Based on many of the important things in Paul's book, made bite-sized, and very relevant to my current priorities and (urban) situation, I have made a list of 30 things for a 30-Day challenge:
1. obtain cast iron pan
2. properly season cast iron pan
3. prepare a food in cast iron pan
4. analyze demand on website for three most marketable new offerings
5. begin work on PDF to soon sell
6. put up sales page on website with new PDF note: decided not to because $$$
7. cook a new, from-scratch dish today
8. cook 2nd new dish
9. cook 3rd new dish
10. forage a food
11. prepare dish one using foraged food
12. prepare second dish using forged food
13. identify one common nearby plant and its uses
14. identify second plant and its uses
15. identify third plant and its uses
16. set up food scraps to mother’s hens system
17. set up gray water buckets to garden system Note: modified
18. spend one day tracking the waste of the house
19. pick one waste item to eliminate from our lives
20. pick one waste item to reuse somehow in our lives
21. implement a new way to save electricity today
22. implement a way to better use rainwater today
23. find a more local source for commonly-used item 1
24. find a local source for item 2
25. find a local source for item 3
26. Wash dishes by hand all day
27. create a wildflower garden for pollinators in the unused area of the property
28. create a brush pile near the garden for wildlife habitat note: decided to discontinue
29. attempt a bit of wattle fencing
30. plant something very unusual in the summer garden
What do you think: 1) should I let myself accomplish the tasks in any order as I feel like it during May, or 2) should I order the list in a certain way now and then keep myself to that order during the coming month?
Looking forward to seeing your progress! I would personally allow picking any each day rather than assigning an order, but I like options and being able to work around things (like weather, schedules, etc.).
Nikki Roche wrote:Looking forward to seeing your progress! I would personally allow picking any each day rather than assigning an order, but I like options and being able to work around things (like weather, schedules, etc.).
Thanks! Yes, I think I will go for the flexibility of just checking something off the list each day. I am nervous about the last week though--I bet I will have the hardest at the end!
Good luck with this Rachel, do keep us informed as to how you get on.
Rachel Lindsay wrote:
What do you think: 1) should I let myself accomplish the tasks in any order as I feel like it during May, or 2) should I order the list in a certain way now and then keep myself to that order during the coming month?
I think you will be setting yourself for failure (completing in 30 days) if you don't give yourself some flexibility. I'd also let yourself complete two in one day if that happens, so you can slip a day when other things get tough.
Some of these seem quite a bit more challenging than others, and may need to be spread out over several days, but e.g. obtaining , seasoning and using a cast iron pan, may be done more quickly so you can get ahead.
It's good to set oneself challenges, I ought to do this more!
I pretty much agree with what others have said. If you're really committed to doing this, there are a few things I'd try:
1. I'd use an electronic document and use colour to identify tasks you feel are easier or harder. If you find yourself checking off all the easy ones, without doing multiples in one day, it will be a heads up that the end of the challenge will be tough.
2. I'd use a different colour to note things which may need multiple days for practical reason. You've identified as urban, but do you grocery shop daily? If not, breaking down the "cook a new, from-scratch dish today" task into some coloured sub-tasks a) choose a recipe, b) decide what ingredients I need and don't have and don't want to substitute for c) actually do the cooking, is an example of my thinking.
3. If there's one I sense I'm avoiding or delaying or just need to at least put some thought into, I'd bold that one. I do that with my electronic ToDo list and sometimes it helps.
In the meantime, it does look as if you've got some back-seat cheerleaders - so here are my final words, "You can do this! And I hope you'll have a great sense of accomplishment when you do so!"
Day 5: Set up food-scraps-to-mother’s-hens system.
In my kitchen I have now set up a small cardboard box inside a larger (12x18") tote bin, the smaller container being for the eggshells she wants me to save for her, and the larger bin for collecting hen-appropriate kitchen scraps.
Alas--it is not at all discreet, but it will certainly do the job, and no one will trip on it, anyway. I live six miles from my folks, and visit them three times a week to help with a joint kitchen garden project there, so I won't have time to get flies in my kitchen scraps before I deliver them (I hope).
Rachel Lindsay wrote:
I think/hope these are wild carrots/Queen Anne's Lace, there in the middle of the picture (behind the soil hill where I am growing domestic carrots!).
This site has some pretty detailed information on identification: https://www.wildfooduk.com/edible-wild-plants/wild-carrot/ . You may want to stop the wild carrot flowering if you are intending to save seed from your own carrots. I don't think they will necessarily improve your carrot genetics very much. The above website describes them as woody and to use them for flavouring stews. I have heard that the seeds may contain a sunscreen oil and were chewed as a contraceptive (don't eat them if you may be pregnant!).
Day 7: Pick one waste item to eliminate from our lives.
I haven't done the waste-tracking audit yet, but I know one waste-creator we are going to elimate from our lives: tissues.
