One week of garden-exclusive meals

Something I've always wanted to attempt is to go for a month only eating foods that I grew, raised, or foraged. Never done it until now, though. I'm going to wait until the summer (when the really good stuff is here) to do a full month in earnest, but this week (Tuesday, March 22nd to Tuesday, March 29th) I'm going to get a practice run in. I have some things I canned last year (beets, tomato juice, okra, jalapenos, and pickles), things I froze last year (carrots, spinach, turnip greens and beet greens), and things I dried last year (tomatoes and plums). In addition to that I have fresh mustard greens, cress, and spinach in the garden now, eggs, pecans from this past fall and four chickens that I butchered last month in the freezer. Looks to me like that will take care of my vitamins and minerals with all the vegetables and the eggs, pecans and chicken will give me the protein and fat that I need. Will be a low-carbohydrate week, but that will be healthier in itself.

I'll post my menus at the end of each day.

Kill-a-watt

I bought a Kill-a-watt EZ Electric Usage monitor the other day to try and see where we may be able to cut back on some of our electric bill. This is a really cool device that you plug into the wall and plug your electrical device into. It tell you the kWh the device is using among other things and if you program your electric company rates into it (ours is $.1093 for the first 800 kWh, and .0875 for any after that) it will tell you how much the device costs you to run for the hour, day, month and year. The longer you leave it plugged in, the more accurate the reading because it calculates the time the device is unplugged into the total cost. For instance, when you first plug the device in and turn it on, the reading will be high because it hasn't accounted for the time the device will be off. A good example of this would be our computer and monitor. When I first plugged the Kill-a-watt in, the computer and monitor were being used so the meter read that they used 14-cents a day, but as the monitor and computer went into power-save mode and used less electricity, the meter went down to 11-cents a day because it calculated the downtime. Pretty fun to see how much energy stuff uses, but at the same time it confirmed that water heater and heat pump are the main energy hogs. Sick of $250-300 electric bills, I became adamant about turning the computer and other devices off when we weren't using them, sure that would be the answer to all our problems. Turns out that I'm only saving us around around $2 a month doing so. Worth doing, but pretty small.

The problem lies with our thermostat....a problem that I WILL solve....

Collards

Planted collards today.

Urban Homesteaders Action Day

Although, I'm technically a Rural Homesteader, I am posting this in solidarity with comrades who are upset with the recent actions of certain poeple in trademarking terms that they did not originate and can not own. Also in solidarity with the homesteaders who have had their Facebook pages shut down and businesses disrupted because of this.

I am an Urban Homesteader!

Planting begins in earnest...

This evening I planted a 4' x 8' bed of beets, a 4' x 4' bed of Parris Island Cos lettuce, and a 4' x 4' bed of mesclun mix. I had an 8' x 4' bed of spinach that was very sparse on one side, so I dug up and moved the stray spinach plants and planted half of that bed with yellow onions that my mom gave me today. Also cleaned up around the garden / chicken area.

Leaf pile

My parents had a ton of leaves in the goat lot, so I rounded up three tarp-loads and dragged them across the road. Hoping to get a big low-maintenance pile I can just let sit and rot for some good compost in a few years.

Sifting compost

I wasn't very careful while cramming stuff in the compost pile late last year, so I ended up with some very nice compost with some very big chunks of vegetation throughout.















No worries. I made a screen out of the cage that supported the Mexican Sour Gherkins last year and was able to sift it pretty well into a garbage can.






































The girls helped.

Pepper Preparation

Started pepper seeds today. Cutting the "8-10 weeks before last average frost" a bit close, but I'm impatient. I haven;t had too much luck starting anything in the house early, but this is going to be my year. I can feel it. I will grow fish peppers!!

This year I'm planting the following varieties:

Chablis Hybrid (from Totally Tomatoes...I guess my mom ordered these because I know I didn't)
Serrano Tampequeno (Free seed packet from Totally Tomatoes)
Chocolate Habanero (from Totally Tomatoes)
Fish Pepper (from Totaly Tomatoes)
Fish Pepper (Last year's seeds from Baker Creek)
Red Marconi (Last year's seeds from Baker Creek)
Chinese Five-Color Pepper (from Baker Creek)
Ancho (Last year's seeds from Pinetree)
Anaheim (Last year's seeds from Pinetree)

I started out by soaking the seeds in ordinary tap water for about 8 hours. Peppers aren't easy to get to germinate and from what I've read, this seems to help.
















Later I put the seeds in some containers I got from work (the ones that grape tomatoes and strawberries come in) and Claire watered them.
































Peppers need higher temperatures to germinate well, so I may have to take these to my grandmother's. Our house stays too cold. We keep the thermostat on 65.

Later today we also planted a 8' x 4 ' bed of peas. I know you'll be happy to hear that, Jo!

Noah's covenant

Spent the morning fulfilling Noah's Covenant. Did four birds this morning, which is more than I've ever done at one time. Took a little under three hours, which is better than usual, but still not as fast as I'd like to be. Plucking feathers still proves to be a chore. I read on a site a while back about a method of simply skinning the bird which sounds promising. Four birds provided 17 lbs 13.4 ounces of meat.

American Seed Company

Finally found an American Seed Company rack! I've been checking at Wal-mart and Big Lots with no luck, but I finally found some at Dollar General today. The packaging has changed and they were three-for-a-dollar, which is more than usual, but still very cheap and extremely worth it. A lot of reviews on the internet look down on these cheap little seed packets, but I can't see why. Maybe because they don't feature long back-stories attesting to the distant exotic origins of the seeds and the fact that by planting them we are suddenly greener-than-thou eco-warriors who will singlehandedly save the earth from Big Ag, or because they don't come out of a full-color glossy catalog filled with pictures of smiling hipster / farmers, or maybe just because they are so cheap and are sold at mass market discount stores. But take it from me. These seeds are very inexpensive, have good variety, and most importantly....THEY COME UP!

Today I picked up the following seeds (all for 33-cents a pack):

Carrot (Chantenay) (x2)
Collards (Vates)
Squash (Waltham Butternut)
Squash (Early Yellow Straightneck)
Cucumber (Sumter)
Radish (Sparkler White-tip)
Salad Blend (Italian Mixture)
Tomato (Beefsteak)
Squash (Table Queen)
Eggplant (Black Beauty)
Beet (Detroit Dark Red) (x2)
Radish (Cherry Belle)
Lettuce (Parris Island Cos)

All for just $5.00

Spinach and Greens

The spinach, mustard and creese that I planted appears to have survived the winter so far. Hopefully as soon as it worms up a little I'll be able to start harvesting some.

Downsizing...

Today I got rid of:

- A colossal weight-training machine (Free-weights, calisthenics and body weight resistance training is my thing nowadays)

- a bag of clothes

- two surf fishing rods

- around 40 gardening / self-sufficiency magazines

- around 150 comics