Sharon Astyk has been having an Independence Days challenge for the past few years. She even wrote a book on the subject. I've been playing around with it at home since then, but have never posted my update on the blog before. The whole idea of the challenge is to do small things everyday to increase our independence for food production. It's amazing when you start to keep track, how much can be done just a little bit at a time.
I'm going to list some of the things I've done in the past few weeks, not just this past week. From here on out, it will be just weekly things done.
Plant something: 2 types of lettuce, 2 types of onions, several types of peppers, both sweet and hot, bok choy, cabbage, broccoli, dill, basil and eggplant
Harvest something: just eggs from the chickens so far
Preserve something: nothing yet
Waste not: composted scraps, food scraps to dog and chickens, reused planting flats from last year and pots from last year
Want not: got hoop house partially built before 6 inches of rain fell, will finish when it dries out a bit
Eat the food: just made one of Hubby's favorites from childhood using stored potatoes and most of the rest of my canned tomatoes. I also made butter from the raw milk we get from a local dairy.
Build community food systems: spoke with the woman who heads up an eat local chapter in my area about the dairy that I get my raw milk from. Will be speaking to the farmer about possible attending a meeting on dairy in the area.
This will obviously get more involved as the year goes on, and that is the fun part.
7 comments:
I didn't know you were doing that challenge. I'd do well in the summer with it all, but not as well in the winter. I don't preserve in the winter at all. I think it ought to have a northern version. Preserving from May-Nov and eating it up the rest of the year.
Daphne, I don't do much preserving this time of year either. Sharon is up north as well, so she's in the same boat. I think that's why it gets started in the spring.
I have a list of things I need to learn about, preserving being one of them.
IG, there are lots of us that preserve on the net. You can learn from us. We do tend to be a bit more legalistic in our preserving here in the US though.
Really great blog! I stumbled across while looking for asparagus crowns online... :-)
Keep up the great work!!
Dawn
Thanks Dawn!
Sounds like a great start!
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