Went through some bookmarks in my browser today, noticed that all the old blogs I've read over the years haven't been updated in quite some time. Then I remembered that I had this thing here, and felt a little silly that I haven't updated in a while. A long while.
So let's see: last entry was about our crazy neighbors across the street. Well, they moved away. New neighbors over there now, but they never talk to us. Maybe it's because it's too hot, or maybe they think we're nuts because we have this huge overgrown garden.
Oh yeah, the garden. It's immense. Every year it seems to get bigger and brighter. This year our tomatoes did really well. Peppers, too. Even tried broccoli out for the first time, and it did really well. The chickens have been a roller coaster ride of emotions ever since we got them. First we bought six, ate one because it was a rooster. Then we bought six more birds, three chickens and three ducks. Then something came along and started eating all of them. We're down to two of the original chickens.
Work has been decent to me lately. I've gotten to the point where I've removed all previous crap from the last IT guy and have replaced it all with my own doing. Feels pretty good. Everything's working. When I have to make a change, most of what I need to do can be done from my desk so long as there aren't any serious network issues.
This means that between mini projects and minor complaints, I can really daydream about projects. And I've come up with some real whoopers. Things like making a smokehouse to smoke meats and veggies and cheeses and fish. Various food preservation techniques like dehydration and canning and etc.
A few years ago I started using Mint to track my spending and help me make a budget of sorts. Every year I check out the various categories of spending and note that our number one cost center of everything isn't rent, or shopping, or anything else: it's food. Specifically eating out at a restaurant. So every year I make a silent vow to cut back on food costs. So far, it's been working, but that cost center of food is still highest on the list. We made the garden, eat all we can from it, but a lot gets wasted. Which then means that we fall back on ordering a pizza or hitting the local diner.
But now that I have at least two methods of preserving foods (dehydrator comes tomorrow), I'll be able to stretch out the usefulness of what we grow. Also I'm hoping to save some money by buying big package deals from the local butcher. Once I build out the smokehouse, shit's gonna get cray-cray.
I've done probably six or seven canning experiments so far. I think my most favorite was the whiskey butterscotch sauce, even though we didn't grow any of the components and it really isn't preserved at all. But it's in a jar. Preserving-wise I think the pasta sauce is gonna be the most tasty, maybe the pickled carrots...
Daughter got a job at the local farmer's market, so I go there every week. Pies are good there, sausage guy knows my name, and I'm starting to get addicted to these crazy garlic varieties that a farmer brings weekly. I don't know if we'll ever be able to produce enough food to support a booth there every week, but wife thinks we can. Maybe if we add in another field to the grow table... I don't know.
