Independence Days Challenge 2012 – Week 8

Producing more food for my family and becoming generally more self-sufficient has been one of my long time goals now, so I was excited to see the Independence Days Challenge is back on Sharon Astyk’s excellent blog The Chatelaine’s Keys. So each week on Thursdays I’m going to post what I’ve done in each category in the past week.  I’m hoping that this will be the additional motivation I need to reach real food independence!

The garden is growing, growing, growing!  I’ll be posting a full garden update soon, but until then, here’s a little taste of what’s going on out there…

Now on to the update!

Plant Something:  More mesclun mix, more radishes, beets, kohlrabi, corn.

Harvest Something: Herbs, a little spinach, a few radishes, and some arugula (you have to hunt around for the tender leaves on a bolted plant).

Preserve Something: Nope.  Been eating it all. 😉

Waste Not:  Food scraps have started to go to the chickens and the worms, so I feel like they’re going to even better use than the compost pile now.  We also roasted a chicken this week and made stock of the bones and some celery that had seen better days in the fridge.

Want Not:  Yes!  I am proud to announce that we just bought into a meat CSA from Riverview Farms up in northwest Georgia (about an hour drive from us).  The offer grass fed beef and heritage pork (also pastured).  They also have a vegetable CSA, but since I’m trying to grow most of my own veggies this year, I don’t think we’ll need it.  The meat CSA will be 16 pounds a month, and since 1) there’s only three (.5) of us, 2) one of those three is a toddler, and 3) we’re not huge meat eaters I think our freezer is going to stock up pretty quickly.

Eat the Food:  Ina Garten’s Lemon and Garlic Roast Chicken, on a bed of baby root vegetables I picked up at the farmer’s market.

Build Community Food Systems:  I think the meat CSA definitely qualifies as building community food systems.  I also got to the farmer’s market downtown this week, as my own local market is opening in two weeks.  I have actually stepped into the grocery store very little this week, so I’m kind of proud of myself.

Skill Up:  I built a worm bin!  The worms are scant at the moment because I’m trying to forage for them, but I’m pretty happy with the results.  Here are the worm bin instructions that I followed.  I’m also including a picture of the pea trellis I mentioned in the previous ID update.

How did your week go?

Previous Weeks:  Week 7 | Week 6 | Week 5 | Week 4 | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1