Independence Days Challenge 2012 – Week 12

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!

Hey folks!  I realized I didn’t even mention my peach tree in yesterday’s garden update, but it’s almost time to do the final thinning.  The peaches are about the size of a pit at the moment, but I hear you want to thin more around the size of ping pong balls, so I’ll wait another week or so.  I’ve already thinned some though – this tree set a ridiculous amount of fruit!

Plant Something:  A little bit of cilantro.  Hoping for enough to make cilantro pesto in the near future.  Also, the sweet potato and tomato cutting from last week have sprouted, yay!

Harvest Something: Herbs, spinach, mesclun mix, radishes, a few snow peas.

Preserve Something: Yes!  I made pickled radishes out of my bumper crop!  It’s the first time I’ve made them, and they’re pretty good, but I think next time I would make them just a bit sweeter.

Waste Not:  Used up some brownish limes on tilapia last night, as well as eating up some mashed potatoes that I had previously frozen.  Reminder – do not freeze mashed potatoes again.

Want Not:  Not much in this department this week, but I need to seriously examine my grocery planning habits.  Clearly menu planning doesn’t work for me, but I need to plan something, so I’ll be working on this.

Eat the Food:  Still steadily working through the canning.  The quart of peaches from last week are almost gone, and I’m baking apple pie in a jar for a family get together this weekend.

Build Community Food Systems:  I visited a new-to-me farmer’s market that is open on Wednesdays.  Got a few things there, but overall I was disappointed.  I thought it was a bigger market than that.  Maybe it’s bigger later in the season, but I think I’ll stick to my local market, unless I need to make a mid week egg run before my hens start laying.

Skill Up: Not exactly I skill I learned, but I managed to catch up on our expense tracking (we were about 4 months behind).  I consider this to be working on “independence from money” so I think it’s fitting for this post.😉

Previous Weeks:  Week 11 | Week 10 | Week 9 | Week 8 | Week 7 | Week 6 | Week 5 | Week 4 | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1