Time for the weekly list of accomplishments! This is my way to stay motivated and accountable in my productive home progress.
As with last week, if you want to join in, please do. We can high-five each other for being garden badasses.
Feel free to list your own weekly achievements in the comments, or if you have a blog and want to do your own post and link to it, that’s totally encouraged too!
Planting & Maintenance
- Almost everything is in for now. I don’t think I planted a thing this past week. Oh – that’s not true, I attempted to transplant two extra cabbage plants into areas where slugs ate other seedlings. Not sure it’ll work, though.
- Basic garden maintenance – watering as needed, weeding, etc.
- Massive weeding efforts in the food forest jungle that’s been neglected for over a year.
- Trained and pulled the suckers off all my indeterminate tomatoes.
- Helped my neighbor water her vegetable garden.
Harvested
The garden is starting to produce – what a great feeling.
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Cherries!!!
- Chard
- 1 single strawberry
- Herbs – mint, lemon balm, rosemary.
Preserved
- Nada. Maybe next week. Drank a lot of kombucha, though.
Cooked
- Took a friend a giant frittata and other brunch fixings. I’m on a frittata kick. Used up 10 eggs. Only 10,000 more to go!
Animals
- Basic daily maintenance.
- Hooked a timer up to the duck tub filter so it doesn’t run overnight. This should cut our energy consumption a bit and not impact the duck tub cleanliness too negatively.
- Had my “In 3rd-year vet school” sister examine one of my ducks who appears to have some sort of organ prolapse. Conclusion: she might not live a super long time but she’s unbothered, doing normal duck things like preening, and otherwise looks healthy. Watchful waiting is the treatment.
- Secret animal addition probably happening today. It’s not goats. No, really: it’s not goats.
Projects
- Finished up the tomato trellis. Ran twine down from the top beam and trained the tomatoes up.
- Build a hand-woven trellis for my cucumbers out of pruned-out tree suckers (video on Patreon).
- Painted my new tool storage thingy that I made out of a few pallets.
Business, Finances and Frugality
- Hit the second goal on my Patreon page! Whoot! We jumped halfway to our third goal within a few day after the official launch went up.
- Homebrew Husband fixed his earbuds that went through the wash by soaking them in 99.9% isopropyl alcohol instead of just buying a new pair.
- Logged every expenditure in GoodBudget.
Energy Use & Solar Panel Production
- Total electricity used: 163 kWh
- Total solar energy produced: 213 kWh (= $114.44 in production incentive)
- Energy “sold back”: 50 kWh (= $5.20 in net production)
- Total earned through our solar panels this week: $119.64
Homeschool
- Basic daily studies.
- We painted pots in the Greek “heroic story” style as part of our integrated history studies. That was fun!
- Lots of end-of-year administrative wrap up stuff: made appointments with school advisors, finished the final progress reports of the year, began looking at class scheduling for next year, etc.
Planned & Researched
- Spent a long time refreshing my memory about the 8 Forms of Capital for my June Patron Letter about how to use this permaculture concept to assess the balance and resilience in your life.
- Inspired by a visit to Grace Hensley’s place, I decided my flower game is weak as shit and I should probably learn more. So basically I stared at pretty pictures of flowers and I’m trying to pass that off as productive.
• • •
I’m thinking about renaming this feature “Show Your Stuff Saturday.” Would that be too cheesy? Let me know, and then brag a bit about what did you do this past week.
I live on the Key Peninsula, west of Gig Harbor, and things are pretty much the same here. The peas, tomatoes, and peppers are starting to take off, and the vine and root crops are doing great. My Yukon Golds look better than they ever have, and I even have some okra fruiting in the greenhouse. All of my herbs are very happy, and I can’t keep up with the mint. Best surprise of the day yesterday was seeing the thousands of tiny grapes appearing on my grape vines.
PS Love your additions to The Survival Podcast.
I spend a lot of time looking at websites about flowering plants, especially the ones with pretty pictures. Sure, it counts as productive! Sometimes I like a creative blog post title, but I have to say I kind of prefer the more descriptive Productive Home Report. I love that you included pictures of your kids’ pots.
Planted:
The remaining tomatoes, kale, and cucumber seedlings. Finally.
A coworker gave us two more cherry tomatoes and a raspberry seedling.
Harvested:
Arugula – finally pulled the bolted plants to make space for other things. Second sowing is growing quickly so there’s more to come.
Oregano and mint
Peas starting coming in, finally!
