Independence Day Challenge

I've read about the Independence Day Challenge a few times on Towards Sustainability. I brushed it off, but somewhere it stuck.

So I went looking for the original owner of it (who credits it to someone else, of course) and read this post.

Interesting. The little by little really strikes a cord with me.

And so I've begun. I guess I'm hoping it will keep me heading where I want to go, which I'm realising more and more is to be independent, as much as I can, with my own and my animal's food.

So last week:

1. Plant Something: This I did in plenty. Seeds of pak choi, loquat, bronze fennel, spinach, buckwheat, borage, chives, sweet red onions, berlicum carrots, sunflowers and lettuce seedlings from my M.I.L. I'm getting into growing from seeds - cheaper, more variety, fairly easy (so far), and you know how they've been treated.




2. Harvest Something: Courgettes a-plenty, basil, pak choi, and grass (I'm sure that counts!).




3. Preserve Something: I turned the basil into pesto (emits a groan of taste ecstasy) and the grass into hay. Does starting a sourdough culture count?




4. Reduce Waste/Waste Not: We used an older fridge/freezer in our kitchen that continually iced up, which would have been costing us lots in power. So we swapped it for our smaller beer fridge that was not in use. We will use the chest freezers that are just outside the back door for the small items I had in the freezer compartment. And I made a yummy apple and apricot jam pudding out of apples going off and jam starting to ferment.




5. Preparation and Storage/Want Not: Can't really think of anything under this one.




6. Build Community Food Systems: I visited with a friend I hadn't seen for a while. She is going to give me some kefir grains and lend me her Nourishing Traditions book. We discussed growing your own chook food and keeping pigs - lots of stuff really. She also casually runs a kind of co-op for buying bulk organic dry goods from a wholesaler - I signed up!




7. Eat the food: All of the above! Yum Yum.

Now that wasn't so hard. And this morning I've already planted some more seeds and I'm cooking tomatoes to bottle right now - next week's post is half-way written.