Independence Days – Week 11

This week was much better than some of the previous weeks.  Turns out that getting some exercise (endorphins) and spending some time outside in the sun (vitamin D) can do wonders for the mood, body, mind and spirit.  The beginning of the week was actually a little rough (it was all cloudy and overcast) but the weekend made up for it nicely, with the sunshine and the gardening!  Also it helps that I was able to see friends more this week as well.

Here’s a picture of the bulk storage I mentioned in last week’s update.  And here’s what we were up to this week:

Plant something – watermelon, pumpkins, spinach, basil, more tomatoes, marigolds, turnips… um also some grass seed where we’re trying to patch up the damaged back lawn.  We don’t have a lot of grass back there, but what little there is has been burned by Josie over the winter.  We’re hoping it will recover a bit.

Harvest something – eggs, lettuce, spinach

Preserve something – um – nothing, and I actually have to take back last week’s asparagus (it was on Rick’s docket to-do, but we ended up eating it all instead!).

Waste Not – compost and recycling, reused some scrap boards in the garden.  Also decided that we’ve been silly not giving the grass clippings to the chickens, so they got two bags full on Sunday.  It’s been raining a lot, and the grass had grown like crazy – lucky birds loved it!

Want Not – made an impromptu garden plot in the back yard – with a raised bed.  We used our own compost – finally – in this bed, and Rick made it out of some left-over scrap lumber.  I really love how it looks.  It has tomatoes (for me and H to snack (or as Rick would say, “graze”) on, basil, and carrots.  Plus some marigolds.  This is pretty much H’s little plot.  Especially since it’s in the back yard, and he loves carrots and tomatoes.  And the raised bed is nice, so he knows where he can’t step.  Plus he picked out the marigolds all by himself.

Build Community Food Systems – gave some extra tomato plants to the neighbors, had another neighbor’s five-year old daughter help us plant in the back yard.  It was so cute and fun and I got some great snapshots of her and H. (Stay tuned for the pictures – will try to get them posted this week).

Eat the Food – mmm…. spinach and lettuce from the volunteer plants has been delish.   Opened the last jar of pumpkin butter.  Rick magically found more tomatoes (I swear I don’t know how he keeps doing this?!?!!) in the freezer so we’ve been enjoying those.  Bacon and ham steaks (ham and eggs fried rice!) and eggs, of course.  Also another batch of hummus. Finished the last of the antelope burger and some kale in some tasty Italian wedding soup (or our own rustic version at least)!  For that we used the recipe in this post, but we substituted antelope for turkey, kale for escarole and our tomatoes from the freezer for the canned (a common substitution in our house).