MamaStories

Baby spinach microgreens

This is my first installment of the Independence Days Challenge.

Plant something. We double-dug three raised beds and constructed the bases of four 4×4 potato bins. I chitted the early potatoes, and those and many seeds and seedlings are ready to go in this week (will update when that happens; it’s raining currently). We also waiting for our neighbor to bring down some trees and prune others, so our garden will get more sunlight.

Harvest something. We’ve been eating our Black-seeded Simpson lettuce from cold frame-now turned raised bed for weeks now. I’m experimenting: in one row I cut the outer leaves, in the other I cut out the inner hearts. We’ll see which regenerates the best (I think it’s the hearts). Also been munching on microgreens from seedling thinnings and “onion shavings”, and I tasted a Stevia seedling yesterday: yum!  O yes, and the baby spinach that bolted when I “hardened it off” in 90F weather, or rather, when I brought it back to the 68F basement! LAL: Live And Learn. LOL.

Preserve something. I’m debating on whether to fire up the small chest freezer we got on Freecycle. DH complains that I don’t buy enough groceries for a whole week, which necessitates extra trips to the store – and the library, as it’s on the way ;). It’s true, I lack foresight when purchasing food. It just hurts to shop for produce that I know will be growing in our own garden very soon. In any case, this challenge will help me make a start! For instance, I could cook double the amount of shepherd’s pie while the minced beef is on sale, and freeze half; I could start practicing canning with store bought tomatoes when they come on sale…

Reduce waste. Our guest-suite project has generated a lot of reusable construction wood, which we’re storing in the shed. We’re sure to get a nice three-bin composting system out of it, and some planters, and perhaps a rustic fence. We’ve made nitrogen recycling a habit, as well as toilet cloth: good riddance to yet another disposable! And as for the usual waste, we’ve “pruned” our house and are improving our record through the Riot for Austerity: April was our sixth month.

Preparation and storage. I am working hard on my skill – wheelthrown pottery: that counts for preparedness, right? As for storage, I still need to put our emergency stores together and should start making a wish list of what we still need. Then we should test our camping equipment in our backyard. Another kick in the butt!

Build community food systems. Our town has some vegetable gardens here and there, but ours is the first in our neighborhood. As our gardening is so in your face – on a (small) hill, facing the street – most neighbors  drive by slowly to check out our progress, wave at me digging, or shout “looks promising!” Last week a neighbor popped by and asked if I would advise her on her own veg garden! I said I have no experience but a lot of gardening books. Another neighbor drove up our long and narrow driveway to consult about the mulch and compost we’re using. The “top secret” green community project has stalled as we wait for replies: hopefully I can let you in on that soon.

Eat the food. We’re finishing off the last of the blueberries that I froze last season. Still working on the blueberry freezer jam I made last year – I cooked it too long, so it’s too thick to spread, but Amie loves it as “popsicle scoop”.

Eek! The joke in my banner has come true.

First Rabbit of the Season

Two of them brazenly hopped right by the bed with the lettuces – our only crop, so far! They passed by it either because they didn’t notice the food, which I doubt, or because they were spooked when they spotted me in the window. I assumed the latter and instantly, in the rain, erected a makeshift fence around the cold frame.

It just brings home to us that we are going to have to erect a fence around the main veggie garden soon. We’ll do that as soon as the tree work around and above that area is done. It’ll mainly keep out dogs, rabbits, and skunks. I’ve never seen woodchucks (groundhogs) around here, or raccoons, but we might try to fence them out as well. We have seen deer, though never that far onto our property. As for the squirrels and chipmunks, well, they’re such good climbers, and what with all the overhanging trees it seems like I will surely lose the fight, so I’m not going to bother.

I’m thinking to reuse the chainlink fence that the previous owner used to keep her dogs in. It sticks out about three foot up above ground and one foot down into the soil. We’ll line it with chicken wire, and we’ll also lay chicken wire underground, horizontally, for no less than one foot, to stop the burrowers. If any woodchucks and raccoons show up, I’ll add a chickenwire overhang around the perimeter to deter their climbing. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll slowly be hidden as we grow our vines on it.

