  I’ve also been trying recipes from cookbooks for my “31 Books” series over at the Science blogs site www.scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook. 

Build Community Food Systems: Have arranged some talks and projects – I’m also plotting open farm days – thinking of having one in April, one in May and one in July.

How about you?

Sharon

The tulips went in last week and were promptly dug up by my damned chickens, who keep sneaking into the fenced yard. The problem was largely resolved by the reintroduction of something in a missing species niche – ie, we put the dogs in the side yard to defend the tulip bulbs with their lives. 

The hens have just about stopped laying, so I actually bought eggs to make enough pumpkin pie.  We probably should light the hen house, but the results have never been impressive, and I tend to think that the hens need their quiet time too, just like I do in the winter.

The big news is that the goats are being bred for spring babies – older does only.  Bast, Arava and Jessie have already had their day, with Mina, Maia and Selene yet to go.  Frodo is happy as a clam!

I have a bit more late garlic to go in, and a few more bulbs, and then I’m done.  But my next garden project starts almost immediately – I have to set up the seeds to winter-stratify outside – so many of the medicinals do best when they’ve had a nice period of cold. 

We have to get the rest of the firewood under cover, and the rest of the hay moved over to the barn, but after that, winter can come, and I’m ready to settle in. I’m hoping to get most of the major projects done by the end of this week – it will be a quiet one, with guests only for the actual day of Thanksgiving, and Eric is off for most of the week, so we’ll get a lot done. 

For Thanksgiving, we’re having our usual turkey, plus our friend Joe makes Peking Duck (he’s half chinese and not from turkey) as well, which is a lot of fun.  Otherwise, we’re traditional – we’ll be eating the enormous Hubbard squash that Mac the Pyr is afraid of (vengeance!) and there’ll be the usual roots and sweets.  We already have had pumpkin pie – that’s what Simon wanted as his birthday “cake” and I’m always amazed at how delicious those winter luxury pumpkins are – they are far and away the best pie pumpkin on the earth.

I cleaned out and moved the food storage over, and found some ummm..tasty snacks for the chickens.  Let’s just say that I can’t think of any good reason why there would be baby food in my food storage, given that the baby is five, but so there was .

I managed to get some of the pruning done, but I really need another afternoon with the shears.  The buns are moved to their winter quarters in the hay barn, so winter preps are coming together. I’ve got to knit faster, though, since the boys are expecting hats and mittens!

After all the chaos, it feels like we’re coming into a homestretch of sorts – that life is getting manageable. I’ve been travelling way too much – I’ve averaged twice a month, which is just too hectic and taking up too much of my mental space.  It is the season of the year to cuddle in, and I just want to be at home.  And now I am.

Plant something: Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths (ground and pots for forcing).

Harvest something: Turnips, beets, kale, chard, bok choy, arugula, turnip greens, pea shoots, jerusalem artichokes, chinese cabbage, burdock root

Preserve something: Canned up some applesauce, dried burdock root

Waste Not: Fed babyfood and a few other things to chickens, collected lots of leaves for mulch, fertility and goat snacks.

Want Not: Sorted through the blankets and flannels and mended a lot.

Eat the food: Pumpkin pie!  Shepherd’s pie (I had extra pie crust) with veggies.  My first lamb and lentil soup of the season!  Massaman curried root vegetables. 

Build community food systems: Did a talk in Albany about our local food system.

How about you?  And what are you cooking this week?

Sharon

I like November, actually.  I always have – it gets quiet and peaceful, and while it is cold there’s still a lot of nice days left of what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “football weather.”  Planting is done save bulbs and the garlic I forgot about and the thinsg I’m winter sowing.

It is time to fill the porch-root cellar up and take the ice packs out of the fridge and put everything on the porch.  We look forward to this all year – the enclosed porch becomes our walk-in fridge and it is so much more accessible than the regular kind – no losing things in the back, no more playing with ice.  Yay!

We need to get our wood and hay in – the hay was supposed to come yesterday but it didn’t.  Our neighbor who brings it over is a busy guy too, so we just assume things will work out.  No pressure.

Hemp and Basil went home to their new place yesterday, and it was  a real pleasure to meet their new owner and know that they are going to be happy where they are. 

The hens are barely laying, but despite that my wonderful step-mother made us a whole set of beautiful new nest boxes, in the hope of getting them to lay somewhere other than the goat’s manger.  The chicken area looks completely refreshed and beautiful!

I’m moving the firewood into the mudroom and getting ready for the season of fires – we’ve already had a couple but it is beginning – we’re expecting days in the 40s and nights in the 20s. I have to settle the indoor plants in their permanent sunny spots – there are always too many things I’d like to winter over. 

Otherwise, we’re concentrating on getting the new project up and running.  How about you?

Planted: Tulips, some late garlic

Harvested: Last hot peppers, turnips, beets, kale, chard, broccoli, arugula, mustard greens, quinces, apples, dug marshmallow, burdock and elecampane roots, milk, a very few eggs

Preserved: Made apple quince sauce, dried hot peppers, dried and tinctured herb roots, made a bunch of goat cheese

Waste Not: collected fallen pears at a local orchard for the chickens, arranged to give a good home to the extra halloween pumpkins after the holiday (goats love them!)

Want Not: Sorting through what we’ve got in the house.  Amazing what I find!

Eat the Food: Roasted squash with chipotle-maple glaze, beets with tahini and yogurt,

Build Community Food Solutions: A couple of articles, working on my local food resources evaluation.

How about you?

Sharon

It is time to harvest the root crops as well, now that frost has killed the tops of most things.  Marshmallow root, elecampane, burdock, elecampane, dandelion and echinacea need to be dug, chopped, dried and tinctured, although a few of the roots will wait until spring, before they begin putting on new growth. 

