Luke's attempt at 100,000 calories

It is definitely a daunting task. It's my first year growing a serious amount of food though so I thought I would see if I could make it 100,000 kcal. I suspect I may have to continue this until next year.

I'm happy for the thread to be moved. I stuck it in here as I didn't want to clutter the forum with such a journal-like thread. I hadn't considered that it could be motivating!

Here's a strange one. I had some old poppy seed and I scattered them around the garden when we moved into our house last winter. I didn't expect much as the seeds were about 10 years old. Surprisingly, my garden was awash with poppies this year - perhaps I should have remembered the story of the Flanders Poppies in WWII, a testament to how resilient and long-lived their seeds are.

I've been drying the seed pods for flower arranging. My dining room has become the drying room, in fact, and is full of poppies and peas laid out! As the poppies dried, they open and drop hundreds of tiny seeds. These seeds are perfectly edible and can be used for making cakes (we recently made a lemon, courgette and poppy seed cake), adding to smoothies or sprinkling onto bread rolls.

Makowiec, a Polish poppy seed cake

Poppy seeds harvested: 179 g (945 kcal)

Total: 36960 + 3520 + 969 + 962 + 638 + 9520 + 221 + 945 = 53735 kcal

More courgettes... there are other things in the pipeline, we just aren't harvesting them at the moment. I haven't bothered to track the weight/calories for greens as, whilst densely nutritious, I don't think they would contribute much to this challenge.

Courgettes harvested: 18.6 kg (3162 kcal)

Total: 36960 + 3520 + 969 + 962 + 638 + 9520 + 221 + 3162 = 55952 kcal

That’s a lot of courgettes! What are you going to do with them all?

Lock your doors - it’s courgette season

That's a good question!

We have been selling some, giving some away and others are available for passers by on a "pay as you feel" basis. Our produce is sold via two honesty stalls: one by a local shop and one outside our house. It's not earned much so far but it's a start for the business.

In terms of eating them, we have been making a courgette and cauli piccalilli which is very good. I think we have used 4 kilos in that, so far. Lunches have often been a courgette frittata. Fried courgettes with pesto is very tasty too. Everything we cook has a courgette (or 3!) in it at the moment.

That’s great to hear. I grew up with gluts of courgettes and have had them cooked many ways. I never grew tired of them and especially shallow fried in copious amounts of butter. My mum used to make an indian dish using grated courgette with a hot dressing made with toasted mustard seeds. I’ll have to ask here about it. It was lovely and nutty and a nice way to use courgettes raw. Thinking back, it was probably from a 1980’s Madhur Jaffrey book.

I’ll definitely be planting some courgettes and other squashes next year. Well done on your road to 100k.

Edward Norton wrote:My mum used to make an indian dish using grated courgette with a hot dressing made with toasted mustard seeds. I’ll have to ask here about it. It was lovely and nutty and a nice way to use courgettes raw. Thinking back, it was probably from a 1980’s Madhur Jaffrey book.

That sounds like a brilliant recipe. I have an old Madhur Jaffrey book from about that era so I'll leaf through and see if I can find it! Thanks!

More courgettes!

Courgettes harvested: 13.1kg (2227 kcal)

Total: 36960 + 3520 + 969 + 962 + 638 + 9520 + 221 + 3162 + 2227 = 58179 kcal

We also harvested 2 sacks of courgettes potatoes from the Community Garden that I'm a member of. One of those sacks (perhaps 30kg?) is my share for the shared work. I haven't been counting veg from the Community Garden but it would certainly help if I did. Does anyone have any thoughts about the eligibility of that for the BB?

Luke Mitchell wrote:
We also harvested 2 sacks of courgettes from the Community Garden that I'm a member of. One of those sacks (perhaps 30kg?) is my share for the shared work. I haven't been counting veg from the Community Garden but it would certainly help if I did. Does anyone have any thoughts about the eligibility of that for the BB?

Work in = produce out, so I personally don’t see when they shouldn’t count. There is one caveat in the BB that might cause a problem:

no inputs from more than 500 feet away

 - I’m not sure why this is a restriction. It would have discounted anything I grew on my allotment which I walked to. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the Paul factor and his location.  The probability that anyone in his area who has to travel more than 500 foot would do it a ICE vehicle Is high.

Edward Norton wrote:

Luke Mitchell wrote:

no inputs from more than 500 feet away

 - I’m not sure why this is a restriction. It would have discounted anything I grew on my allotment which I walked to. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the Paul factor and his location.  The probability that anyone in his area who has to travel more than 500 foot would do it a ICE vehicle Is high.

