IDC: Week 7

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:

-started more seeds: 

-transplanted clove trees into bigger pots
-planted some wineberry starts i received from a friend

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

Milk

Sunchokes
Pig (well, actually it was a friend's pig but we helped butcher and bought half of it)

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:

-curing bacon and ham

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

-Rendering pig fat into lard
-Cleaning hairs from the pig to make our own paintbrushes
-Cleaned and packaged just about everything from the pig: bones, lungs, heart, pancreas, liver, kidneys, tongue
-Making head cheese from head of pig

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:

-bought 4 cases of Weck jars to try out canning this year. I've been warned they chip easily so I thought I'd start out with a few different styles and see what I like and if they are any good. I like that they are all glass.
-bought a bulk supply of Tattler lids for my existing canning jars. Not crazy about them being plastic, even if they are BPA free but I'm not sure the Weck jars are going to be durable enough and the Weck jars are expensive.

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: 

-eating lots of eggs and milk

-hard boiled eggs, deviled eggs, egg salad

-made yogurt, ice cream and cheese from our milk

-making butter with cream

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: 

-offering milk and eggs to my community

-offering herbal medicines to friends

-hosted monthly herbal study group

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: 

-still studying up on common and uncommon, infectious and non-infectious diseases and what herbal medicines would best be suited for them

-greg is reading up on making a still

-learned how to butcher a pig last weekend