Independence Days Update

And for this week's efforts...

Planted
Nada. Nothing. Stuff is growing, why should I plant more? :)

Harvested
More lettuce: I love salad straight from the garden. In fact I have some packed up to take for my lunch at work tomrrow. I also dug up a few new potatoes - totally not caring if I might damage the roots of the existing potato plants, they look very resilient to me. The potatoes were great. :)

Preserved
I noticed a lot of clover growing around here so I picked some to use for tea later. Also some yarrow, presumably for similar uses. It's all drying on the top of the stove. :)

Stored
Big 10 lb bags of sugar were on sale for half price ... so I got two! $5 for 10 lb of sugar is just too good to pass up.

Prepped
I am working on the assumption that 'prepping' includes all infrastructure building efforts.
We did lots in this regard: we found a freezer that was being given away - it is outside awaiting another coat of Tremclad, then it'll take up residence inside, probably as the repository of Lamb For Sale (which has to be stored in a separate freezer from the stuff we eat). We also picked up some useful things from a farm sale - several boards (destined for the barn lean-to we intend to make on the back of the shed, so our sheep have somewhere to go when bad weather and lambing season coincide), two new burn barrels (The Reluctant Farmer had a 'bobcat incident' that squished the previous burn barrel), and a wash tub (for the aforementioned barn).
In addition, we reclaimed the shed as an actual shed: now that the chickens are happily housed in their new portable Coupe de Ville, we were able to deconstruct the portion of the shed that served as chicken coop ... and remove the manure, hay, and assorted other messes that littered the shed floor. The shed is now, once again, a shed ... and we are glad to have a place to store our useful stuff!

Manged Reserves
Well ... I looked in the pantry and thought "I should inventory this stuff". Does that count? We did start a couple of batches of mead and fruit wine, as we do enjoy our evening beverages. They are bubbling away quite happily.

Cooked Something New
We tried a few new recipes this week .... none really 'worked'. Oh, except for The Reluctant Farmer's oatmeal pancakes. They were yummy.

Reduced Waste
Hmm ... not sure what we did here.. our clean up jobs feel like they created more waste. We did move two leftover hay bales to the garden to use as mulch, and we have made at least two dog food meals from dinner leftovers (see the above entry on 'cooked something new'...)

Worked on Local Food Systems
Nothing new here ... oh, well, except that The Reluctant Farmer emailed our relevant governing bodies to find out more about the rules we need to follow if we are going to sell our meat directly. That probably counts.