Independence Days Challenge

While we know what the Independence Days Challenge was designed for as written by Sharon here.

I thought I might tell what the challenge means to me personally.

As we all know, we can not tell what the future may hold as far as climate warming and food inflation or even scarcity of certain foodstuffs may bring ( I have been having a hard time lately finding short grained rice, has anyone else had this problem? Good bye rissoto for the time being anyway).

This challenge is a way to work toward an independent mindset, while perhaps knowing I am certainly in no way independent for the moment. The more I continue in the challenge the more I come to realize how very much I rely on outside sources.

I do however hope to be prepared ( in my mind with contemplation) to meet any personal challenge that may come my way as we watch the climate change and the world with our food supplies change along side it.

With those thoughts, I continue with my Updates.

Plant something – more lettuce

Some of our eggplant is blooming and I am such a proud parent as this is the first time any eggplant I have planted has made it this far.

Eggplant is suppose to be easy to grow also, so who knows why all my attempts in times past have resulted in dismal failure?

We finally have some cucumbers forming.

2. Harvest something – About the same as last update LINK, with the exception of a few green beans added to that.

I am still anxiously awaiting wild blackberries.

3. Preserve something – frozen squash, zucchini, cabbage, onion.

4. Prep something – nothing

5. Cook something – new!
Zucchini Pizza. I just made a regular pizza with italian dressing drizzled over and grilled zucchini on top. Hubby liked it (but I had to add hamburger as he is a meat eater extremer), and it was very good with some of our dried chili flakes from last season.

6. Manage your reserves – Made a large batch of spaghetti sauce to use up some of my frozen roasted tomatoes. I am afraid our tomato reserve will not last until we have more ripe however. The tomato are really slow this year.

7. Work on local food systems – No.

8. Manage waste – Still throwing on compost heap

9. Learn something new – No

And, just a picture of some wild geese to end with.

While they are pretty they are also nasty things and we got the dogs mainly to keep them at bay. They used to get so brazen as to mess on our decks without the dogs.

Yuck!

PS, of course we have fallen in love with our dogs, they are part of the family!