Independence Days Challenge Update 5/30/08

Another week when it feels like I didn’t get much done, but once I look more carefully, there is progress…

Planted:  Peppermint (starts), echinacea (seeds), and… wait for it…  potatoes!  Finally!  For seed potatoes, I used the last of our garden potatoes from last year, that had gone wrinkly and sprouty in the bucket.  They were mostly russets with a few yukon golds.  I experimented a bit, planting some “nodes” in addition to the seed potatoes, to see if the nodes sprout too.

Harvested:  Nothing this week.

Preserved:  Nothing this week.  I still haven’t even retrieved the onions I put in the dehydrator lo these many weeks ago now.  We’ve had an almost-unheard-of week and a half of daily rain, ending finally today, so I imagine the onions might have dried during the heat wave when I put them out, and then re-hydrated and maybe even molded during the humidity of the rainy days.  I’ll check them tomorrow…

Stored:  Finally got buckets and gamma seal lids of the same size, and put one bag of basmati rice into a gamma sealed bucket.  I’ve seen mouse droppings in the cupboard, so I need to better store several paper bags of stuff — flour, beans, etc.  to keep them away from mice and other critters.

Prepped:  Made good progress on the garden bed digging and fence installation.  Received the grain mill and solar oven pot from Lehman’s, but haven’t opened the box yet.  Received my co-op order with some things I listed in this category last week — T-posts for the fence, wheat berries, baking soda, and four 5-gallon buckets.  I forgot, when writing last week’s post, that I also ordered a sprouting screen.  I’ve never sprouted before, figured it was time to learn.  One thing I’m tempted to count as a “prep” is that I started a new job this week — it will be 16 hours a week and last probably 2 months, maybe 3.  The hourly wage for this job is double what any of my other jobs pay (it’s a reading/writing assignment for the Forest Service, where I used to work, and they brought me back at the same fairly high pay rate I was at when I quit).  While the specific project doesn’t really excite me, I decided to do it as a way to assess how I would feel about returning to work there (I left this particular office in 2003, and left the government entirely in 2004).  They seem like they’d be interested in having me back, and while I do NOT want to go back in the same position I was in before, there are some other opportunities that do appeal to me.  My primary dilemma would be that 1) I don’t want to give up the part-time jobs I currently have, even though they don’t pay well and don’t offer benefits, and 2) I don’t really want to return to full time work, especially as I’m trying to get more into gardening and other home projects.  Anyway, so this project is kind of a “check it out” situation for me.  The reason I consider it as a “prep” is this:  I would really like to own my own home/property once again.  Returning, even for a year or two (assuming the economy lasts that long) to a comfortable salary, while still living as minimally as I can, would allow me to save a significant amount each year which could go toward the purchase of land/home.  I’m in a rental house now, for the first time in over ten years, and I DON’T LIKE IT!  I want my own place, hopefully in time to do specific preps there like plant fruit trees and other perennials that need a few years to get established, to insulate, and put in a woodstove if it doesn’t have one, etc.  Lots of things you can’t really do in advance, you have to be on the land to see what’s the right way to prepare.  So my first goal in preparation (in addition to preparing by stocking up and by learning skills) is to move towards being able to buy a place again. 

Managed:  I didn’t rescue the dying carrots yet.  Maybe planting the potatoes before they moldered counts?  Began sprouting process with decade-plus old red beans.  I’ll taste the sprouts if they sprout, but I’d also like to see if sprouted beans will grow if planted!

Cooked Something New:  Not this week.

Worked on Local Food Systems:  When my friend the herbalist offered me MORE catnip (she said it’s one of her primary weeds in her garden), I told her that anytime I that will be sitting at the farmer’s market with things to sell, I’ll be happy to sell catnip starts for her as well.  So she will pot up a bunch of tiny ones, and I’ll offer them!  Farmer’s market starts June 14th.

Reduced Waste:  Well, my cat litterbox experiment seems to be working (see below), and it will (but hasn’t yet) reduce my use of commercially-produced kitty litter.  I also gave my cat a raw egg to see how he would like it.  I’m pondering giving him “real” food — chicken, egg, etc — instead of prepared cat food.  He’s finally gaining some weight back after being painfully skinny, but he’s becoming picky about which cat food he likes — this brand this week, something else next week.  This is producing a lot of waste, both uneaten food as well as lots of cans.  If I can make him real food, that would be a win-win!  He eventually ate the egg, but it took a few days.  Next I think I’ll try hard-boiling it to see if he likes that better.  The main obstacle to me giving him regular meat, either raw or cooked, is that I don’t have a freezer.  I’d have to buy just a few days’ worth at a time and keep it in the fridge.  Or, I might actually consider getting a small freezer, since it would be really handy as a food preservation option anyway (at least as long as there’s available electricity).

Learned a New Skill:  Started a jar of sprouts using my new sprout screen.  I also set up a second kitty litter box which contained thinly cut strips of shiny paper (ie junk catalogs).  I didn’t think Bear (the cat) would use it, since he also had the regular litter box right next to it, but today I noticed that he has peed in the new box!  This week I might try swapping places so that the paper strips box is in the usual litterbox place and the commercial litter is nearby.  If this works then I can stop buying cat litter and use junk mail instead!