We dug the sweet potatoes yesterday – despite the hot weather, they didn’t size up as much as I woudl have hoped, but the flavor was glorious, we roasted some to eat with greens and cheese sauce ysetrday, along with the freshly dug potatoes. I’m leaving the turnips, celeriac, salsify, jerusalem artichoke,  beets, leeks, carrots and others a little longer yet to sweeten with a few more frosts, but soon – very soon they will come in – along with half the parsnips (the rest stay in the garden for early spring).   The season of roots is here!

Lots of harvesting but not much planting.  The children collected all the green tomatoes and ripe hot peppers yesterday, and all that’s left in the garden are greens and roots, really.  There are a few flower that haven’t been toasted, and some herbs yet to harvest, but for the most part, the garden is winding down. 

The eggs are winding down too – we don’t light our hen house, and the hens are getting to the point of laying only a few eggs.  But that’s ok – it will pick up again after the new year, and I incline towards the theory that the rest is good for them.

Milk, however, we have aplenty – the only boys not weaned now are Stachys and Hemp, and those two will move up to the buck barn this week – we’re just waiting for Stachys to hit 8 weeks.  Basil and Hemp will be going to their new home soon after.  That leaves just the girls pestering their mothers for milk, but the mothers are increasingly bored with the nursing, and since the doelings are separated out at night, their Moms are giving us great vats of milk, which we are turning into cheese and yogurt, and still overwhelmed by.

Lots of things yet to do to get ready for winter and wind up the season – I feel behind due to the travel and the holidays, but all will come together.  There’s still a little time yet, and autumn ought to have some time for revelling in the year’s accomplishments too!

Plant something: Black cohosh, blue cohosh, fall raspberries, garlic, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple, partridgeberry.

Harvest something: green tomatoes, red tomatoes, hot peppers, eggplant, kale, chard, beets, turnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, spilanthes, marshmallow, burdock, dandelion, elecampane.

Preserve something: Last batch of raspberry jam, green tomato chutney, green tomato pickles, dried hot peppers, pickled beets, tinctured and dried various roots.

Waste Not: Usual composting and reducing of packaging and feeding of things to other things.  Eric seems finally to be making progress on getting scraps from the SUNY Cafeteria to feed our chickens as part of their local foods project.

Want Not: We both finally got new shoes, badly needed – Eric’s were really holey. 

Eat the Food: First pumpkin pie of the season, first batch of chicken soup, first batch of lentil soup, first pumpkin pancakes….the fall cooking is for real!

Build Community Food systems: Off to New Haven this weekend for a conference on urban adapting in place, gave a big talk about food at ASPO. 

How about you?

Sharon

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

You never know when it will come these days – sometimes it is warm all fall, other times it gets cold early.  Our first frost has happened anywhere between September 19 and October 30 over the nine years we’ve been here, so you never know what to expect.  And that doesn’t count the basil frosts – you know, those light ones that just toast the basil.  We had one of those the last week in August once.

It is time to try and pull in all I can of summer, and the process keeps us busy – besides the five day diversion during which we ate all kinds of unsustainable things, increased our waste production and otherwise used resources in ways we don’t ordinarily, now we’ve got to come back and get into the groove again.  I’ve got literally piles of produce to attend to right now

I did come back with some wonderful plants that went into the ground yesterday – I took a workshop on propagating woodland medicinal plants.  While our medicinal herb production has mostly focused on wetland herbs, our 19 acres of woods already are home to a small amount of goldenseal and blue cohosh (but not enough that I’d ever harvest any for sale), but clearly can produce the conditions suitable to growing them.  The class, taught by an extension expert from North Carolina was brilliant, and she gave us all plant divisions to take home of Black Cohosh, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple and wild ginger. I have small amounts of black cohosh and wild ginger already, but I was excited to get some new planting stock.  It’ll be years before we attempt any serious harvest of these plants, and I’m not counting any chickens before they hatch, but it seems a good use of our land.

Before we left there was an unholy rush to get all the tomatoes processed – bazillions of them, roughly speaking.  They are ripening more slowly in the cooler temperatures now, but I’ll need to do some more.  Today I’m gathering in the pumpkins and bottle gourds as well, and clearing a bed to be made into a low hoophouse for lettuces, spinach and kale.   I’ve got zucchini to dry and cukes to pickle – the final rush.

We’ve been so comatose the last few days after the chronic sleep deprivation of the trip that things have been slow getting started – yesterday we dealt with the last of the sweet corn, and picked the raspberries that we waiting for us so patiently.  Today there’s jam to deal with, and peppers and…

This time of year is my favorite – it feels so lush and rich and the wealth of the harvest makes me happy.  At the same time, with school started up again for Eli and Eric and the busy season hitting before winter, and the wave of holidays, it feels like we go two months at a dead run – and long for the quiet of winter.  I guess it makes the transition easier!

Plant something: Black cohosh, goldenseal, mayapple, bloodroot, wild ginger, winter wheat, lettuce, arugula.

Harvest something: Pumpkins, gourds, squash, broccoli, kale, collards, dried beans, peppers, hot peppers, apples, carrots, beets, daikon, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, pea shoots, many herbs.

Preserve something: Made raspberry jam, made peach jam, dried zucchini, dried pumkin, dried apples, pickled green tomatoes, froze corn, froze lima beans.

Waste Not: We wasted a lot on our trip – there just wasn’t a good way to avoid it.  Sucked.

Want Not: Nothing special

Build community food systems: Gave a talk about why grow food in front of Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Garden!!!!

Eat the Food: Lots of corn chowder.

How about you?

Sharon