Independence Day #3

1. Plant something: corn, green beans x2, black beans, Lena Cisco’s Bird Egg beans, spinach, lettuce, radishes, amaranth, transplanted tomatoes, basil, cauliflower, broccoli

2. Harvest something: oregano, rosemary, green onions, sage, mint, parsley

3. Preserve something: Started my first batch of Kombucha… does that count? Still working on vanilla extract.

4. Preparation and Storage: Labeled pantry, decided on a few other organization things that need to get done…

5. Cook something/Eat the Food: husband and I decided that our jam next year would be much more fruit and much less sugar (after eating several kinds of jam on our sandwiches this week)

6. Manage your reserves: Used some of the older grains I had hiding in my ucky pantry…

7. Work on local food systems: talked to FIL about using old bean seed (he and MIL have bean seed from 2003) for the garden the kids I work with are planting, made a point to purchase local produce this week, and remember the name of the farm when we ate.

8. Reduce Waste: remembered bags for shopping, took reusable tumblers, finally brought H2O bottles from house to car… adopted some milk jugs that would have been just recycled… now they’ll help grow food!

9. Learned a skill: still (slowly) working on Spanish, talked with community member who is trying to learn English, made a plan to work together once a week. I don’t know if its learned… but we tried planting pole beans with corn… no squash with it… but we’ll see what I can accomplish with my powers of persuasion, muah ha ha!!!!