Independence Days: Catching Up

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been playing a bit of catch up and getting a lot of chores done around the house.

On the 21st we drove over to the Western slope to go pick peaches, however our four hour (each way) drive proved to be fruitless – quite literally.  We go to the orchard and they had a sign that said they were all out of peaches.  We were pretty upset, especially since we had called ahead of time to make sure there were peaches there.  They said they should have peaches ripe again at the beginning of September, so we are hoping to get the opportunity to go again.

Since we ended up without any peaches on that Saturday, we now had a free Sunday on our hands (we had planned to be processing 150 pounds of fruit).  I scored two bookcases on freecycle that were perfect for our basement.  So we spent a good part of the weekend cleaning and rearranging and organizing.  Went sent probably four garbage bags of stuff to the Goodwill, and there is probably another bag or two to go.  The room still needs some curtains, the rope around the dart board, and a few little extras here and there, but it’s starting to shape up.

This made space in the basement’s second room to store canned goods, Rick’s tools and my craft supplies.  That room is still in progress, as it needs the door rehung, cabinets mounted to the walls, new paint and some major organization.  You can see a glimpse of it in the dartboard picture – it’s gated off and has a strip of ugly green paint on the doorway.  But we made the biggest leaps towards having a put together basement that we’ve done since we moved in seven years ago.

We decided to break down and begin our backyard fencing project as well.  I picked up the lumber on Sunday and Monday we set posts.  Then throughout the rest of the week, we finished the fence for the chickens – and finally after the last 10 months, took down the temporary chain link we borrowed from the neighbor.  We think it turned out pretty nice.

Thursday, we had someone from the botanic gardens come to look around our place so that we could be entered into Denver’s Chicken Coop Tour in October.  We spent a good chunk of time cleaning the yard and gardens this past week as well.   And we’re excited that we will be a part of the tour.

Here’s the update:

Plant something – divided my hyssop and penstemon, moved some irises and a sedum to better homes so they would no longer be choked by my geranium.

Harvest something – eggs, tomatoes, zucchini, cukes, kohlrabi,

Preserve something – Surprisingly little – only corn in the freezer last week, some peppers to the freezer this week.

Waste Not – compost and recycling, scraps to chickens, etc.

Want Not – shelves for the basement.

Build Community Food Systems – took lots of orders for peaches from friends, registered to participate in the Denver Botanic Gardens Chicken Coop Tour to promote sustainable lifestyles in an urban setting.

Eat the Food – Lots and lots of veggies.  We are getting through nearly everything in a farm share bag.  Lots of cucumbers from the garden.  Broke into the pickled garlic but didn’t love the taste.  The recipe called for sugar but I think the sweet with the garlic is weird.  Bit disappointing, considering we made so much.