Urban Homesteading

Thrifty Thursday: Reusable Produce Bags – for FREE!

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Anisa

Here’s a quick one that occurred to me as I was emptying the mandarin oranges into the fruit bowl last week.  Although I’ve been bringing my own reusable bags to the store for a while, I always cringe at the amount of plastic bags I still use for produce.  Luckily I grabbed the camera and now I can share an easy, no sew, way to have a reusable produce bag!

Step one: Empty your mesh bag of the produce that came with it.

Step two: Cut off the labels, including anything that has a bar code (don’t want your store checkout person to get confused).

Step three: Using an old piece of ribbon (this scrap came from something I was going to throw away anyway) to lace through the mesh around the hole you made to get the oranges out.  Tie the ends together.

Step four: Remember to bring with you to the store do you can reload you new/old bag with new produce that doesn’t roll around the cart all by its self any more!

Categories: Simple Living, Thrift | 3 Comments

Independence Days – Weeks 9-10

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Anisa

The garden is a bit behind where I’d like it to be, but there is still time, as Rick keeps reminding me.  So here’s what has gone down in the last week or two or three.  😉

Plant something – tomatoes, beets, kohlrabi, eggplant, quinoa, onions, kale, rhubarb, squash, radishes… this is off the top of my head, so I might be forgetting something?

Harvest something – eggs, lettuce, spinach, asparagus

Preserve something – asparagus.

Waste Not – compost and recycling.

Want Not –  Realized that I could use my empty canning jars to store some bulk items like rice and granola.  This looks so much nicer in my cabinet and it’s much easier to find things then a bunch of bags all jumbled together!

Build Community Food Systems – um – I don’t think there’s much here.  We did have the neighbor over for dinner one night?  And I did find out that my friend Julie joined the farm and will be working on the same day as me (woohoo!) this summer.  🙂

Eat the Food – Jelly, ribs, and corn gone; been munchin’ fresh asparagus, made a big batch of hummus for the first time.  Rick’s been diligently using all our frozen tomatoes and every time I think they’re all gone, he magically pulls another bag from somewhere!  The peaches are still delicious.  The pickled beets are gone now.  The boys have been using frozen melon in smoothies.

What about you?

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days | 3 Comments

Independence Days – Week 6

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Anisa

Plant something – nothing (AGAIN!  UGH!)

Harvest something – eggs and dandelion greens

Preserve something – nothing

Waste Not – compost and recycling.  Also – been thinking that Rick’s biking to work might fall in this category, since it saves gas?  Gave away the old washer & dryer on Freecycle as well as a few very tired cloth diapers.

Want Not – Rick roto-tilled the garden and the place where we’re going to plant Concord grapevines this year.  So excited!  Also, I found a place to make a new cover for our bike trailer for less than a replacement cover from the maker would have been if a cover were available (it’s not).  This is so great since we love this trailer and I got such a good deal on it.  (And we use the bikes so much in the summer). 

Build Community Food Systems –  nothing

Eat the Food – some pickles, tomatoes, pesto, pork shoulder, peaches….. trying to eat exclusively from the pantry & freezer this week since I feel a little meated out (with all the beef and chicken we ate over the last month or so).

Categories: Food, Independence Days | 1 Comment

Independence Days – Weeks 4 & 5

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Anisa

I realize this report is late late late.  I’ve already started documenting week six for us as well, but I wanted to get these past two weeks posted, so I’m not SO far behind.

It’s been a busy couple weeks here at the homestead, and we still have nothing in the ground.  But good friends were in town, and we were able to see them and spend some fun time together.  I did contact someone about a dairy cow share (though it is SO expensive, I’m not sure if we’ll do it).  And I was able to get some yummy fruit!

I’ve struggled finding blog writing time, though I am finding I have a bit more to say these days.  Now if only I could manage to get both boys to nap at the same time, I might get to write it.

Plant something – nothing

Harvest something – eggs

Preserve something – nothing

Waste Not – compost and recycling

Want Not – Week 4: sold my small size cloth diapers.  Yay for recouping some of the cost, and rebuilding the kiddos bank account.  Also finally joined free cycle.  Planning on offering a few things on there next week.

