Lisa Zahn

Okay, I guess I'm mixing my idioms there, but I thought it sounded good. A couple days ago I took home from work at the co-op an entire case of cherries. Each bag had several moldy cherries in it and it wasn't acceptable for sale, so the co-op got credit and I got to take them home. For free! Well, except for the hours of labor and $20 worth of rum and the cost of the sugar and canning jars that it took to make Rumtopf (photo below) and jam. George and I picked them over for moldy ones, which we fed to the compost. Briefly, we thought about freezing the moldy ones for future chicken feed but found out online that mold kills chickens fast! Good to know...We washed the good ones in a sinkful of water with a few drops of 35% hydrogen peroxide added into it (thanks to Jess for sending us the H2O2 as a produce wash, btw). Then Rose and I pitted them with paper clips. Super easy technique, but hard on the back and fingers. Rose lasted 1/2 an hour and earned 50 cents for it. That ha...

I've not been posting these updates weekly because I got a little bored of it, but I thought today would be a good time because so much is happening in the garden. It is the month of the "Wort Moon", when such an abundance of plants and herbs (worts) are blooming and ready for harvest. George lying amongst the "tall grasses" of the one flower/weed bed we've done nothing with yet. This challenge has inspired and motivated me to no end. I was just thinking yesterday on how much more free time we seem to have, even with working so hard on the garden and food challenges. That is because we’re not off driving to places but are staying home so much more. I woke up yesterday morning with a strong desire to just "drive to Duluth" which in the past we would have done no problem. But of course now the cost of the 2 and 1/2 hour drive is prohibitive, and we'll only do it once this summer when we have planned for it. Spontaneous driving trips are out, but ...