Projects:
Rhubarb honey shrub from homegrown honey, homemade ACV, and (a friend’s) homegrown rhubarb. First time making shrub and definitely won’t be my last!
Finished knitting a blanket
Revived my sourdough starter after an extended stay in the fridge
Frugality:
Reviewed the May budget and adjusted some formulas to more accurately reflect our savings rate.
These seem to get posted right on my Saturday work break. 🙂
My stable moved to a brand new facility that is still under construction, so my day-to-dat has been massively disrupted.
Lemon balm: harvested and froze nearly a gallon bag for tea this winter. Started a lemon balm tincture. Today, going to infuse a vinegar for salads and for an oxymel, which will be new to me. I’m also going to do an herb salee with lemon balm and parsley.
Lacto-fermented 1/2 gallon of asparagus.
Made yogurt. Made walnut fig bread from yogurt whey. Sliced it and froze it. Having baked goods in the freezer is an important frugality step for me. If I start the day was a warned or toasted baked good, I don’t hit Starbucks for breakfast.
Weeded a ton of grass out of my food hedge.
Research: I’m in a deep dive into herbalism and very basic foraging right now. I’m looking for SIMPLE ways to increase my nutrition levels every day, i.e. infused vinegars. Looking for the herbal equivalent of lactoferments…super tasty things that are easy and will make me feel more vibrant.
We harvested some odd bits of greens (spinach, cabbage, cauliflower leaves, chard, bok choi) as they’ve started bolting. Also started eating the native strawberries and our very first honeyberries. Continuing to use the garlic greens, onion greens, and herbs (mostly basil, miniature basil, sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and parsley).
Kept up with watering the garden. Need to do some weeding tomorrow.
Looking into tearing down a slowly falling structure and considering how we want to replace it. Also looking into outsourcing a couple of days of big weeding projects over the next two months. Fortunately, we’ve found several people interested through our neighborhood Facebook group.
Now that some of the big stuff is done for the year, I can look at some secondary garden projects, like creating marked pathways.
Starting to make plans and do research for a year-long cooking project. Also planning for the next food swap at our house. May need to build a Facebook page around it, just to keep the emails and general Facebook posts to a minimum.
Gotta get on the jam-making for the Food In Jars challenge. Plus, hey, who couldn’t use more jam!
Just to make you look good :), my stuff of the past week consisted of spackling part of a wall in part of a hallway in the house (prepping for painting someday), selling 15 doz eggs, mowing most of the 1/2 acre of lawn – no, sheep are not an alternative for this – and buying all my veg at a local farm market, yay local asparagus, lettuce, beet greens, bok choy, tomatoes and cuke (hot house). I don’t think a garden is happening this year. Not even flowers. Counting my blessings that I live in a land of plenty (vancouver Island) where I can shop pretty much year round for local produce, meat, lentils and whole wheat flour, and that I can afford to do that. Goal this week is to move the chickens, get primer on that hallway wall, and cook all that produce into wholesome family meals. And mow the lawn again. Impressed with your garden tool pallet thingy. 🙂
I love “Show your stuff Saturday”! Who cares if it’s cheesy? When did cheese become a pejorative anyway? Every day I get further behind, but every day something gets done, even if it is just potting up a few things. I keep not getting around to blogging the garden season though I did make notes. Not daily, like I planned. I thought I was being clever by working more with containers to thwart the voles, but those bales of Sunshine mix are not cheap! My right knee has been acting up and is slowing me down. Grrrrr. Somehow it seems to be a great year for cauliflower. I have 10 plants looking very promising. I was, once again, guilty of poor planning and have far too many celery plamts and not enough lettuce. I no longer kid myself into believing it will be perfect next year, but I shall keep trying. I shall keep digging till I am dug. Metaphorically, both.
Well, well, this is our first year with a greenhouse, and everything seems to revolve around it. The asparagus seed I harvested from my heritage Larac asparagus might have been super timely, as I think our existing plants have passed their expected lifespan and are in decline. The many seeds I sprouted and have been nurturing will replace my currently 25+ year old plants. We will replace many of the existing plants tomorrow. m
I’ve been coddling my deck flower pots (I too am just trying to up my flower game) and it’s paying off. Every thing looks so nice. I need to get my tomatoes and cucumbers staked up, my carrots, beans, and beets planted, compost making continued, and the big flower bed is a huge mess I’ll get to one of these days. My Mexican sour gherkin plants are ready to go into the garden, but I’m thinking I’ll plant them in pots with individual trellises instead.