Week 5: Rick finished the compost bin.  Unfortunately, H & Josie are fascinated with it and keep opening it up and then the chickens join in and we end up with compost over half the yard… so still a work in progress I guess on that front.

Build Community Food Systems – Week 4: 30 # organic heirloom tangelos from Arizona.  A farm friend got a bunch of boxes all at once and shared with friends.  And they are SO good!

Week 5: I called the landlord of the four-plex across the alley from us.  We’ve noticed that over the last few years, although they have a lovely mature green grape vine nobody ever harvests them.  So we asked and he said we could help ourselves (not sure if this really benefits anyone but us, but at least the grapes won’t be wasted)!

Eat the Food – used the last of the carrots and asparagus, two hams at Easter, tangelos for the ham glaze, can’t remember what else…

Um – also so big this week, I received my certification to teach!  yay!  I’ve went ahead and ordered my business cards and some charts!  Yay yay!!!

Categories: Food, Independence Days | 2 Comments

2010 Independence Days – Week 3

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Anisa

Plant something – we have volunteer spinach & lettuce!  (ok, I know that’s not planting, but yay)!  We did hit the garden center this week and came home with bucu seeds.  So far, I’m sad to say, nothing new has hit the dirt – but I’m not supposed to post what I haven’t done! 

Harvest something – eggs had a banner week for 2010 thus far: aprox 27!

Preserve something – nothing

Waste Not – compost and recycling. Rick worked on the compost bin construction this weekend.  It should be done next week! 

Want Not – so fortunate – Rick’s grandparents gave us a gift certificate to the garden center for Christmas, so we used two-thirds of it on seeds this week.  We have a little left to go towards tomato plants and any flowers I may want come April/May.  Also – we got a packet of seeds from Rick other grandpa – kholrabi from Slovakia!  These seeds are super special and we are so excited to plant them! 

Build Community Food Systems – served up all that green chili (I made aprox 3 gallons last Saturday) on Tuesday. 

Eat the Food – asparagus soup again (we had friends over),  carrots from the freezer for corned-beef & cabbage on Wednesday and pot roast on Friday (this was a beefy week – very unusual, we NEVER buy beef!),

No recipe to share this week.

Categories: Chickens, Food, Independence Days | 2 Comments

Let Them Eat Cake

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Anisa

When chicken food gets wet it disintegrates. H dumped the chicken water into the chicken food, making sort of a “mash” in the bottom of their round food pan. When I asked what he was doing, he said, “They’re having cake today.”

Categories: Chickens | 1 Comment

Wordless Wednesday: Better Than TV

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Anisa

Categories: Urban Homesteading | 2 Comments

Spring Cleaning!

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Anisa

Ok – the Spring Cleaning has officially begun around here.  It started out slow:  an hour in the garden last week, a little extra sweeping.  But it’s on the upswing now.  Sunday, after Rick installed the new washer, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon hand scrubbing the kitchen/laundry floor and baseboard.  I washed the lower cabinet doors and washed all the rugs.  I’ve been chipping away at the office piles and did load after load of laundry for twos days straight.

Over the last three or so years I use these checklists from Woman’s Day magazine to get me through my Spring Cleaning.  I also use a checklist from the Martha Stewart Homekeeping Handbook which now lives on a shelf above my laundry area (since I was most often referring to the laundry section in the book). 

Yesterday would have been a perfect day to wash the windows – nice and cloudy, but I really like to do this chore on a weekend when Rick is home.  The inside windows are no problem, but it’s the outside of the windows that I need someone else to keep an eye on the kiddos for.  I actually like doing this chore.  It’s kind of methodical and I love the way the house seems to sparkle when it’s done.

Today we are going to the garden center!  The To-Do list for this weekend seems to be getting longer and longer.  Garden chores, yard chores, and cleaning chores keep getting added to the list. 

What about you, have you started your spring cleaning?  Do you have a routine?  What do you do?

Categories: Urban Homesteading | 2 Comments

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