Plant Something:
- 2 Golden Plum trees
- 2 Stella Cherry trees
- 7 Cranberry bushes
- 1 Bruce Plum
- Landino clover
- 32 Cantaloupe
- 30 Armenian cucumber
- 42 Pickling peppers
- 12 Italian pepperoncini
- 72 Sweet Margoram
- 72 Russian tarragon
- 24 Violet French artichokes
- 72 Purple basil
- 12 Ghost hot pepper
- 42 Cayenne pepper
- 18 OrangeGlo watermelon
- 12 Scotch Bonnet hot pepper
- 6 Craig’s Jalapeno grande
- 18 Goat Horn hot pepper
- 144 Fennel Di Ferenze
- 144 Cauliflower
- 18 White wonder watermelon
- 24 Prescott fond Blanc melon
- 24 Jaune Gros De Paris (100 lb edible pumpkins)
Gina helped me plant everything this week.
Harvest Something: 55 eggs
Preserve Something: We preserved 11 eggs in the new incubator.
Waste Not: Laid lots of left over news paper in the garden as a weed barrier.
Want Not: Our incubator arrived on Thursday and after labeling each fertile egg, we put nine duck eggs and two chicken eggs into the incubator. Each day we’ll add a few more until the incubator is filled. Each egg is labeled with two dates:
- date put into the incubator
- date when eggs should hatch
Also, all the weeper hoses arrived this week so I won’t be outside watering for hours each day. In the beginning, I’ll need to be out there, but when things get established, the weeper hoses will do their job.
Eat the Food: Chicken pot pie again, pickled eggs (actually tasted rather good!), lots of steak, lots of eggs, kefir cheese cake.
Build Community Food Systems:
Gave lots of food to my two oldest daughters. Also gave seeds and plants to them. Gina learned how to start seeds and this next week our business will be official and we can start selling eggs, and other foods.
Skill Up: Learned how to put the incubator together (super easy) and watched videos on how to hatch eggs.
Organize: I wrote the Independence Days Challenge each day as the post draft so I could post it on Friday morning…it worked out well.
Dom and I also are organizing our work days better. Usually its an all or nothing kind of day, and now we’ll be splitting each work day into four categories:
- Regular routine of caring for the animals and greenhouse happens very early in the morning
- When its still cool outside we’ll be doing heavy labor work
- A few hours are spent concentrating on interior work
- Back to the garden or other work that needs to be done outside
I thought I might add this video I took of my son Noah playing guitar for the talent show at his school yesterday.
I’m continually amazed at the volume of seeds you are planting! I can’t wait to see what all you get to harvest! It should be quite phenomenal!!! Hope you’re having a wonderful week!
Thanks Melissa,
I planted a lot more than what we consume hoping to get a moderate harvest. I went overboard with the tomatoes because last year we had a meager harvest. One thing that we were over abundant in was Armenian cucumbers. We were harvesting over 25 lbs a day with those big suckers…and that was with only 8 plants. The biggest one we had was 42 inches and the girth on that bad boy was huge. This year I’m hoping they’ll be just as prolific for the farmers market. I planted seeds I saved from the largest one we had, and right now we have 30 Armenians coming up. I’m scared. LOL
Last year was very experimental to see what will grow well here. Everything we planted grew well, so I wanted to take the chance and go all out. My main goal is to produce 90% of what we eat for the year. I’m hoping I’ll exceed those expectations. š
Sorry, I’m a little behind on my commenting and responding…the end of this school semester is kicking my butt!
So, 90% of your food, ha? That is absolutely amazing!!! I hope to some day be able to do that, too! I can’t wait to see what you all accomplish this year!!! I’m still looking at our food production in pounds and fully understand we need at least a few more actual acres before we can come close to what you’re doing š Thank you for the inspiration!
Thanks Melissa,
We are on only 1 1/4 acre of land. I’m amazed at how much a small plot can also produce. There was a city farmer that transformed a 1/10th of an acre into a highly productive plot that produced over 2 tons of food each year. I wish I could remember the website I saw it on. This person was able to feed so many inner city families with his small plot (which wasn’t even his land LOL )
1 1/4 acre, ha? It just looks huge, I guess. but in comparison to our plot, everything looks huge š
I’ll play on Google and see if I can find who you’re talking about š I will just keep pushing the envelope on our little plot as far as I can (while still leaving myself some room to walk around…lol). I am very hopeful this year will far surpass last year in the totals department š