Unstuffed: Independence Days Week #8

Monday, June 29, 2009

Independence Days Week #8

Here is my Independence Days Update for the week.

Plant something:
- monarda, sweet woodruff

Harvest something:
- nettle seed
- violet leaves
- yarrow
- mallow
- catnip
- motherwort
- plantain
- lamb's quarters
- basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, dill
- 10 oz spinach
- 3 oz peas
- two heads of lettuce

Preserve something:
- started yarrow, violet leaf, catnip, motherwort and plantain tinctures
- drying nettle seed, mallow, violets and motherwort
- making basilcello
- froze spinach

Reduce waste:
- made beans in sun oven while at work
- saved popsicle sticks used as tasters for honey at the farmer's market, was about to throw them out and realised I could keep them for labeling plants
- set up soaker hose watering system in the garden (saves water)
- used dried nettle leaf for hair rinse
- the usual biking to most places, especially to work, the garden and market

Preparation and storage:
- left two or three radish and spinach plants to go to seed so I can try and save some seed, mulched the rest of the now empty bed with comfrey, to prepare for a fall crop

Build community food systems:
- went to farmer's markets on Thursday and Sunday

Eat the food:
- establishing tasty habit of bringing a simple oil and vinegar dressing to garden to make and eat a freshly picked salad under the cherry tree
- using fresh culinary herbs in everything
- used young peas as snow peas in a stir fry

5 comments:

Jenn said...: It's always so inspiring to see how much you're getting accomplished. I'm not at home right now, but they make me want to be so I can do more towards Independence Days too.; June 29, 2009 at 12:38 PM
Amber said...: Thanks Jenn. I'm very fortunate to be able to do this and have so much fun at it!

It must be hard to be away from home when you've got homesteading fever, but I imagine there must be lots of things you can do and plan for.

I didn't have the garden plot last year or even imagine that I would have one this year, but already I was reading gardening books and daydreaming for the day when I did.

The great thing about reading, learning and daydreaming is that you can do it pretty much anywhere!

Take care,
Amber; June 30, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Anonymous said...: You have been busy :-).

I love how unique and interesting your 'harvested' list is. Violet leaves? Thats one i havn't tried.

Tricia; June 30, 2009 at 7:30 AM
Unknown said...: Good idea bringing salad dressing to the garden. I read about a lady who plants her tomatoes and basil together so she can snack in the garden. Mmmmm!; June 30, 2009 at 9:06 AM
Amber said...: Hi Tricia! Violets grow all over the place around here and people pull them like weeds out of their garden or throw them mercilessly under the mower. ;)

I'm enjoying getting to know such an abundant plant.

The flowers are edible (pansies included). If you have the time and patience to pick enough you can candy them, make vinegar or syrup.

The flower vinegar is a wonderful culinary addition and the syrup is good for coughs and sore throats.

Violets leaves are said to be high in Vitamin C and A. Young leaves are tasty in salad. They also contain mucilage (the same slimy, gooey stuff in aloe vera) which is very cool and soothing to the skin (sun burns) and other irritated and inflamed tissue (think IBS, mouth sores).

I have also read that violet leaf infusions are beneficial for breast health and can help with pre-menstrual breast discomfort.

If that's the case, I'll do a very bouncy happy dance for violets! :)

Artizan, it doesn't get much fresher than pulling your food out of the ground and eating it right away!

I like to bring a thermos of hot water with me too and fill it up with fresh herbs to make tea, as soon as I get to the garden.

Lemon balm and mint is really nice!; June 30, 2009 at 5:50 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali