independence days - week 9

since i'm struggling to get the garden in again this year due to my rambunctious toddler, i thought taking the id challenge would be a good moral booster for me. i try to practice this idea anyway during the growing seasons so it's a great reminder of how much i really do even when it feels like i don't.

this has been a week of putting out fires. 4 gallons is a massive amount of cherries to pit by hand (note to self, look into buying a pitter AND a harvest basket that straps to body). clover is giving me a steady 1/2 gallon a day and increasing. harvesting honey was no easy task but a delicious one! i felt bad that we took the honey but the local beekeeper reassured us it wasn't bad since there was so much blooming right now, they would make it up quickly. and sheesh, they filled this super in 10 days plus started capping it off.

we lost 4 more broilers. we are down to 16 now. we started with 30 with all the free ones. i'm pretty disappointed. round two arrives next week. hopefully we'll do better with them. the turkeys are thriving though. they are so sweet with all their whistles and chirps. thanks to the advice of giving the turkeys raw eggs/yogurt. i happened to have a bunch of old (like 2 years - i can't throw anything out!) frozen eggs that i've been feeding the turkeys. at first, they didn't want it but now, they attack it. i also give them curdled milk. i need to handle them to get them friendly.

1. plant something:
^nothing, nada, zip!

2. harvest something:
^eggs, milk
^4 gallons cherries
^1 super of honey (we had to remove it because greg put together the frames wrong although all was well when we pulled it off)

3. preserve something:
^milk - yogurt, cheese
^5 quarts cherry pie filling
^2+ gallons honey

4. prep something:
^purchased 1 gallon of honey from local beekeeper
^pitting and prepping cherries for drying purposes (recipe recommends freezing before drying)
^write up shopping/wish list for auction we'll be attending on saturday
^contacted seed store to inquire about purchasing seed for hay/pasture

5. cook something:
^added lamb's quarters in with hamburger as spinach substitute

6. manage your reserves:
^weeded garden like crazy and mulched as much as possible
^kids and i cleaned out the basement to start organizing for food storage

7. work on local food systems:
^sold eggs and jellies at local farmer's market
^gave tour of garden to local garden club leaders
^set up date to give tour to another interested party (won't be until august)

8. reduce waste:
^use canvas bags at grocery store and farmer's market
^re-use egg cartons for our nest run eggs

9. Learned a skill:
^made yogurt w/o electricity (used an old styrofoam omaha steak cooler my parents had given me years ago that i unearthed in the basement)
^learning how to extract honey w/o an extractor