My daughter has been sick for a week with a viral headcold. She has from toddlerhood preferred to blow her nose, when sick, on thin cotton rags that were give to me at my baby shower. (The package said 'cloth diapers' but they were the thickness of pocket handkerchiefs, only four times the size. Yes, I bought proper cloth diapers on my own to supplement the ones my sister gave me that she had used with her babies!) And these rags don't make her nose red when she wipes with them for a week. Good enough for her, I guess good enough for her father and me. So I am going to buy more of them and kiss the boxes of tissues goodbye!
Nancy Reading wrote: This site has some pretty detailed information on identification: https://www.wildfooduk.com/edible-wild-plants/wild-carrot/ . You may want to stop the wild carrot flowering if you are intending to save seed from your own carrots. I don't think they will necessarily improve your carrot genetics very much. The above website describes them as woody and to use them for flavouring stews. I have heard that the seeds may contain a sunscreen oil and were chewed as a contraceptive (don't eat them if you may be pregnant!).
Thank you very much! I will probably put the roots in a crock pot with some chicken preparations for one of my foraged food dishes--I don't plan to use the seeds. They volunteer in my lawn, and I have had the soil tested recently to see if it is safe to eat out of it!
AAAAAAHHHHHH! Last year I accidentally brought it 7 miles from my garden to my mother's garden in the woods...where she didn't have it before, and now it's there. And it will eventually interfere with the mycorrhizae of her beautiful forest, my current read (Mychorrhizal Planet--Michael Phillips) tells me. So we must use it, and fast: https://www.healthygreensavvy.com/creeping-charlie-uses/
Don't know how soon I will actually be able to sell it, but at least I have gotten it started today!
I teach Latin online. And the old Latin textbook I use and recommend most often has lots of instructions for examples/drills for students to review with, but doesn't actually give the Latin words and endings anywhere. Since I have been asked about this via e-mail, I know other teachers would like to have them to refer to. Since I have now taught the whole textbook, after two years I have in that process made all of those reviews in my presentations, and so I have them. I just started copying and pasting into a WordDoc that I will later turn into a sellable PDF.
Day 11: Create a wildflower garden for pollinators in the unused area of the property.
"The property" refers to my parents' property, which is less than 10 mins from my house, and is 20 acres of woods. Woods, except for a strip that the power company, without permission or warning, made into "not woods" three years ago now. No one will ever try to grow anything edible there, but I thought we might be able to help pollinators with wildflowers growing there. We noticed yarrow growing there on its own when we planted our seeds in the morning, and a knee-high bright yellow wildflower volunteer I haven't identified. So my mother, daughter and I raked up the soil in a long rectangle maybe--40' x 4'--as a start for our first bag of wildflower seeds, and we scattered the contents and stomped it into the grown. We will gradually extend the planted area back down the slope toward the house, as time goes on. I still have two more bags of seeds from clearance last fall, so I will probably add more this week or next, and look forward to a bunch of late-summer blooms!
Day 12: Find a more local source for commonly-used item (1 of 3).
Just found out that they have pasture-raised whole chickens for sale at my farmers' market here in town. Awesome--we sure like to eat chicken around here, and I need a chicken to cook the wild carrot with soon!
(Y'all I'm almost halfway through the month and I've mostly done the easy ones so far. And we're about to get super busy and have vacations and stuff! We will see how I finish the month up...)
Plantain, broad-leaved plantain. My daughter woke up this morning with what I am pretty sure is a Brown Recluse Spider bite (she gets them almost every year in May, and we catch many of them in glue traps in the master bedroom and bathroom). My mother, who is always reading about herbal skin remedies, messaged me to find some plantain leaves, "macerate them" and apply to the bite.
I did. And it didn't get as hot and swollen and red as it did last year, and she has not complained about it the rest of the day. I may use some each day until it's finally gone.
And I researched it a bit and found out we could eat it too, if we wanted, and have "Baked Plantain Chips." Yay!
(Bit of a hiccup yesterday with my 30-day plan, but we will continue on today, and keep on chuggin'.)
Attached is a photo of what can happen when you don't mow your lawn in middle Tennessee, but I am very glad it happened. All parts edible; diuretic, laxative, and anti-inflammatory. And it planted itself in my front yard--how about that?
Day 15: Pick one waste item to reuse somehow in our lives.
And...it's gonna be toilet paper tubes. (The other big waste item we have right now is melon rinds, but...other than composting those, which I already do, I couldn't think what to do to reuse those.)
I will use the toilet paper rolls as fire-starters on our summer camping trip(s), as cord organizers for the irritating snarls we have in various rooms in our house, and covers/holders for our (few!) rolls of wrapping paper in the closet.
(If anyone suggests any other ideas, I will be glad to hear them!)
Rachel Lindsay wrote:(The other big waste item we have right now is melon rinds, but...other than composting those, which I already do, I couldn't think what to do to reuse those.)
I've heard somewhere of making pickles with melon rinds. That said, I think that was a "sweet" pickle, as opposed to a fermented pickle, and sweet pickles aren't a healthy enough food group to want to be eating too much of!
Day 16: Implement a new way to save electricity today.
