Independence Days Update - Week 1
Sharon May 2nd, 2008
I know it hasn’t been quite a week yet, but I thought I’d try and do my Independence Days updates on Fridays, to give me a routine. The blog may be on the quiet side this month, since 1 month from today Aaron and I complete _A Nation of Farmers (and Cooks)_ and get our lives back. But at least this means I’ll do something every Friday. And it means I get the fun of reading your updates, which I hope you’ll post in the comments.
Crunchy Chicken very kindly made the wonderful graphic you see above, and here’s the information for those of you who want to add a banner to your site:
<a href=”http://sharonastyk.com/2008/04
Ok, down to the nitty gritty.
Planted: This week, I planted a bunch of cucumber and zucchini seeds, along with beets, turnips and more peas. I also transplanted strawberry plants, sweet peas, onions and chard. We had a hard freeze, so I’ve been waiting on the potatoes. They’ll go in this weekend.
I harvested more stinging nettle, dandelions, chives and our first mustard greens of the season, along with rhubarb galore and asparagus. Yum!
Preserved: Canned rhubarb sauce, dried dandelions. We also had seven extra roosters butchered (we should have done it ourselves, but no time) and put them in the freezer. Today I’m going to scramble some eggs and freeze them, since I got four dozen yesterday.
Storing: I ordered more dried cranberries (we go through them at an alarming rate), sugar for canning season, and pickling salt at my bulk store. I’m still waiting on the arrival of two bags of rolled oats.
Prepped: Not much, but tomorrow is the town-wide yard sale in the nearest suburban town. My neighbor and I will be going, and I’m looking for more canning jars, shoes in bigger sizes, and more homeschooling books.
Managed: I really need to clean out the freezer. The problem is, there are seven roosters in the freezer, and that involves hauling them all out. This did not get done. Note to self - eat rooster so I can clean out the fridge. I anticipate a few weeks of nice Shabbos dinners. And if I’m super-ambitious, maybe I’ll even can chicken stock.
Cook Something New: This week was all about the asparagus - first harvest came on Saturday and was eaten with lime dressing. We also ate pasta with fresh dill, garlic and asparagus, roasted orange flavored tofu and asparagus, stir fried asparagus with vegetarian oyster sauce and raw asparagus, straight from the garden. Twas good. Tonight we will have roasted chicken, spiced roasted potatoes, asparagus with lemon dill sauce and sorrel-chive salad. The tofu and pasta dishes were new recipes for us.
Work on Local Food Systems: I barely left my house - book craziness. But I did give lettuce seedlings to two neighbors, and bring eggs up to another neighbor who mentioned she wasn’t buying them much because of the price.
Compost something: I don’t mind adding this to the categories, but it is sort of a hard one for me to do - we compost everything, or feed it to chickens and compost the manure. I can’t think of anything I did that was unusual.
Learned a skill: Well, I doubt it will help me in a low-energy future, but I learned to put images in my posts 
. Otherwise, the only skill I have learned is whining about why I haven’t finished the bit of the book I’m supposed to have finished - and actually, I think I knew how to do that already.
Ok, how about y’all? How is it going?
BTW, we’re not weird - apparently stocking up is the new trend: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/30/AR2008043003435.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120959859362157723-tf90ygLZ3jD_5LabyNB4AHJuPTY_20090501.html?mod=rss_free
What’s next? News stories on mending!
Sharon