Welcome to the Friday open thread for the Living Simply group. If you are not familiar with our group, the basic idea, from our profile, is:
A group to explore and share sustainable, simple living ideas among fellow progressives. For the urban, rural, or wannabe homesteader, this is a place to share information to simplify everyday life. Sustainable skills such as gardening, food production and storage, do-it-yourself projects for the home or farm, and backyard chickens and other livestock, as well as eco-conscious philosophies such as cooperative living, eco-cities, the Slow Food movement, and being a mindful consumer are but a few potential topics of interest here.
A couple of diaries posted to the Living Simply group this week. First we had Frank Palmer's The Library Example, which provided for some interesting discussion about what goods we could legitimately share instead of outright consume.
I then began the first leg of my fermented foods journey with Adventures in Fermentation: Kombucha, Part I, wherein I illustrate the steps to produce your own SCOBY/mother culture for brewing kombucha (and hope my kitchen isn't taken over by some mutant bacteria/yeast swamp monster).
I'm posting this later than I usually do because I was fortunate enough to spend the morning at a fabulous local homestead where I picked out 3 flats full of seedlings. I brought home kale, chard, 2 varieties of cabbage, 2 varieties of broccoli, and 17 different varieties of heirloom lettuce, which I promptly planted in one of my raised beds before being chased indoors by a chilly rainstorm. If the weather permits, I'll plant my onion sets out later, too. Finally! I finally feel like spring is really on the way. This is the first I've been able to plant anything--either because of weather or my own time constraints--so I'm glad the garden is actually going now.
A few photos of today's garden loot:
A small-headed cabbage, Gonzales
Kale, variety eludes me
Good 'ol Oak Leaf lettuce, a loose-leaf variety
Lola Rosa, a red loose-leaf lettuce variety
An early butterhead variety, May Queen
And one of my absolute favorites, Drunken Woman. Isn't she pretty? This is another butterhead, but it produces a crinkly, "frizzy head" of lettuce that is absolutely delicious (we'll forgive her her minor indiscretions. Everyone is entitled to a good time now and then, eh?).
I planted several other types of loose-leaf green lettuce, both green and red Romaines, a red iceberg (I typically don't consider iceberg a real veggie, but this is an heirloom variety in a beautiful shade of deep maroon--there's got to be some nutrition there), romanesco, broccoli (Arcadia variety), and Chinese cabbage. Some are new varieties to me, some I have planted before. The butterheads tend to be my favorites, but I also love a lot of the tender loose-leaf varieties. Romaines tend to end up in my smoothies, though I love their crunch in salads as well.
So what are you doing to live more simply? Weekend projects and plans, anyone?