Independence Days with Adventures In Country Living

After reading this post and this post at Adventures In Country Living, I decided to give this challenge a go as a way of helping me along and making me more accountable. I had just finished reading the Sharon Astyk book when I stumbled across Anita's blog in that convoluted rabbit hole way you find things on the internet!

Anyway, this is my first challenge update so here we go! (I know, it should have been Monday, sorry about that!)



Plant something
There is a nursery next door to hubby's work and they often give us past sellable seedlings - still fine though, just a bit too leggy to sell. So planted some lettuce and onions. Unattractively covered in chicken wire to deter chickens!

Harvest something
Peaches, peaches, peaches! I wish I could send you some, Anita! Any recipes (especially if they don't involve peeling!) gratefully accepted. And, as you can, still tons more on the tree. We have been harvesting them a bit green as our district has a wasp problem this season.

Preserve something
Roasted pumpkin seeds, dried apples and dried tomatoes. See those tomatoes - that used to be a whole bag of tomatoes! I am also currently drying some peaches and have stewed and frozen batches of peaches.

Waste not
We always feed our food scraps to the chickens. I get a bit stressed out when we visit people and see them throwing food in the bin!
We have also been feeding the fallen peaches to the cows - the boys think it is great fun listening to them crunch away at them and then spit out the stones.

Want Not
Not sure what I can put here; maybe that we went op (thrift store) shopping and I found quite a few items of boys' clothing in bigger sizes to put away.
Whenever I grocery shop, I always buy at least two of each item, so we stay well stocked up. Everyone in the house now knows to get stuff from Mum's 'shop' in the plastic crates under our bed (even though they think I'm crazy)!

Eat the food
Spaghetti bolognaise last night from last year's cow we raised. And surprisingly, peaches!
Tonight a dried tomato, fetta and spinach quiche.

Build community food systems
We gave away some of our peaches to a friend who previously gave us some plums. We were given some beetroot by another friend. It all just seems to go around.

Skill up
Don't know - I would say just 'meeting' new people on the net and finding out how they are doing things. There is always something new to learn!




Here is the link to Anita's post for this week.

So how about it?! Even if you are not a full-on preparedness, self-sufficiency crazy nut, it can only help to do one, some or all of these things on a regular basis.