Independence Day Challenge after a busy weekend

I spent last weekend in Hamilton with the kids, hobnobbing with my sister in law and my nieces, so I’m in catch up mode. I even kept my wee boy home from school yesterday because he was so exhausted from the busy weekend.

So, once again on a Tuesday:

Independence Day Challenge Update

This is my Monday update on what I’ve done over the last week to move towards food independence. I originally read about it on Towards Sustainability and the original idea came from Sharon Astyk – read more about it here.

PLANT SOMETHING:
Seeds of Palm Tree di Tascana Cabbage, De Cicco Broccoli and Joi Choi Pak Choi (this is proving SO easy to grow).

HARVEST SOMETHING:
Lots of eggs, mustard, courgettes. I was able to harvest free windfall Gravenstein apples from an orchard when I was in Hamilton – I picked up about eight big bags! We also visited a pick-your-own berry farm and picked 2.6 kgs of raspberries, mmmmmm!

PRESERVE SOMETHING:
Not this week, but I’ll be working on all those apples and raspberries next week!

REDUCE WASTE/ WASTE NOT:
A yummy banana cake with some really old squishies and then the rest of the bunch went into the freezer for some future banana cooking.

PREPARATION AND STORAGE/ WANT NOT:
On my way home through Auckland I picked up a purebred Lavender Araucana rooster. I’m figuring that my chooks produce eggs, manure and compost and do a great job of keeping down the bugs. But if I keep groups of heritage breeds, I can also sell surplus eggs and birds for a little extra in the kitty.

I picked up my organics order from my friend and froze the extra seeds, milk powder and flour to prolong their life.



BUILD COMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS:
Ummm. I did go to the Hamilton Garden’s show on Saturday. They had a permaculture area with lots of interesting stands and some speakers. The kids made adobe mud bricks and petted the milking goats (I’m in love!), the alpacas and the kunekune pigs. I picked up a brochure to join the NZ Treecroppers Association.

EAT THE FOOD:
Still not eating too much out of our own garden yet. I feel I’m still getting the hang of succession planting and planting quick things as well as longer growing veges.

LEARN A NEW SKILL:
I learnt how to make seedling pots from strips of newspaper using this handy little gadget I bought from the Hamilton Permaculture Trust’s stand at the show. No more plastic punnets and they can go straight into the ground when they are ready as the newspaper just rots away.

There we have it. Now I'm off to take the wee bunnies to the vet. I've come back to find they both have yucky scabby things on their ears and from what I can find out on line I think it's some sort of mite/mange. I'm learning very fast about rabbits!

Independence Day Challenge Update

This is my Monday update (yes, I know it's Tuesday, but Monday kinda got away on me) on what I’ve done over the last week to move towards food independence. I originally read about it on Towards Sustainability and the original idea came from Sharon Astyk – read more about it here.

PLANT SOMETHING:
Seeds of Buttercrunch lettuce, Sweet William flowers, Musselburgh leeks. Seedlings of Yellow and Blackjack courgettes, Superking brocolli, Dwarf Carpet stock and Joi Choi Pak Choi transplanted into the garden.

HARVEST SOMETHING:
I’ve been picking my green manure crop mustard to throw to the chooks and to eat in salads. I’ve also been harvesting Courgettes, Pak Choi and Basil. And I harvested more mown grass to throw into the chook pen to increase their deep bed. And I collected EGGS of course! I totally forgot about including them last week.

Olivia nibbling on the mustard, she liked it younger and sweeter!

PRESERVE SOMETHING:
I bottled six jars of tomatoes, three with skins and three without, to see if we like leaving the skins on or if it’s worth getting a mouli to get rid of them. I also boiled up some beef bones, an old onion and some carrots to make beef stock for freezing.

REDUCE WASTE/ WASTE NOT:
I made a (hopefully) sparrow and white cabbage butterfly proof enclosure to plant out my seedlings under after finding that the sparrows had eaten all the growing tips out of my dwarf beans. They won’t grow now – what a waste :(

Ugly, but hopefully very functional. (The cover, not my daughter!)

PREPARATION AND STORAGE/ WANT NOT:
I bought a rabbit (who isn’t here yet, we're waiting for his hutch) to start my plan of growing and eating my own rabbits. And I found three of the most gorgeous old sheets in an Op Shop. I think I'll keep the blue and purple one for use - it's cotton, while the others will probably get used to make things.

BUILD COMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS:
I talked to the people I bought the rabbit off about the possibilities of harvesting rabbit meat. I bought three Light Sussex chickens off a lady and talked to her about sprouting her chook wheat and maize to increase their health and also told her how to break broody chooks from sitting so they could go back to laying her some eggs.

This is my young Light Sussex Rooster who got some new girlfriends.

EAT THE FOOD:
I made a courgette chocolate cake – Yum! I also ate a salad this week made entirely from my garden: courgettes, mustard, basil and pak choi. What a great feeling.

LEARN A NEW SKILL: This category will get used sometimes, but I don’t think I’ll be able to put something in here every week! But this week I’m including my sourdough culture because I’m still growing it up and learning about how to use it, hopefully next week I’ll have made some bread from it.

This is the new shelf my hubby made and put up on the weekend. You can see my sourdough starter in the muslin covered jar next to the white yoghurt maker.

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.