Independence Days Challenge: Week Two

The backyard veggie patch, just waiting for sprouting...
Leaning curly willow still needs a home.

So here's my update on what I've done this week toward the goal of greater self-sufficiency. Self-suffiency is something I've always wanted more of, and always thought smart. In these times of hyperinflation, it's become ever more important, even urgent for many of us. By the way, here's a great article I just read explaining the hyperinflation and the difficult times we're in (despite the cheery news we keep hearing from the Fed and mainstream media; you all know what you're facing at the grocery, the gas pump, the doctor's office)...


1. Planted: 154 onion sets; 1 full head garlic bulbs (about ten bulbs to try–should plant in fall in MN); 1 square foot of mesclun mix lettuce; 1 sq. ft. red oak leaf lettuce; 8 sq. ft. carrots; 8 sq. ft. beets. Much of this is late, but hey it’s planted now! Also started parsley seedlings (late) and thinned the tomato seedlings.


2. Harvested: chives, sorrel, not much else. I regularly tell the kids to go eat some herbs out of the herb bed, and they do!
3. Preserved: nothing but keep buying supplies for it (lids, sugar, more jars at a garage sale, etc.); made small batch of sauerkraut that's too salty!

4. Stored: 3 quarts of grapeseed oil; cat food; cases of frozen gluten-free bread and pizza crusts

5. Prepped: George got a truck-load of compost from city site and we put it on the garden beds; added coffee grounds (in large bags from Starbucks) and peat moss to compost in garden beds; picked many many rocks and plastic trash bits from city compost; added chicken wire and grids to raised square foot beds–chicken wire is to keep my cat from using the beds as a litter box but they're a bit hard to plant around
6. Managed: caring for seedlings daily; daily weeding garden and flower beds; had a “self serve” plant sale on the boulevard and made about $3 because most plants I gave to my neighbors

7. Cooked: tried a new Curry Split Pea Soup recipe because green split peas are available from a local farmer–would taste better with yellow split peas though

8. Local food: work on this regularly at my job, a food co-op; have been encouraging customers to buy local as much as possible, especially when they complain about rising gas prices...

That's the neighbors tall quackgrass on the other side of the fence.
Yes, it's a rental and the landlord/slumlord only makes it up
from the Cities about twice a summer for yard work.

9. Reduce waste: keep adding to compost pile; used city compost so I didn’t have to buy it in plastic bags; picked up coffee grounds at Starbucks

10. Learn a skill: um, cooking Curry Split Pea Soup?; cutting chicken wire for garden (ha ha–too easy to count, isn’t it?)