This week I received an air fryer/pressure cooker device. I was afraid to use it at first (new things and gadgets always scare me), but then I crisped something up and I realized: This thing is even better than a toaster oven! For the last few years I had been wishing for a toaster oven, so that I could stop turning on our big oven every whipstich, as I do, to make toast or really warm up anything since we do not use a microwave.) But--now that I have this, I am going to save on all that energy/electricity as I had wanted to, aaaaand...
...that device makes today almost a 2-challenges-for-1-day because I learned: I can use the pressure cooker part to make my own bone broth! (I am drinking it nearly every day right now for my health). There's no more local source for a commonly-used item than my own kitchen! But since I haven't actually made it yet, I won't count it, but it was exciting to see that I will be able to!
What type did you get, Rachel? I'm thinking of getting something similar for my Bulgarian house which doesn't have a large oven/stove since the old one died. I'd like to see if I can find smaller lower-energy appliances to use in its place.
Toilet paper tubes can be refitted into seedling pots. This way you can plant your young seedlings without removing them from the tray.
I have to keep them wet all the time if I want my seeds to succeed, and then the cardboard loses strength. I'm still using the paper tubes, but now they go inside plastic vases so they keep the form.
Jane Mulberry wrote:What type did you get, Rachel? I'm thinking of getting something similar for my Bulgarian house which doesn't have a large oven/stove since the old one died. I'd like to see if I can find smaller lower-energy appliances to use in its place.
My brother-in-law gave us a Ninja Foodi. I guess that's what they use, and have loved. I haven't used the pressure cooker yet, but one sister tells me I really need to. So I will, before May is over!
Day 17. Spend one day tracking the waste of the house
(I did this item yesterday, but am posting it up today because our beautiful, fun, smart [and sleep-fighting!] toddler niece was here last night for her first overnight, so...)
Ugh. To quote the character of Ophelia in Hamlet, "Oh, woe is me/ T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"
So. Much. Food. --Decayed stuff from fridge as well as leavings after meals/snacks
The remaining birthday decorations (banners/balloons)
Packaging for foods, must have been at least a dozen things
Bandaid
Paper plates (because of company, but I composted!)
Scrap paper, junk mail envelopes, stuff used for art projects
I knew I would not like keeping track of it, and I did not. But where I save on waste, I will vastly improve my daily life. So, I had better generate some goals about that. I know I need to check out the Fighting Food Waste threads for sure!
Day 18: Set up gray water buckets to garden system
It's actually going to have to be a "warming-up shower water buckets to garden system" because of the way things are in our situation right now. Our old bathroom sink has had issues in the last year, and I think we will not be messing with it this month.
I have brought the red bucket in for the shower water, and will begin using it tonight!
Day 19: Plant something very unusual in the summer garden
I just heard of these from a nonfiction gardening book for children from the 1960s:
Job's Tears--it said people have grown their own beads, and my daughter (7 now) is obsessed with all things beady. We will see what happens. Package says it takes 2 weeks for them to even sprout, wow!
Everyone's favorite local u-pick strawberry farm closed down a couple years ago, but today I poked around on the internet and found another, and it is in a neighboring county. Miss G loves strawberries and although strawberry season is just about over here, we still have time to go picking, now that I know where we can go!
Day 23: Create a brush pile near the garden for wildlife habitat.
I started this today, but I do not think I will continue. If I leave it in the front yard of my property, it will be an eyesore. If I remove it to the back yard, it will be nowhere near the garden, and will be unattractive unless I hide it behind the shed, where there is already a bunch of weird stuff.
And if I do this at my mother's property, the garden is already in 20 acres of woods, and thankfully wildlife abounds, eating some of our plants and spreading lots of seeds around.
Not one of my better ideas, but I will keep having them, and trying for better ones!
Rachel Lindsay wrote:Day 23: Create a brush pile near the garden for wildlife habitat.
I started this today, but I do not think I will continue. If I leave it in the front yard of my property, it will be an eyesore. If I remove it to the back yard, it will be nowhere near the garden, and will be unattractive unless I hide it behind the shed, where there is already a bunch of weird stuff.
This is a reasonable conclusion to make. What about a rock pile instead? Make it look decorative - or like an Inukshuk of sorts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk
Rock piles can be good for snakes assuming poisonous ones won't move in, and amphibians, and could be made so they're not so messy as a brush pile.
It was Nutmeg & Cinnamon Muffins (my name for it, the name in the magazine was Cinnamon Coffee Puffs--and no coffee was involved with these).
Cooking is something I have to grit my teeth and endure--so it is good that I put these cooking items on my list. But that is a reason these are still left here at the end of the month!
Yesterday I finally tried the pressurizing function on my electric pressure cooker so that I would feel confident to cook with it, so that will probably happen tomorrow!
Based on many of the important things in Paul's book, made bite-sized, and very relevant to my current priorities and (urban) situation, I have made a list of 30 things for a 30-Day challenge:
10. forage a food
11. prepare dish one using foraged food
12. prepare second dish using forged food
Man, I'm starting to worry about these that are left over. Especially since apparently I'm going to have to go to a forge to help me out with one of them...
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