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Home > Archive: June, 2014

Archive for June, 2014

The garden runneth over, and a new small business

June 12th, 2014 at 02:38 am

Well, the good news is that my efforts to start clearing out clutter seem to be working. Our bedroom is pristine, and it's now nice to go in there and see nothing-- no clutter, no clothes piled up. it's relaxing!

Since it's summer, most of my life is consumed by the garden. I have a few things brewing on that front.

First, I am up to my eyeballs in salad greens. I think I must have more than 10 pounds of it in the garden waiting to be eaten. It takes a lot of greens to add up to 10 pounds! And here I planted extra thinking I wouldn't get much. Shows you what I know.

I'm happy with the way the garden is going so far, although some of my transplants are a little bit yellow and I can't figure out why.

I've been trying to figure out what to do with all of the greens. I don't think I can eat them all before they bolt and go bitter. Today, I set up a trade of 1 pound of greens for strawberry jam and dandelion jam.

The more I think about it, I love the idea of trading. I might have been bitten by the bug. A few months back, I traded several pepper seedlings for a little bit of firewood. It's like the light switch turned on and the possibilities, should I be able to develop the network of people to trade.

Anyway, we're going on vacation next week and I'm not sure the greens will last for a week until we get back. I might call a food pantry tomorrow and see if they can take some.

The other big garden news, is I've been asked by a local retailer to sell some of the luffa sponges I grow in my backyard anymore. They were looking for local scrubbers and someone I had given one to as a gift mentioned that I grew and processed them. I've spent today cleaning and cutting the last few luffas, making tags, and tagging them. I drop them off at the store tomorrow.

The proprietor has asked me how much I want for them. I don't know. Cash is nice, but I was thinking of maybe asking for trade for bags of compost. I need some of that for the garden and I'd have to buy some if I didn't trade for it. I like the idea of trading, but I'm not sure if that would come across as weird.

Any thoughts?

That's just about all that's happening here. Work work work, kids on summer vacation, and prepping to go out of town for a week.

garden goodies and using stuff up!

June 4th, 2014 at 11:46 pm

Well, two weeks into the eating out of the pantry challenge and there's finally a small dent in the freezer and some empty shelf space near the home-canned garden goods.

Things are going well.

We have also started reaping harvests from the garden. It's so exciting to see all of your planning grow and end up on the table! We've picked about 3 oz of oregano; 5 oz of mint; 1.63 pounds of salad greens; and 3 pounds of strawberries. It's very exciting.

Tonight, I made shortcake from scratch (using stuff up!) to go with the strawberries for dessert. In the spirit of the pantry challenge, I've also used up a lot of the pasta sauce I canned last year, for a couple batches of lasagna. And, we're eating down the meat from the freezer.