Independence Days
Written by Kate Petersen on May 31, 2008 – 2:58 pm -Idea shamelessly stolen from Sharon Astyk.
I’m going to do this every week, most likely on Saturdays, and perhaps you will play along too. The idea is to do something every day or every week to further your sustainable lifestyle, to take one more step toward Food Independence.
It isn’t a contest to see who can do the most. It’s more like a weekly reminder, a deadline to check in with people who will help hold us to our goals, and a place to brag when we did do something above and beyond the ordinary.
Each week, I will try to:
1. Plant something.
2. Harvest something.
3. Preserve something.
4. Prep something. Here’s Sharon’s description of this item:
Hit a yard sale and pick up an extra blanket. Purchase some extra legumes and oatmeal. Sort out and inventory your pantry. Make a list of tools you need. Find a way to give what you don’t need to someone who does. Fix your bike. Fill that old soda bottle with water with a couple of drops of bleach in it. Plan for next year’s edible landscaping. Make back-road directions to your place and send it to family in case they ever need to come to you - or make ‘em for yourself for where you might have to go. Clean, mend, declutter, learn a new skill. Independence is being ready for whatever comes.
5. Cook something. (Shouldn’t be difficult for any of us!)
6. Manage your reserves. This means don’t let the head of lettuce in the fridge go bad, or open a can of something and only use half of it.
7. Work on local food systems. Buy something from a local farmer, or get a new member in your co-op, or spend an hour working in a community garden.
Join me?
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My answers for this week:
1. Plant something. I got two mint plants into their pots. I didn’t get my garden in this spring, what with my husband’s knee injury and everything else that happened, but I’ll work on doing at least a little from now on.
2. Harvest something. Didn’t happen.
3. Preserve something. Nothing this week.
4. Prep something. This was Costco week, so I picked up some alcohol preps, aluminum foil, and some extra tuna and canned crab. Also another big pack of toilet paper, because when the zombies come, toilet paper will be worth its weight in gold. In the meantime I can insulate the attic with it.
5. Cook something. Um, yes. All week. Tonight I am trying a new thing — spinach, orzo, wild rice, some garlic, feta cheese, and I’m not sure what else will end up in there.
6. Manage your reserves. Bought two nearly-out-of-date chickens, roasted them, fed DH two meals from the dark meat, cut up and froze the white meat, made a huge pot of stock from the bones. Tomorrow I’ll can the stock for later use.
7. Work on local food systems. I updated the website for the food co-op, which is as close as I got.
Addendum to managing: I completely forgot the Great Bookcase Project. This week I spent weeding out one bookcase in order to make room to organize all my books on food, gardening, cooking, and TEOTWAWKI. Now I can find things, and I have room to add some more necessary books as I encounter them.
It would take weeks to reorganize our book collection ’cause they’re everywhere, on shelves, in cupboards, under the beds, on top of wardrobes, in boxes….
Excellent idea, Kate. Ms AAF (willowspirit) has planted a slew of herbs this week, rosemary, catnip, mint, peppermint, thyme and quite a few bushes of ornamental flowers. I’ve cooked! And read many new blogs on alternative lifestyles, and I’m planning to build a set of outdoor stairs with recycled railway sleepers. And rebuild the old pond as we’re getting quite a large frog population.
Not so great this week, thanks to packing, but I’m chomping at the bit for after the move.
Then, I’ll have an in-town place close to work and a great farmer’s market, and this place with blueberries, raspberries, grapes and various and sundry already planted.
The in-town place will be home to tomatoes and herbs, although I have established thyme, mint and, from the looks of it - fennel? - beds here.
So the act of moving - and taking on more debt (yikes) is, for me, an act of independence, although not singular one.
As for eats, it’s all veggies and buffalo right now. No time for much cooking right now.
But just you wait.
I love this idea, Kate.
