Independence Days- take 2: week 5

Ok. I'm tired.  I seem to be saying that a lot lately.  But I didn't sleep well last night.  We were up late helping J15 on a school project that was due today.  It was a report on her 'life and times'.  She was supposed to prepare a history of her life, with pictures, and correlate the stages/ages of her life with world and US events.  Unfortunately, she ended up redoing much of it.  She had been working on it at school for the past week and had lots of pictures and information on her file on the school server.  Sadly, the school server was down all weekend and she couldn't access any of the photos she had already scanned in.   So she had to re-scan photos from before we had a digital camera and pull information and images off the web to complete her project.  Then, of course, her printer decided to be uncooperative.  Finally, she just saved it as a PDF and V printed it from his computer this morning.  Thank goodness for a household network where we can share files between computers easily.  When we finally got her wrapped up, a thunderstorm came through, and then I was having weird dreams that involved painting and packing.  Hmmm, I wonder why that would be.

I guess the 16 hour days I've been putting in working on the house have taken their toll as well.  Both V and I are feeling physically a bit better this evening after having had a 'down' day today.  V was doing some writing today and I was at work.  We did get out to the house for an hour or so this afternoon after I got off work.  V cut some wire to length for some of the re-wiring that needs done in the house and I got to weed!!!!  Hurrah!!!  Who would think I would be so excited about weeding.  I did get the lettuce, beets and chard weeded, the potatoes hilled a bit and some of the peas weeded.

But on to my usual Monday business: the Independence Days Challenge.

1.  Plant something- 3 huge crowns of asparagus from my parents, my super secret tomatoes, a yellow cherry tomato from our backyard and 10 free flowering tree seedlings (they look like tiny sticks!)

2.  Harvest something- RADISHES!!! our first real harvest from the new garden!  I did snack on a few leaves of chard and a bit of lettuce while I weeded but they aren't quite big enough to harvest for salad yet.

3.  Preserve something- again, my standard reply of  'only my sanity'  But that was quite a feat this week.

4.  Reduce waste- Hmm, the usual but not much else.  We are still trying to repurpose as much as possible out at the house.  Oh, and I guess I keep snagging boxes out of the 'office trash' drop spots at the hospital to use for packing (I got 3 boxes today!).  That saves them from ending up in the garbage.  My brother dropped off lots of boxes for us again today.  We will save all the boxes for them since they are hoping to be moving soon as well.  Oh, and another thing.  I pulled out a bunch of boxes, an almost new mop, broom and a box of cleaning supplies from the dumpster across the alley- someone had dumped lots of their moving/clean up stuff- so I ended up with a bucket, most of a bottle of bleach, nearly full bottles of clorox clean-up and 409 spray, a scrub brush and a few other things.

5.  Prep and storage- Well, we are still working on the ultimate prep of getting our homestead up and running (well, livable comes first!)  Storage is NOT high on my priority right now.  We're trying to downsize our stores before we make the big move or at least not add anything new.  Although, I'll confess, I almost picked up some canning jars I saw last week but then I remembered that my Mom says she has a whole bunch that she isn't using anymore that I could have (after we move!)

6.  Community food systems- Not really.  I guess the sharing of the super secret tomatoes is a kind of building community, even if they weren't mine to give- I was a recipient.

7.  Eat the food- no problem there. We're trying to reduce the stores so we've been eating from stores as much as possible, although I'll confess that we stopped at the store on the way home to pick up some frozen french fries to have with our burgers for dinner tonight.  But tomorrow is cheese tortellini (from the freezer stores- purchased when it was on a good sale) and pesto frozen from last year's garden. We're almost out but I noticed that my basil is up so we'll have more this year.