Unwritten Posts

I’ve fallen behind on many things this spring, including blog posts.

I know I owe a book-review post for the book(s) I’ve read for Green Bean’s May Bookworm Challenge.

I probably need to write a few more musing-type posts about my mental/emotional adjustments to the stresses I experienced last winter and on into the spring.

I’m *months* behind on my Riot for Austerity tallies.

But this morning I was reminded of another post I forgot to make, when someone found this blog by searching for “I can’t get my gamma seal lid on the bucket”.  During an Independence Days Challenge report last month, I’d described similar trouble when I bought some gamma seal lids and then attempted to install one on a storage bucket I already had.  The storage buckets were purpose-bought for food storage from a co-op from whom that would be the expected intended use.  The lids said they fit “almost all buckets between 3.5-7 gallons”.  My buckets were 4 gallons, comfortably within that range.  And yet.  Even so.  The lids would not fit.  The buckets were too small in diameter. 

This last month I ordered 5-gallon buckets from the verysame co-op, and lo and behold, whaddaya know.  The lids fit!  I didn’t even need the rubber mallet I’d been advised to use — the ring part of the lid was, first of all, quite apparently the same size as the bucket.  It fit easily over the rim.  I pushed down, used a bit of force, walked my hands around the edge, and *snap*!  The ring attached itself to the bucket lip.  So easy!  So obvious!  It’s now screamingly apparent that the other buckets were simply too small for these lids, but since I’d never done it before, I had no way of knowing what was within the “push harder, it will work” range and what was outside it.  Now I know. Hope that helps you too, mystery googler…

Independence Days Challenge Update

Wow, I had a really unproductive week from the perspective of the Challenge.  Although, part of the reason was because I had some extra paid work time I had to spend this week, so it wasn’t entirely unproductive overall.  Mainly I just was feeling lethargic, plus we had some really weird weather that didn’t help — 90s F over last weeked, which was really too hot to work well outside, though I did quite a bit anyway, then turning chilly, windy, and wet on Monday, making it unappealing to work outside, especially pre- and post-business hours.  So, here’s the wimpy tally:

Plant Something:  Well, I planted the rest of the catnip (in pots) that my friend gave me.  This doesn’t really mean anything other than I was lazy enough last week to only plant some of them, so I’m not sure it should count.  However, since I planted nothing else this week, I’ll count it :)  I didn’t transplant anything either.  It was all I could do to keep things watered and thus alive.  Oh wait!  A neighbor brought me some spring onions, and I’ve been eating the tops and planting the bottom inch.  I have three sprouting.  So, I guess I did plant something!

Harvested:  Nothing, unless I can count the cat gnawing on the catnip.

Preserved:  Nope.  Those test onions are still outside in the dehydrator; in my lethargy this week, I *looked* at them a few times, but did not open up the screens to see how dry they actually were.  And now that it’s been raining for 2 days…  I’ll just leave them for another while and see what happens…

Stored:  Took possession of a bucket of limp root cellar carrots from R’s.  These need to show up in the ‘managed’ category soon, by my making soup or something from them, before they’re post-consumer.  Also stocked up another 30 pounds of dog food.

Managed:  I bought a toilet seat for my, uh, ‘nitrogen bucket.’  Should be much more comfortable than that sharp-edged bucket rim! 

Prepped:  Last weekend I did quite a bit of digging garden beds and working on the garden fence.  Still lots to go before I’m done, though.  Our typical frost-free date is the end of May, though if there’s a nice-weather opportunity this weekend I might plant something sturdy like potatoes before that. Placed my co-op order which includes some 5-gallon buckets that should fit the gamma seal lids I already have.  Also ordered ten T-posts which are destined for the garden fence.  Also ordered some wheat berries, which I’ve never worked with or even seen before, and 5 pounds of baking soda, mostly as a cleaning agent (and for cleaning up pet messes on carpet, which I’m once again dealing with, since the rental is mostly carpeted).

Cooked Something New:  Thought I was a bust on this one, but then I remembered that I did, inadvertently.  I made some black beans recently, ate from them one night, then put the pot in the fridge.  Several days later, when I looked in the pot, it had started to get a ‘going bad’ film over it.  I scooped away the film, then rinsed and smelled the beans — they still smelled ok.  So then I put a little oil in a cast iron pan and sizzled up the beans, and discovered… …refried beans!  Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.  I’d never known how or tried to make them before.  They were good!

Advocate for Local Food Systems:  Hmm.  I took possession of a tomato plant from a friend — we’d agreed to give each other one of the unusual varieties we were trying.  He gave me one labeled “Ping Pong”, and I owe him a  Marvel Stripe.  However, what he brought me is well over a foot tall and ready to go into the ground.  My Marvel Stripe starts are about 3″ tall and just getting their second set of leaves.  I think my friend has a greenhouse.  I’ll wait a few weeks and them give him the best start I’ve got…  Also, I attended the open house for the community radio station I mentioned last week.  It’s not directly about a local food system, but I do believe that the intention of the station owners is to use the station to help create the kind of localized community that a local food effort would require.  I contined to tell people about the new farmer’s market (starts June 14) and to plan which of my starts are destined to be offered there.  And, my neighbor brought me a bunch of spring onions, as I mentioned.  They were volunteers from her last year’s garden.  I gave half of them to a girlfriend and am eating/planting my way through the rest.  I offered the neighbor a catnip plant in return, but she already had all she needs.

