Mendolonium

A couple of months ago we (read:  Thomas) finished off the cherries we canned two years ago.  So this past weekend we trekked out to a wonderful local cherry orchard:  Big John’s to pick organic heirloom cherries.  With two kids to wrangle and us not quite all feeling well (we were all felled by a nasty bacteria the past few weeks) we picked only thirty pounds of cherries, but what wonderful cherries they are.  So since my last update we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Tomato Seedling (Furry Yellow Hog, from seed)
• Basil Seedlings x4 (from seed)
• Round French Zucchini (from seed)

Harvest something:

• Bell Peppers!!!
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Blackberries (I am pretty sure the squirrels are helping me with these.)
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Sage
• Cherries (from Big John’s)

Preserve something:

• 22 pints cherries (canned, in extra light syrup)
• 7 half-pints of “Black Forest Preserves” – a cherry chocolate concoction (canned)
• 1 cup sage (dried)

Waste Not:

• Jeff has been gathering all the broken, ripped, and mangled toys, books, and puzzle pieces from the house and is slowing repairing them one-by-one.  We are diligent about buying sturdy items, but after two boys some things are starting to look a bit worse for wear.
• Broke a jar of canned blueberries so I just had to make lemon-blueberry muffins.  Couldn’t let those beautiful berries go to waste.

Want Not:

• Been using our memberships to Kidspace and The Huntington to entertain the kids rather than toys.  Who needs stuff when you have outdoor fun?

Eat the food:

• Baked a cherry pie.
• Baking (and eating) lots of bread.
• Tried a new recipe; a quinoa-butternut squash casserole from Sharon’s book.  It was excellent.  Theodore, in particular, gobbled it up.

Build community food systems:

• I am planning to start a very local urban farming group focusing on our neighborhood (or folks who live outside our neigbhorhood, but could walk/bike/public transport nearby).  I am envisioning that the group would exchange home grown produce/herbs/eggs/milk/seeds (example:  I’ll trade you one pound of carrots for one pound of tangerines) as well as share farming wisdom.  I would also like to ensure that there is a social and community aspect to the group through get together – perhaps a potluck every other month?  If you are local and have an interest send me a message.  Regardless of whether you are local or not I would love ideas and input.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Independence Days. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.