Independence Days Report

Hey, Green Bean - does this look familiar?!?

This will be a little long since I missed last week's update...

Planted: Swiss chard, carrot, beet, kohlrabi seeds; dug up a small bed & planted a short row of little red potatoes left over from last year's crop that were starting to sprout (with hopes they'll grow); 2 blackberry bushes, 2 more blueberry bushes; from the Farmer's Market on Sat.: 2 hops plants, 1 ea thyme (some of mine died out during the winter) and 1 cilantro - plus a small, free-for-Mother's-Day Roman chamomile; planted loofah seeds in milk cartons

Harvested: not much - some sorrel leaves (see previous post on sorrel) for a really yummy soup plus a few chives & some dandelion leaves; some basil leaves from the plants I picked up yesterday

Preserved: 2 loaves of pumpkin bread into freezer; small bunch of chives put into freezer - then realized that was pretty silly - the chives grow for almost 9 months - would be easier to just pot some up in the fall to being indoors

Prepped: bought canned tomatoes on sale for pantry; found 2 boxes of canning jars at a thrift store for $2/box minus 25% off; used a store coupon to buy blackberry bushes, more blueberry bushes and grape plants; put some bottles of water into new freezer; started cats on homemade food, mixing w/their regular food for now; reorganized laundry area cupboards for canning jar storage; bought box of borax (on sale) for storage

Cooked: made some yummy soup using sorrel leaves & homemade chicken broth from freezer plus some dandelion leaves because I was out of spinach - was going to freeze some but it was so tasty, I ate it all (in 3 different meals, not all at once...); tried baking Sadge's bread in a bread pan - not ever going to do THAT again - and that's all I have to say about that.

Managed: made pumpkin bread using pumpkin from freezer that I had prepared last fall - first home-cooked pumpkin ever! Working on cleaning out fridge freezer; moved some things to new freezer (homemade cat food, cranberries, chicken)

Worked on local food systems: bought all my tomato plants (15!) locally (from The Tomato Lady); went with my daughters to Farmer's Market opening day to get plants for my birthday & Mother's Day; then we visited The Flour Mill - locally owned, using local products (they have 50# bags of oatmeal!); bought some corn flour for making my own tortillas

Composted/Gave back to land: I'm a lazy composter , using the 'dump-&-cover" method. Started cleaning up the first of my 2 compost piles. Lots of partially-decomposed grass & yard trimming (but no visible kitchen waste!); going to continue working to get it all cleaned out, down to the good stuff. Planted the 2 free trees received from the Arbor Day annual giveaway at the Library (Green Ash & Littleleaf Linden)

Learn new skill: I need to add to this: or relearn a previously-known-but-little-used skill - used my rusty carpentry skills (and ladder-perching skills) to make a trellis for the runner bean starts (I don't think they're going to make it, so I planted the hops nearby to use the trellis, too) and to put up the birdhouses I received last year for a birthday gift; got a little more comfortable using the portable air compressor (another last year BD gift) to pump up flat tire on wheelbarrow & bike tires

To Do this weekend: plant tomatoes, fruit trees, grapes; start digging new potato bed; pick dandelion blossoms for jelly. I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of right now. Get more chicken on sale for freezer.

OKP* This is Squawk, mama to Spice