1. Plant something - We spent entirely too much time first mowing and then biking that the weekend planting got delayed. I'll be doing most of it today, after work. The plan is to get some more carrots and parsnips planted, and some more lettuce. We also need to sit down and plan out what goes into the last couple of unplanted box and how we are going to organize the row garden area before next weekend arrives. I spent quite a bit of time hoeing up weeds in the row garden area in prep for next weekend's marathon planting session AND we covered up the bottom of some of our potato plants that are already getting big. I also discovered that the rosemary that I cut from our neighbors bush has taken root, so I'm very excited about that.
2. Harvest something – outside of cutting some more lilacs, there hasn't been much harvesting going around yet. I did cut down many (painful) armfuls of wild black berry canes to feed the goats. Not quite a human harvest, but a harvest none-the-less!
3. Preserve something – no preservation this week.
4. Reduce waste – Switched out my autodish soap this week. I was using this HUGE canister that I'd bought at Costco over a year ago and it's finally gone. I've now moved from little tablets in plastic bags, to Ecover biodegradeable detergent that comes in only cardboard packaging (that is recycleable). I also have started using baking soda and white vinegar in place of fabric softener. As soon as we run out of laundry soap, I'm going to refill the big canister from the auto dish soap with a borax mix (recipe from a book I got for Christmas) to use instead. Eventually, I want to replace all my cleaners with homemade ones - reducing what I need to buy and what we need to throw out. If we can only find time to make goats milk soap - it'll reduce one more thing we'll need to buy, too!
5. Preparation and Storage - I am signed up for the food storage class. We also got out on the bikes this weekend - after a tough day of farm work, we had a tough day of biking. I can barely move today but what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? We also stocked up on some pet food - but I need to invest in a better storage method for it besides just stacking up the feed bags in the garage. It's fine for now while it's cool in there but it's not going to be a good method when the summer heat hits.
6. Build Community Food Systems - Not much to report on this front. Local farmers markets open next weekend though! We are actually thinking that we may need to sign up for a booth later this summer so I'm going to make a point of looking into how we do this before next weekend.
7. Eat the Food - We skimmed 6 quarts of goats milk on Sunday before our bike ride, so I'm excited to have plenty of milk to drink this week (I can't drink it whole except in my coffee...it's an issue I have). I also finished another jar of apple butter this morning, so I'm looking forward to opening a new one from the pantry! Oh, I got a cool book from some friends of ours about cooking within season from local foods, so I'm hoping to set aside time to make a recipe or two from that this week.
1 comment:
I've got my garden planted! Yeah! We put in a raised 4x12 foot bed, plus I have a few squash plants (yellow crookneck, zucchini, and pumpkin) over along the fence where they can grow out of the way of the lawnmower :) I planted lots of tomato plants, some romaine lettuce, chinese celery, cilantro, basil, garlic, bell peppers (which I haven't had luck with in the past), and cucumbers. I'm trying to convince my hubby to put in one more raised bed next to this one, thus removing more grass from the watering need.
We're also discussing potential plans for our hillside, adding in some fruit trees and a walk way to gain easier access up there.
Keep up the blogging - it is an inspiration for me :)
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