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.
If you missed any Living Simply diaries this past week, posted or republished to the group were:
The first few installments of RiaD's incredibly informative series Get Growing (originally posted to her Firefly Dreaming blog), which includes pieces on Broccoli & Cauliflower, Cabbage & Kale, and Onions & Leeks.
It all comes out in the wash, my own diary on the art of being frugal and saving energy when doing laundry.
Another fine foraging diary by wide eyed lib, entitled Free Food: Enhance Your Foraging with Botany.
In the spirit of an open thread, what you have you been doing lately to live more simply? Me personally, I've got big-time garden fever; however, it was a blessing in disguise that I've been too busy to do anything other than spread some compost on my raised beds. Just the other day, this was the view I woke up to from my front door:
I'm in zone 7a! I like winter just as much as the next person, but I guess that Mother Nature didn't get the memo that winter is over. Nearly 3 inches of snow on the ground with just a few days to go 'till April is decidedly uncool. I'm just glad that I hadn't planted out any lettuce seedlings, as they would surely have met their demise. So, the plan will be to plant lettuce, kale, and onions in the next week. Surely I'll be safe from snow and frost after April 1...here's hoping, anyway!
If Mother Nature didn't get the memo that it's spring, my chickens definitely did. I'm collecting more eggs than I have room for, both from my breeding birds and my laying flock (I've been eating a lot of omelets lately). I hatch a lot of chicks as early as I can in the year, so I've been hatching for a few weeks now. We've got a few dozen fuzzy additions to the farm already, and I just set trays totaling 80+ eggs in my large incubator. We recently started construction on a larger, more well-designed brooder than the one we are currently using to house the little ones, and I expect we'll put the finishing touches on it today. None too soon, since I'll likely be over the 100 chick mark in a few weeks!