Off To A Pretty Good Start

I’m liking how the psychology of the Independence Days Challenge is working — I notice myself thinking “hmm, will I have enough to report?” and looking around for things to do.  I even postponed writing (or at least finishing) this post until I went and did certain things, so that I could report them.  This is the kind of motivation that works well for me.

This past week, I:

Planted:  Peas and onion sets in pots inside; peas outside.

Harvested:  Dandelion leaves and flowers.  Ate them in tonight’s salad.  I was more creeped out by this than I expected to be.  First I rethought the calendar for this house, to reassure myself that they couldn’t have been sprayed by the previous tenants.  Then I harvested them from outside the fenced yard, to minimize the possibility of them having been peed on by the dog.  Then I rinsed them well before putting in the salad.  The leaves didn’t creep me out, it was the flowers with all the hidden nook and crannies where mystery bugs might hide.  This is all rather amusing to me, since I’m not normally creeped out by bugs.  But perhaps it’s the difference between seeing them and eating them that got to me.  Anyway, I ate them all.  I even ate one or two flowers without a mouthful of rest-of-salad, just to see what it was like.  I didn’t notice a distinctive taste to the flowers, but somehow they tasted good anyway.  The leaves were a bit bitter, but no moreso than some other greens.

Preserved:  Nothing.

Stored:  Put the black beans bought recently into a mouseproof bucket.  Am I the only idiot who can’t figure out the “so-easy-a-kid-can-do-it” gamma seal lids?  I have a standard 4 gallon bucket, and a lid that clearly says “fits nearly all 3.5-7.0 gallon buckets.”  But the ring is way too big to go over the rim of my bucket!  The rim is nearly big enough to go around the OUTSIDE of the bucket, which doesn’t make sense (since the rubber seal is up inside the upside-down-U of the ring) but I tried it that way anyway and for a while thought it was how it was supposed to go.  Argh — I gave up and just snapped the regular bucket lid on.  That’s sufficient for mouseproofing, and I probably have more perishable items to gamma seal than black beans, but darn, I wanted to at least figure out how it worked!  Anyone have a clue what I was doing wrong?

Prepped:  Dug about 100 square feet of new garden bed.  Started to accumulate materials for garden fence and plan the location, but haven’t actually put any posts in the ground yet.  Set up a two-section compost bin made of old pallets.   Set up and began using a urine bucket in the bathroom, to which 10x water will be added and the result poured either on the garden directly or into the compost.  Pruned more fruit trees:  I’m on tree #5 out of 14, and I started with the small ones, so I might not be able to do all 14 if my ladder doesn’t prove tall/stable enough for the high branches.  Ordered a Diva Cup per Crunchy’s challenge.

Managed:  Cooked some REALLY old red beans (as in, more than a decade old!) and some only moderately old brown rice (almost 2 years old) and ate it for 3-4 meals throughout the week.  Also, some of the seeds I planted (the peas this week, some cilantro and lettuce planted earlier) were from OLD seeds.  Thirteen-year-old peas have already sprouted, as have eight-year-old cilantro seeds!  No sign of the 13-year-old lettuce, though. 

Cooked something new:  Tried making Naan as per badhuman’s recipe mentioned in earlier post.  Did something wrong, only marginally edible result, need to try again, but it was a good learning experience.  Similarly, experimented with the remnants of the red beans and rice as soup, which got overspiced and underspiced at the same time (don’t ask, I’m really good at things like that) and only a small bit was eaten, the rest composted.

Worked Toward Local Food System:  Talked to several friends/community members, some of whom are gangbuster gardeners, and informed them about the new farmer’s market starting up next month, and encouraged them to sell seed starts there, and to be a customer there as well.  Made tentative plans to sell some of my own starts, whatever I have that is excess to my needs for my own garden or what I plan to trade directly with friends.  But didn’t take any action on that (other than continuing to water the extra sprouts) so that doesn’t really count.  I did buy some organic produce I wouldn’t normally buy from my local grocery (a sack of oranges, a sack of yellow onions) to show my support that they have started carrying organic produce.  I know organic is a far cry from local, but as compared to what they carried before, it seemed like a step in the right direction to me.

Reduced Waste:  Composting food waste is the norm for me, nothing new.  The urine bucket in the bathroom should count as reducing waste, though — fewer flushes!

Learned A New Skill:  Well, both tree-pruning and bucket-peeing are mostly unfamiliar activities that are becoming more familiar, but I think it’s pushing it to call those new skills.  Naan-baking doesn’t count until I get it right.  I didn’t even practice knitting this past week.  So I guess I don’t have anything in this category this time.