It’s raining which is good: the soil needs it. So I’m stuck inside, with some time to catch up on research, and to show off my creations from my first session of wheel-thrown pottery!

Here they are, thrown, dried, kilned and glazed:

Their beautiful colors (glazes made by my teacher, Lisa Dolliver) are hard to capture in photographs. I love each imperfection, and the fact that they never turned out to be what I had intended them to be. I sit down at the wheel and play, letting the clay dictate. I signed up for another session and this time will try to be more goal-oriented: try to recreate something, for instance, try to get its shape and volume right.

Yesterday I made two plates/platters, which is great fun to do, all that compressing. I also still need to get the hang of collaring, which looks like so much fun. And my wedging leaves a lot to be desired… I think I shall move “pottery wheel” up on my Tools/Toys list.

Gasoline

Whenever there’s a birthday party or a school outing, I volunteer to drive ourselves plus several more kids there and back and even around to their houses. This month has been laden with those, and DH has had to drive in to work a couple of times. Result: 9.65 gallons/person, or

23% of the US National Average

Electricity: those lights!

The further jump in our electricity bill (from 484 KWH to 534 KWH) wholly coincides with the addition of one heat lamp (and incandescent) and two more fixtures (2 fluorescents each) for our germination and seedling area. We buy 100% wind energy electricity, though, so:

15% of the US National Average

Still, I’m looking forward to turning the lights off soon for many, many reasons!

Heating Oil for Heating and Warm Water: finally down!

Finally the weather has turned and it shows. For oil for heating and for hot water we reached:

48% of the US National Average!

Phew, what a relief! I doubt we’ll be turning the heat back on until Fall comes ’round again, but we musn’t become complacent: preparations for next winter are the following. (1) A good wood stove and putting more effort into drying the wood we already have (by then it will have been cured for two years) and getting more local wood – perhaps even from our own yard again. (2) Also, a wrap-around greenhouse that will double as a solar collector. For (1) we need to save money. For (2) we need to start designing and collect a lot more windows from Freecycle!

Trash: the usual, so far

Still on track, as we haven’t finished our guest room project yet – waiting for the inspector! – so haven’t reckoned the construction debris yet.

10% of the US National Average

We are still salvaging a lot of construction wood: We’re keeping it out of the landfill and it will all come in handy some time later, no doubt. Whatever we don’t plan to use we put on Freecycle.

Water: waiting for the rain (barrels)

We’ve been consuming more water as the new, small lawn and the larger patches of buckwheat become established and need frequent watering – the promised rains have not come.So we used up 595 gallons of water over the month, that’s

20% of the US National Average

All of us – the Rabbit (co-houser) included – have been very good with showers and flushing toilets, so we’ll just have to suck up the extra consumption, but not for too long!

The problem is we’re wavering with the rain barrels. They cost a lot to buy new ($100 a pop). I’ve pursued all the avenues I can think of for free/cheap barrels that we can convert to rain barrels ourselves and no luck: that market seems to be “saturated” already around here. A tank, maybe? That would have to be bought online and shipped, and also costs a pretty penny…

Consumer Goods: good, depending how you count…

We bought some big things in April. Some were garden related, those I’m not counting (a hoe, for instance, which came to a pretty penny!).  Other expenses were for our guest room – for our family, all of whom live far away and visit for long stretches, and co-houser(s). They include a toilet, a shower enclosure, an interior door, and the usual construction stuff like studs, dry wall and subfloor… Just like the garbage, I’m going to count all these next month, when the project (hopefully) finishes. Then we’ll tally it all up. It all goes into a yearly average anyway, at the end. (*)

So those expenses excluded we did reasonably well, with two take-out dinners, coffee (I’m counting these here as I’m not counting food), and a couple of dollars for books from the library book fair: $160, that’s

19% of the US National Average

(*) I want to add we did quite well by getting a lot of good stuff on Freecycle: a slider for the main entrance to the room, off the mudroom, a casement window that will let light from the mudroom into the room, and a really nice window for the new bathroom.  As for other things we kept out of the landfill: Amie spotted a clean, almost new and more importantly *real* Pooh Bear at the good-goods-exchange at the dump, and what could we do? Poor “not-real” Pooh Bear!