Reduced Waste:  Nothing this week.

Learned a Skill:  Nothing this week.

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.

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.

Who Knew? The Lemon Balm Was Listening…

The day after I posted a “come in” call for the Lemon Balm, it sprouted!  Two little dabs of green rose up overnight.  No such luck with the Ground Cherry — maybe it needs a second pleading here?  Come on,  baby, you can do it!  And let’s hear from some of the other plants that have only sprouted ONE sprout…

Thursday’s Independence Days Challenge actions:

* Growing Food:  I dug *part* of a garden bed, pruned *part* of an apple tree, and *started* to set up a compost pile.  I don’t really want to count things that I only partway do, especially since I have a history of starting what I don’t finish.  But I do want to report the progress.

* Food planning/Eating from storage:  Soaking some *really old* red beans that I’m finally using up.  They’ll go in the crockpot Friday and be dinner, with some rice.

* Eating from storage:  Thursday’s dinner, along with a salad, was baked potatoes and roasted beets, both grown in last year’s garden and root cellared ’til now.  (Hey, if they’re both in the same oven, how can one be baked and the other be roasted?  I guess they’re baked beets then…)

In other news, I’ve taken the next step towards a new part-time summer job that looks like it will see me once again earning more than I’m spending, at least for a few months.  It also has the potential to turn into a full-time job with benefits, etc after the summer, but I’m not sure I want that, so I’m not focusing on that for now — first, I’ll just see how the summer goes and see how I feel about any other opportunities later.  More details once it’s official.

At home, I’ve unpacked a few more boxes, moved around a little more furniture.   A little at a time, pressing myself to keep making small progresses, seems to work best for me, rather than planning an all-out long slog of a day, which I usually end up slothing and not doing.  You could say it’s the same kind of mentality needed for the Independence Days Challenge, which is why I’m hoping that challenge will be a good one for me to participate in.

Dipper Gourd Ho! Honeydew Ho! Come In, Ground Cherry and Lemon Balm?

Growing Challenge update:  A dipper gourd seed has sprouted!  Just one.  In addition, I have one and only one healthy-looking Afghan Honeydew sprout, one and only one small Banana Pepper sprout.  The Mesclun Mix sprouts (a couple of dozen) are about 2 inches high.  A dozen or so Turnip sprouts, and half a dozen or so Rhubarb sprouts.  Still no sign of Ground Cherry or Lemon Balm.

In other garden seed-starting news, my healthy and fast-growing Cilantro sprouts were, I just realized, seeds packed for 2000 — eight years ago!  That’s encouraging to me that they stayed viable for so long.  On the other hand, the Simpson Lettuce seeds from 1995 have not shown any response yet.

I notice that I’m reluctant to plant seeds in groups of 2 or 3 as is often suggested, with instructions to thin out the smaller ones and keep the healthiest sprout in each spot.  Each seed feels too valuable to me to risk “wasting” them by thinning.  Where I have room, I’m instead just trying to sprout extra seeds, far enough apart that I can keep all those who grow.  But in a few cases I might have to thin a bit.  I’m also trying to decide when to just plant what I would want for myself (I don’t need more than 1-2 squash plants, for example, of each variety) or when I should plant many and then offer the starts for sale at the early farmer’s markets.  The market will be starting in early June, and I doubt there will be much for sale there at first, since that’s just about outdoor planting time around here!  Only what people have started indoors or in cold frames might be ready by then, and since this is a new farmer’s market, I don’t know that many people are growing for it.  Which might make any starts I have to offer that much more interesting.

In related news…

Sharon Astyk has presented a challenge she is calling the Independence Days Challenge.  You can read about it here.  The bottom line of the challenge is to do something each day for one year that forwards your level of independence:  plant something, harvest something, learn a new skill, cook something new, preserve food and manage your storage, help create/sustain a local food economy (or a local economy for anything sustainable or subsistence oriented, for that matter).  I’m going to try to do something that fits this challenge each day.  I might not post about it every day, but I will try to post at least weekly, listing my Independence Days Challenge activities for that week.  So far, for example, I have:

• Monday April 28 — I volunteered sorting orders at my local food co-op, and took possession of my own order, which included some bulk/storage food (25# rice, 25# black beans, 15# sugar, 3 gallons olive oil), and some food storage items (four gamma seal lids for 5-gallon buckets).  My order also included six organic butternut squash starts and six organic delicata squash starts.
• Tuesday April 29 — I planted eggplant seeds in a pot indoors.
• Wednesday April 30 — I planted Principe Borghese tomato seeds in a pot indoors.

See how easy?  That’s the idea, that each day’s action might take only a few seconds or minutes, but the challenge is to keep it up on a daily basis.  Come play along!