My canning buddy and I are contemplating what we’ll can this year. The MSGs are going to get some interesting treatments, but we’re also going to try a bacon jam, something with organic berries, and perhaps an artichoke basil pesto.
Bacon jam sounds delish! Keep us all updated…
Harvested:
* Radishes
* Kale
* 1 wild strawberry and 1 domestic strawberry
* Finally picked some peas today!
* Nasturtium leaves
* Chive flowers
* Salmonberries!
Projects:
* Continuing to mulch my potatoes–they’re hip high now!
* Started mulching my garden path
* Mowed
Animals:
* My ancona (the baby of my first generation of ducks) has been broody for three days. We might end up with grand-duckies!
Cooked:
* I saute chive flowers with sliced radishes, radish florets, kale and nasturtiums. My family loves it!
Planted:
* Cucumber
* Squash
* “Strawberry Spinach”/ beet berry
* More beets and carrots where my original plantings never popped up, likely due to the constant cold and rain
Homeschooling:
* We’re busy picking berries and raking lawn clippings for mulch, lol!
We are on the peninsula at Ocean Park WA, still a bit cold. The currents have fruited and I am hoping the deer don’t get them (again) this year, I would love some jelly. The mint is up. We have planted herbs in outside boxes and rainbow chard in the greenhouse/shed. Big trim job on the honeysuckle to replace the rusting and collapsing trellis with one made with 4X4 dunnage studs. Now we need some soil and then we will plant potatoes.
I think “show your stuff Saturday” is a fine and dandy name. 🙂
I envy you your cherries. My alley cherry is bearing fruit (more than last year! It’s growing up!) but it won’t be ripe for another month. Same with the serviceberries – though with our cool spring (long spring?) we might, maaaaaybe, get another extra-long serviceberry season, which will be very, very great for freezing fruit and making jams. Fingers crossed!
Here’s what I’ve been up to, of late: https://birchtreemaiden.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/first-weekend-in-june-a-productive-home-post-fermented-radicalhomemaker-punkdomestics-garden/
Yea I’m loving this trend! “show your stuff Saturday it is”!
Planted/harvested – nada. garden is all in and still a ways from harvest here in Zone 5a.
Bees- second Hopguard treament and made a queen castle for mating some queens for nucs later in the summer.
cooking – chalkboard lists all dinners for next week. Made baguette (again) and feel like it’s getting closer but still not quite perfect.
Signed up for YNAB for the 34 day free trial. Not sure what I think yet.
I wasn’t going to garden at all this year after two years of complete abandonment to the weeds due to 2015 first trimester pregnancy and 2016 newborn. But then my sister promised me one basil seedling and I had to weed just enough to make room and it was so nice to be out in the dirt and sun with my now-yearling that I weeded the rest of my three little beds. So yesterday I planted two cherry tomatoes, two basils, four strawberry plants to replace the ones I killed over the last two years, chives, oregano and lemon balm. Somehow my raspberries and currant bush survived and are looking vibrant this year, even setting a little fruit already though up here at parallel 49 in the Rockies it’ll be awhile before anything ripens. Set up a drip hose on a timer so I don’t have to remember to water, mulched all with straw and finished it all up about 9:30pm – still light out, the nice thing about living way up here. Laffed and laffed when it poured ALL DAY today after all my messing around to get the hoses and timer playing nice yesterday.
I somehow have missed these check ins, but yay for accountability in the garden. This week I RE-sowed chard (an early season raccoon disaster then some failure to germinate with the first redo have really messed with my chard dreams this year, but I persist. Third time has better be the charm). Reworked some microgreen trays and also started soaking more sunflower seed to sprout for next week’s salad. Started new lettuces in the grow operation in the sunroom. Harvested lettuce, sorrel and black mustard greens for salad, and oregano and mint to dry. Watered and weeded. To do next: plant out the spicy salad mix and new oregano I picked up from the co-op. Feed the potted stuff and maintain watering. Harvest some more lettuce and baby kale. Check garlic heads for development. Not sure why they all fell down after a big wind and never got back up.
I’m out of sync with your week, but some shit got done. We might be “borrowing” some lambs to mow the orchard for a few weeks. They should be coming Friday. Can’t wait to hear about your addition.
http://www.anntorrence.com/blog/2017/06/homestead-log-week-of-may-29-june-4.html