IDC: Week 1

By popular demand, the Independence Days Challenge is back! Every Friday from February - September we are challenged to work on our skill set. Anyone can join in!

The categories and my responses:

Plant something: A lot of us were trained to think of planting as done once a year, but if you start seeds, do season extension and succession plant, you’ll get much, much more out of your garden, so I try and plant something every day from February into September.

Plant something: 

Placed my seed order for all my veggie and herb seeds for the year. 

Prepping last years' leftover crop of onions for this years' sets.

Harvest something: Everything counts – from the milk and eggs you get from your animals to the first dandelions from your yard to 50 bushels of tomatoes – it all counts.

Harvest something: 

Eggs. 

First 2 kids of the year were born this week so the count down to fresh milk is on!

Preserve something: Again, I find preserving is most productive if I try and do a little every day that there is anything, from the first dried raspberry leaves and jarred rhubarb to the last squashes at the end of the season.

Preserve something:

Nothing preserved this week but I have been updating our emergency water bottles with fresh water (some were dated as far back as 04/06, yikes!)

Waste not: Reducing food waste, composting everything or feeding it to animals, reducing your use of disposables and creation of garbage, reusing things that would otherwise go to waste, making sure your preserved and stored foods are kept in good shape – all of these count.

Waste Not: 

Fed chickens, dog and cats scraps; composted unfeedable scraps

Preparing onions with green tops for planting out

Want Not: Adding to your food storage or stash of goods for emergencies, building up resources that will be useful in the long term.

Want Not: 

Ordered several packets of Frontier Soups mixes. I hope to come up with my own blends to package for our storage in the future but wanted a few on hand to get us started. 

I've also been adding to our medical supplies and rebuilding our 72 hour kits.

Added more water filters for our Berkey water filter and misc. other items for our 72 hour kits.

Eat the Food: Making full and good use of what you have, making sure that you are getting everything you can from your food, trying new recipes and new cooking ideas, eating out of your storage!

Eat the Food: 

We've recently started a new diet including gluten-free so I've been trying out lots of new recipes, rebuilding my recipe book arsenal with recipes we can use. 

Also, getting down to the last bits of our side of beef so I made heart and tongue for dinner which freaked out the family but they were game and all but 1 tried it out and were surprised to find they LIKED it. :)

Digging up Sunchokes to eat

Build community food systems: What have you done to help other people have better food access or to make your local food system more resilient?

Build Community Food Systems: 

A friend of mine whom I've been talking food storage/prep with for quite awhile finally started storing food!

And a new one: Skill up:  What did you learn this week that will help you in the future – could be as simple as fixing the faucet or as hard as building a shed, as simple as a new way of keeping records or as complicated as making shoes.  Whatever you are learning, you get a merit badge for it – this is important stuff.

Skill Up: 

Studying up on uncommon diseases and making notes for herbal remedies (book mostly lists conventional meds which may not be available in a 'TEOTWAWKI' scenario). I like this book for the basic information but was sad to see they were narrow minded in their treatment offerings ie. no herbal remedies when antibiotics were warranted. The book would have been 10 times better if they had included that information.