Independence Days Week 3

1) Plant:

We've been so wet here that it's been difficult to get more planting done, but I managed to squeeze some in this week, probably working the soil a bit too wet in the hoop house, so I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me.

This week I planted the gourdseed corn down in the grain test plot. I got some more lettuces planted in the hoop house: slo-bolt, red salad bowl, oakleaf, and salad bowl. And, the rain held off yesterday, so I finally got my basil in the market garden. I didn't get my tomato and pepper seedlings in yet, but at least they're growing, so there's no big rush there. Next weekend looks to be nice, and everything should be dry enough, so that's my big project on slate for then. That and the cotton—gotta get the cotton in. Oh, and the amaranth.


2) Harvest:

Harvested black seeded simpson lettuce, romaine, speckled romaine, red salad bowl and green salad bowl lettuces, green onions, chives, rosemary, thyme, oregano, dill, cilantro, turnips, radishes and chard.


3) Preserve:

Still working on clearing out old preserves: pesto, dried tomatoes, turkey. Jim vacuum sealed and froze remaining pork from last week's butchering.

4) Store:

Put up 50 pounds of baking soda and one bulk pack of toilet paper. Not gonna go crazy on the t.p., but having one back up package in case of shortages seemed to make sense. Let's face it, it'd be easy enough to switch to cloth, but it's gonna take a mini-crisis to manifest that change. It's the only paper product we still use on a regular basis, and the family has no desire to give up that little luxury.

5) Prep:

Jim finished with the shelving in my larder—yay! I'll be spending this rainy Sunday organizing everything down there. The shelves in the background are the new ones, creating even more usable storage space. The shelves on the right were stored up in the barn loft when we moved into the house. Jim was able to reassemble and anchor them directly into the wall last year. These are bomb-proof and hold all my canning jars at the moment.


6) Manage:

I spent Thursday working in the kitchen garden—weeding the garlic bed and clearing out the hoop house. I pulled the turnips, which were too hard hit by the slugs to be worth keeping. I sorted through and kept those and fed the rest to the piggies. I also pulled the arugula, which I was hoping to let go to seed, but it was creating too much slug habitat to leave in place. I brought two hens in again to help clear the bugs before I planted.

I also got the market garden weeded yesterday and put out the new agribon row cover I bought to help with the flea beetle damage on the brassicas.

7) Cook:

This week I made a lemon cake from scratch for my son's birthday. Unfortunately, he wanted the mix that his gramma makes, so it wasn't a huge hit.

8) Add:

CSA delivery to three families: eggs, red salad bowl lettuce, romaine, green salad bowl lettuce, swiss chard, oregano, dill, chives, cilantro, and radishes. Exchanged eggs with neighbor across the way who brought his tractor to help till a new bed Jim made for the kids in the front yard. He saw Jim using the hand tiller and the kids raking it out, so he drove over to help out. Gave 6 raspberry plants to neighbor next door.

9) Reduce:

Using packaging bags for trash can liners, since unrecyclable plastic is one of our few garbage items. This at least reuses them before throwing them away. I also purchased some reusable chico shopping bags to keep in my purse for stores other than the grocery. I'm good about grabbing my canvas bags for grocery shopping but often forget to grab them when shopping for other things, so this should further eliminate our plastic accumulation.

10) Learn:

Continued to learn about bees and installed my first nuc in their hive. Picked up second nuc yesterday evening and will install this week at first sunny weather. I learned about Housel positioning of the foundation after I installed the first nuc, so I'll be using that with the second hive. The efficacy of Housel positioning is questionable, but it should make for an interesting variable between the two hives.