Independence Days Challenge Update

This past week, I:

Planted:  in containers:  Beets, more Ground Cherry (the others never sprouted), more Brussels Sprouts (request to grow them from a friend), Cilantro (second batch, aiming for continual harvest), Marvel Stripe tomato, onion (seeds), catnip.

Planted:  outdoors:  Catnip, strawberries, stinging nettle, valerian.  Discovered that my oak barrel blueberries (which are still at R’s house) are alive!  I didn’t think they’d survive the winter.  I know that’s not a new planting, but it means I don’t need to buy and plant more blueberries!  And it also means they can survive the local winters.

Transplanted, pot to bigger pot:  Dipper Gourd, Honeydew Melon. 

Harvested:  Nothing this week.

Preserved:  Set some onions out to dehydrate — just did this Friday morning, so they’re still out there.  Not sure how to know when they’re dry enough!

Prepped:  Set up the dehydrator, washed off two of the screen trays, testing it out now with one tray of onions.  Ordered a Lehman’s Best Grain Mill, plus a small black speckleware pot that looks to be a good size for the solar oven or [future potential] haybox cooker.  Dug more garden beds, pounded a few more fenceposts for the garden fence.

Managed:  Made a big pot of Jerusalem artichoke soup when I realized I still had a whole bucket of them from the root cellar at R’s.  Followed the recipe properly this time. :)  On the downside, I only had two meals from it before it spoiled (I left it out on the counter, thinking I’d reheat it every day, but the weather got hot FAST and soup didn’t sound appealing and I didn’t remember about it in time to put it in the fridge…)

Advocated for Local Food Economy:  shared my organic onions and oranges with my herbalist friend/employer.  She brought me nettles, catnip, and valerian from her garden, and shared some of her organic kiwi from the store.  Agreed to grow Brussels Sprouts for a friend.  (I asked if he wanted me to grow him some starts, and he said no, he just wanted to buy the finished product at the farmer’s market!)  Started collecting ”disposable” food containers — a yogurt cup, a takeout soup container, a tofu tray, a cherry tomato ‘basket’, a tin can, etc — to put extra seedling starts in, for giving to friends or for selling at the farmer’s market.

Other Local Economy Happenings:  Okay, this is neither about food nor is it about me, but I just have to share — we now have on the air a ‘community radio’ station!  It just started this week, and it’s run by the husband of the woman who owns the wi-fi cafe, the same woman who is starting a commercial kitchen (the kitchen is her new project — the wi-fi cafe is transferring ownership to the manager, who is the one adding the new farmer’s market on the cafe’s front porch on Saturday mornings — are you keeping this all straight? :)  Right now the station is just music, but he plans to add local shows — perhaps a someone doing a cooking or gardening show, perhaps someone else doing an astronomy show talking about what the night sky is doing each month, etc.  It’s a great new piece of local infrastructure for this very remote, rural community, that could be used in so many wonderful ways in the future!  The music is “western”, I guess you’d call it — certainly not top 40 country, but definitely cowboy-y.  But also funny!  Hard to describe.  And I simply love their call letters for this “wild west” flavored community — they are KDUP — pronounced K-D-up — say it out loud — get it?  Giddyup!  :))

Cooked Something New:  Millet.  Soaked it overnight and cooked it like rice for breakfast, with soymilk and salt.  I oversalted it, but even accounting for that, I thought it was only so-so.  The taste was bland but not unpleasant, but the texture was unfamiliar.  I think it’s likely that I undercooked it without realizing it.  What I’m learning is that my food tastes are very much about habit — I come to crave certain tastes, textures, and temperatures in my food, and something that doesn’t meet those cravings is hard to find satisfying.  This is all the more reason, as far as I can tell, to keep trying new things and building up a tolerance for them, against the time when it’s essential to eat whatever’s available.

Reduced Waste:  I began collecting those ‘throwaway’ containers to use for giving away starts.  On the other hand, I cooked lots of food that didn’t get eaten, and even though it gets composted, that still seems like waste.

Learned A Skill:  Nothing this week, although the whole process of starting seedlings indoors and then transplanting them is new to me, and garden bed digging and fence-building is not something I’d done much of, so I’m definitely adding to those skills.