Independence Days Challenge week 1

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.