Yep, Another IDC Update! What A Surprise!

This past week:

Planted:  Transplanted banana pepper sprouts.  These guys hadn’t gotten any bigger in weeks, but they didn’t die.  It might be too late for them to produce fruit this season, but I planted them anyway.  I planted the whole “tray” the seedlings were in, since I’ve had almost zero success with my transplanting this year, especially with seedlings that are still small.  I dug a hole the size and shape of the plastic tray, then flipped the whole sheet of soil, seedlings and all, into the garden.  Then watered thoroughly, of course.  We’ll see if this is any more successful than the breaking apart each seedling method.  I now understand why doing many seedling per tray isn’t a good idea, and next year I’ll be using individual little pots instead.  One friend who does a gangbusters garden told me that she doesn’t even use the really little divided pots, because transplanting into a medium size pot and then transplanting again into the garden was just too hard on the plants.  So she starts her tomatoes, peppers, whatever in 3″ pots, which are big enough they can stay there until they go straight into the ground.  I’m taking notes for next year.

Harvested:  Apricots, peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Managed:  Mulched the potato bed?  Does that count?

Stored:  Nothing new.

Prepped:  Another firewooding trip with R.  I took home a half cord of top quality lodgepole.

Reduced waste:  The only thing I can think of above and beyond the ongoing composting is that I used yard-trimmed alfalfa to mulch the potato bed.  I spent some time gathering more cut thistles for the next trip to Kate’s, but didn’t deliver any more yet.

Advocated for local food economy:  Wore my Locavore Farms T-Shirt to my job at the library, and it got commented on by someone who didn’t know about the full extent of their farm!  They say their you-pick option will start up in early August, so I’m hot to spread the word about them as much as possible before then.  I also bought some stuff (jam, relish, onions, cabbage, zucchini bread) at this week’s farmer’s market.  Didn’t set up a table or sell anything, as R and I were heading out for the woodcutting day.

Cooked Something New:  Hard-boiled eggs in a solar oven!  Wasn’t sure it would work, but it did!  I just set two eggs in a small dish, no water.  I left them WAY too long (hours!) and they did get a bit overdone, just as eggs would if they were boiled way too long, but they were still tasty!  Next time I’ll pay attention to the time and see how long it takes to get soft-boiled and how long for hard-boiled.

Learned a New Skill:  Nothing I can think of, though R and I did have some challenging conversations this week that required me to interact with him in a different way than I used to.  There’s something about getting frustrated that makes it really hard to explain to someone WHY you’re frustrated, at least in a way that they can hear you and not shut down in self-defense.  We had some interactions where I tried some new approaches to expressing my concerns.  I’m usually a pretty clear-headed communicator, and it was really hard to realize that I had no idea the right way to say things so that he would understand what I was expressing.  I don’t think I actually learned a new skill, but perhaps opened a path that might eventually lead that way.

Yet Another IDC update…

Gee, whatever happened to all those OTHER posts I planned to make?  You know, the ones that are about something other than the IDC challenge?  I have a book to review, the Growing Challenge to report on (photo update soon), and sometimes just some interesting thoughts that almost seem blogworthy…  But each week, all of a sudden it’s time for the IDC report, and I discover I’ve made no other posts since the last update.  Oh well…

This past week:

Planted:  Brussels sprouts, cabbage, pumpkin, sprouted black beans.  Transplanted: Tomatoes, turnips, squash/melon (not sure which – start from a friend), honeydew melon, rhubarb.

Harvested: Peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Stored:  Nothing

Managed: Nothing

Prepped:  Went firewooding twice this week with R.  We each got a good load.  Nice lodgepole!

Reduced Waste:  Brought another load of thistles to Kate’s for her goats to eat.

Advocated for local food economy:  Sold a few garden starts at the Saturday farmer’s market.  Introduced myself to the other partner in the nearby organic farm and asked her about a CSA — she knew what it was AND seemed interested!  She said doing a CSA takes a lot of organizational skills and time, and she just happens to love that stuff!  And although she has been splitting her time between here and Portland, she says she’ll be around here from April through November next year.  So I’m very hopeful that we might have a CSA in the valley next year!  Wa-hoo!  Also in the local food economy category, someone brought some excess chard into the library, and I took with me what was left when I closed for the day, but since I already had plenty of farmer’s market chard at home, I gave the new bag to the auto mechanic (when I picked up the Geo Metro from getting its new timing belt and water pump).  He was not familiar with chard, so hopefully he and his family got a good introduction!

Cooked something new:  Nothing this week.

Learned a new skill:  Nothing I can think of this week.

Two Weeks of IDC belatedly updated

For the week ending July 6th:

Planted:  Nothing

Harvested:  Peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Stored:  25 lbs pinto beans.

Managed:  Nothing

Prepped:  Firewooding with R, got a half cord of lodgepole (went to him).  Ordered a scythe!

Cooked something new:  Sauteed farmer’s market chard & spinach from R’s garden, cooked like mushrooms with red wine (and onion and garlic and a bit of oil), then a dash of vinegar once it’s on the plate.  Needs more spices, otherwise good!

Advocated for local food economy:  Participated in the farmer’s market, selling garden starts from a friend’s garden.

Reduced Waste:  Trying to repair a weedwhacker instead of junking it after one part broke.  A recently-bought new one is so poorly-designed that it’s about to break as well, and I’m pondering returning it.  Then I bought a THIRD weedwhacker for $13 at a thrift store, am mostly using that.  (all this mess with problem weedwhackers became the motivation to order the scythe!)

Learned Something New:  Tried again using the sprouting screen.  Last time I tried to sprout very old red beans.  One or two sprouted, but most didn’t, and the whole thing just started to ferment pretty fast.  This time I’m sprouting freshly bought black beans.

Then, for the week ending July 13:

Planted:  No

Harvested:  Peas and one tiny strawberry

Preserved:  No

Stored:  No

Managed:  No

Prepped:  No

Cooked something new:  Baked a cake (from a mix) in the solar oven.

Advocated for local food economy:  Wore a T-shirt promoting the local organic farm/you-pick

Reduced Waste:   Started feeding the cat raw ground beef instead of cat food.  Even though the beef comes in plastic wrap and styrofoam, it’s a lot less packaging than can upon can of cat food.  I’ve had to feed him less and less at a time, so that he eats most of it right away and there is less food remaining in the bowl to spoil in the heat.

Learned Something New:  When I went to try the cake in the solar oven, I put it out very late in the day (6pm, and I live hard up against the east side of a mountain range, so the shadows cross my yard about an hour earlier than they do farther out in the valley).  So I left the cake out there all night — I did fold up the wings of the oven, since it was quite windy that night.  The next morning I didn’t have to leave until after 10am and I was hoping the cake would cook by then, but it was still pudding, so I left it while I was away, and came home to a yummy cake late that afternoon!