It’s Friday and time for another check-in! I have to keep reminding myself that right now it seems easy to hit a goal in each of the Independence Days categories, but come January it’s going to be a bit more challenging.
Plant Something: Planted a few more onion sets in empty spaces in the raised bed where four more onion plants died back without bulbing. I’ve upped watering in the bed and the remaining older plants are starting to bulb instead of dying prematurely. Live and learn!
Harvest Something: Still early for most of my plants. I harvested a few more sprigs of rosemary and some chamomile flowers. A few green onions and basil leaves also made their way into the kitchen. Oh! We also picked 20 lbs. of strawberries at a local farm.
Preserve Something: Dried the rosemary and chamomile. But the major preserving was strawberries. Canned 8 pints of jam and froze a gallon of whole berries.
Waste Not: Drew pruned out some dead branches from our homicidal 10-story spruce in the front yard. He stripped and cut down the limbs for drying. We’ll use them in our outdoor cast iron stove. Other than that, we composted all yard and kitchen scraps.
Want Not: I scavenged 250 canning jars and rings from one of my mom’s friends who was throwing them out. I mended some of my pants that had developed rips around the pockets.
Eat the Food: Used the leftover yogurt from last week and the softer strawberries for smoothies before making a new batch of yogurt. Also ate all the leftovers so none ended up in the compost bin, yay!
Build community food systems: Took my parents with us to pick strawberries. I prefer to pick a year’s worth of berries there and support a small, local farmer than eat the flavorless, colorless factory farmed strawberries year-round.
Skill up: Learn to operate the pole pruner so we can handle more of the tricky pruning on our property.
How are your goals going?