I understood this as compost, seedlings or plants, rather than produce. I'm not living on my site (yet) so, if your reading is correct, none of this would count for me either! We do drive to our land but do so as infrequently as possible (and always make sure we load up with things to take to the land - bricks, stone, saplings, transplants - and bring back anything we need at home to make it as efficient as we can).

On another note, I actually mean two sacks of potatoes not courgettes! Significantly more calorific!

Luke Mitchell wrote:
no inputs from more than 500 feet away

I understood this as compost, seedlings or plants, rather than produce. I'm not living on my site (yet) so, if your reading is correct, none of this would count for me either! We do drive to our land but do so as infrequently as possible (and always make sure we load up with things to take to the land - bricks, stone, saplings, transplants - and bring back anything we need at home to make it as efficient as we can).

Good point. I’m sure Mike would have brought this up. I’m wired to read things backwards or find the wrong meaning in stuff which is why I have to be extra careful with BB’s and if necessary check in advance.

How far is your land from home? Have you thought about selling your expensive unrelaible petrol drinking van and getting an electric cargo bike? (I’m only half serious, just doing as much as I can to spread the good word . . .)

Edward Norton wrote:
How far is your land from home? Have you thought about selling your expensive unrelaible petrol drinking van and getting an electric cargo bike? (I’m only half serious, just doing as much as I can to spread the good word . . .)

It's a 15 minute drive, although a few miles of that is along a fast, 60mph road. We have seriously considered purchasing an electric bike and building a trailer for it. It's something we will do in the future. We've also talked about cycling to the land on our regular, non-electric bikes but we are always carrying spades/sledgehammers/stone/the dog and it never seems appropriate.

For now, as much as I dislike it, the van makes sense for us. We live rurally and often need a second vehicle to get around (to the doctors or for the volunteering I do with the National Park, mostly). We also end up moving large things quite regularly, IBC tanks, lengths of timber, half-built structures... I'm also constantly scavenging for building supplies (I have my nose in every skip/dumpster I pass!) and having the van to transport these is essential. I've attached a couple of photos showing some of my recent finds. The carbon and financial savings go some way to offsetting the emissions of the vehicle.

Eventually we will park up the van (Dandelion, as she is named!), remove the engine for parts or recycling and turn it into a building. Until then, we'll do our best to keep it on the road and put it to good use.

We had some friends visiting during the 3-day weekend. They were very impressed (daunted?) by the size of our 'Boston' squash and, as they felt ripe, we decided to pick some of the largest ones. They're already too big for the oven so I'm going to have to be a bit creative with my use of them.

The biggest wouldn't fit in the bag I was using to weigh them. It felt about 15kg, the same as the 2nd largest, so I'm going to assume that is "close enough"!

Squash harvested: 86kg (34400 kcal)

(I'm using a figure of 40kcal per 100g, obtained by looking for "hubbard squash nutrition" on Google)

Total: 36960 + 3520 + 969 + 962 + 638 + 9520 + 221 + 3162 + 2227 +  34400 = 92579 kcal (getting close!)

I've been taking a close look at the requirements for the Badge Bit and I realise that I'm short on a few things.

The potatoes, which I have included, were grown from chitted store-bought potatoes. We bought 2kg of potatoes in total: 1kg of white and 1kg of red (these were 'Alouette'). The potatoes were meant for eating but we they grew just fine. Unfortunately I don't have any photos or proof of this.

My other realisation is that I need to include more crops to get the BB! The requirements are for 12 or more different crops, each with a minimum of 2000 kcals. Currently I am on 4: potatoes, courgettes, peas and squash. The poppy seeds don't reach the required threshold.

I've been growing and harvesting lettuce and kale throughout but I've been ignoring this as they provide so few calories for their weight. I'll have to remedy this in the future. Later in the year, we will have mooli, Brussel sprouts and red cabbage too.

Awesome! Love those squash. I’m guessing you can store them for months. Is the flesh similar to kobacha Japanese squash? I’m so looking forward to next growing season and planting lots of squash.

Thanks for the reply to cargo-biking - I figured you’d already assessed all options. I think what you are doing is fantastic. I really should give my bike a name.

This BB is a long one. I’m guessing you’ll be done by this time next year and you’ll be more than halfway to the next one. Thanks for the update.