Hi! I’ve been gone for two months, but am finally back home. I was helping my mom pack, move, unpack, paint, etc. Kate, your comment about stocking up at Costco reminded me that I used t.p., paper towels, and yes, even a giant box of packages of Top Ramen noodles to pack up and protect some of my mother’s most precious items…an old pottery urn was cushioned with rolls of paper towels, dishes with rolls of t.p., and her stereo equipment was padded with liberal use of tiny packages of dry noodles, most of which didn’t even get crushed in transit. So even if you don’t like eating Top Ramen, it makes an excellent packing material!
To follow along with the theme better (and I love this and hope you will keep it up), this week:
1. Planting herbs, mainly the ones I use most, which are basil, mint, and cilantro,
2. Going to the Farmer’s Market tomorrow to restock my veggies and baked goods,
3. Gonna try home cheesemaking. I read Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle while I was in CA and now I must try making cheese. I eat enough of it!
Somewhere in my bookmarks, I have the link to a great cheesemaking site.
And beware ultra-pasteurized milk in your ventures. If you have access to raw, tho, you’ve got it made.
You have to report back. Cheesemaking is a dream have!
Mwalla: Fankhauser’s Cheese Page,
Thank you! I’m on my way over there….
I’m adding it to our blogroll here - it’s just too good a site not to.
Hi Bis! If you find that link, I’d love to see it. Yeah, Kingsolver warns about the ultra-pasturized milk, too, says it won’t separate right or something. I think I can get raw milk from the Amish farmers near here, but if not, I’ll try pasturized and see how that goes.
I hope this works out better than my project of making homemade sea salt…I was so busy unpacking my mother’s crap that I completely forgot to do it!
Oh, and good luck with your move!
Lulu, if you can’t find raw milk, see if you can find low-temperature pasteurized milk, and if you are really lucky, it won’t be homogenized either. Low-temp pasteurized is about as close as you can legally get to raw milk, and it makes great cheese.
Actually, if push comes to shove you supposedly can make cheese with powdered milk, although I’ve never tried it.
This is great! I just got home from the garden store with a big block of compost (my home-made isn’t ready yet). What made this different was that I walked there–with a wheelbarrow. ‘Bout a mile each way. What was extra-cool is that the staff didn’t bat an eye at my wheelbarrow–they’ve seen this before! (”My new car,” I said. “Runs on rice.”)
So:
Update, broadly in the “work on local food systems” category: my neighbor was just weed-wacking her very neglected lawn. Nothing’s been done to that lawn in at least five years, so I figure the cuttings are clean.
I asked her if I could rake up her grass-leavings for my compost bin. This accomplished several things: getting to know my neighbor a little bit; discussing my fledgling food garden (neighbor completely new to the concept, so a little community education); helping her clean up; and adding both green matter to my compost bin and some free mulch to my spud container.
This diary gave me the impetus to go over and approach her. Turned out great!
Anne, what a terrific start! Congratulations!
It’s a damn good policy to know your neighbors, you never know when you need them or vice versa.
Kate, I just realized Sharon is a regular at The Psychotic Farmers Forum, albeit definitely one of the more sane posters.
Took me a while to put two and two together, but yea, she is!
Too funny!
There’s tons of really good info over there, and it was such a boon for me when I first moved out here.
But much like dKos, wa-a-a-a-ay too many loonies.
I think the deciding factor for me was the even of the Iraq invasion when they all went into hypermode preparation for the end of the world and their (assumed) immediate ascension to heaven.
Okay, it might have been when a group of them cornered me, insisting I was subjected to Satanic rituals as a child because my dad was a Mason.
Or … well, you get the idea. Lotta loonies.
Sharon’s one of the few sane ones.
The even. Not the even - the eve.
gah.
We understand.
Now that’s quite amusing, because I found Sharon through another really loony end of the world site and was pleasantly surprised to find that she was sane.
You might enjoy reading about the day she had 14 sheep and a donkey on her front porch.
And people wonder why there are certain varieties of loonies I’m willing to tolerate.
Once on that site (the Psychotic Farmers Forum), someone came home to discover their goats had broken into the house.
Or … let me see if I can find my favorite post of all there - HELP I”VE BEEN INVADED BY WILD HOGS!!! More fun than you can shake a stick at.