A New Composting Project!

So I've been running a composting co-op where I pick up food scraps from my neighbors. It currently serves 17 households and a preschool.  I'm doing it for the finished product, to keep stuff out of the landfill, to help educate people on composting, and to get people thinking about the landfill. It's been a great project. I'm still working on this one with gusto, but now I've got a new baby!

For this second project I've selected a business to compost for. Rainbow Foods has graciously and gratefully decided to fill buckets with deli and produce scraps and set them aside for me. I will be picking up about 15 gallons every other day. I'm keeping the two projects completely separate so I can have two different sets of data: one where material is added once a week and one where material is added every other day. I keep notes on weight, volume, and temperature to make sense of this all. I like to know exactly what is going on, and I also want these volunteer projects to provide solid data that can be used to create composting co-ops all over Juneau. It's exciting!

Gearing up for a new growing season

I was inspired by the onions I recently dug up from my covered raised beds. Apparently I hadn't buried one deep enough, and it had a shoot about an inch long, mid-February. I brought it in and potted it. It probably grows an inch a day. I keep clipping, and keep eating. I have since planted an indoor pot full of onions and one of garlic for the greens.







 I've also started up the Bioset sprouter that I bought last year. I'm not convinced on the system itself, but the peas are starting to grow....we'll see. I've had great luck with sunflower sprouts growing in soil and plan to start up a pot of those this week.

Last year I tried starting seedlings for transplant and failed miserably. Maybe it wasn't the right light setup, or maybe it was because the house sitter didn't water them, or maybe it was the brown-thumb voodoo spirit that resides in the interior space of my house. In any case, I'm giving it another whirl. Everything looks pretty lanky, but I'm going to wait a month then plop it all in my raised beds and see what happens. I have all my seed packets sorted by planting date, inside and out, and can't wait to see what becomes of it all. I was sure to get extra seed to accommodate the extremes of my experiments. 

While we had some rain I went poking around the garden a bit. Some of the plots I have covered with hoop houses are dry and ready for plants. Others, whose covers blew to shambles while I was out of town, are frozen solid. The herb bed surprised me with a green flush of oregano. I was outright astonished by the terra cotta pot of green oregano, which had been placed on top of the raised bed's soil in the fall. I brought it inside, trimmed it up, and now I've got the best marinara sauce around.

 
The Chicken Flop

 For three years I've raised chickens have have been selling eggs. When the darkness came I kept a light on them and always had eggs year-round. Until this fall. I got busy and didn't notice the dark before it was too late: they stopped laying. All I had was an outdoor halogen, so I put it in. A month passed and still no eggs. I changed the bulb to a CFL--still no eggs. I finally threw down some 60 cents and bought an incandescent.  Tah-Dah! I now get 6 eggs a day from 8 chickens. Chickens don't need much, but if they don't have it you're out of luck!

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Bunnies! Eleven bunnies were born on February 16 and have been doing well despite some frigid temperatures. When they were about a week old a few finally poked their heads through the fur blanket their mother had so graciously plucked. I took Huck up to see and in excitement he said, "Awww, I'm going to eat them!" It was a hilarious display of amazement paired with the reality of being an omnivore.

Local Food Reality in a Temperate Rainforest

I think it's important to recognize that our food production is limited in some ways, but then steam ahead full-force anyway. Almonds and avocados don't make sense. Okay, that's fine. Apples and kale don't make sense in South America--so what! There are two ways to look at it depending on how extreme you want to be. One, you can buy what you can't produce and work really hard to produce and gather what is available here. Two, you can choose to opt out of the things you can't produce, i.e. instead of buying oranges eat berries. I prefer a mix of the two scenarios. While I pick and store enough berries, apples, and rhubarb to supply us with various forms of fruit year-round, I'll admit that I love bananas and I'm not ashamed! I also know that I can't grow wheat for my bread or rice for my...rice. I'm okay with supporting farmers who can produce those things. What I don't like is paying someone to grow, package, and ship something that I can grow myself. I'd love to see the day when the grocery stores do the Juneau Sprout thing. I want to see Juneau kale in every store. Juneau chard. Juneau lettuce. Juneau rhubarb......

I stumbled upon a squirrel cache this week and was completely enamored by it. There were hundreds of pine cones piled against a fallen tree and at one end was a pile of the spent peelings. It really struck me how vulnerable we have made ourselves by always counting on the grocery store to be there...or for it to have food...or that we'll have money to buy food...or a way to get to the store......There really are so many ways it could all shatter and we could starve. It makes sense to have a cache, even if you don't fear the world collapsing. Why give up the ability of a squirrel?

 For my stash I:

Freeze: blueberries, rhubarb, kale, chard. spinach, smoked salmon, and any of the various meats from our hunting forays. We only eat wild meat, so in the fall we really get out and hunt. We also raise rabbits, which we freeze and eat fresh.




Dry: Apples, blueberry leather, meat, fish.


Can: Meat, whole blueberries, various goulash jams, beets.

And bypass preserving by the Live and Fresh Method!

Many things keep in the garden until October, and some things go beyond.  Rosemary, chives, oregano, and garlic tops can go in indoor pots. Kale, onions, and carrots stay put in the hoop houses outside, ALIVE AND WELL at New Years and beyond...Chicken eggs and rabbit meat year-round.

And realize that this is just a start! I've only had my garden for three summers and I feel like I haven't put much effort into trying to grow extra for preservation--this season preservation is one of my missions!

So what food can Juneau produce?

Here's my list of successes. Many of my failures I don't consider final, so I won't call them un-doable here. I'm sure other people have grown and gathered many other things in addition to these, so set up your own experiment!

Wild for the Gathering:

Deer, Moose, goat, ptarmigan, grouse, ducks, geese, salmon, trout, cod, halibut, crab, shrimp, bull whip kelp


Blueberries, strawberries, salmon berries, crow berries, cloud berries, currents, cranberries, and crab apples

Dandelions, chickweed, chicken of the woods






Cultivated:

Arugula, mustard greens, spinach, lettuce of many varieties, swiss chard, kale, beet greens, thyme, tarragon, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, nasturtiums (to eat), carrots, peas, onions, chives, bunching onions, string beans, beets, radishes, garlic, broccoli, brusselsprouts, cabbage, gooseberries, and sunflower sprouts. Limited success but showing promise for cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, asparagus, raspberries, and strawberries. 

Eggs, rabbit meat, turkey meat.




Look at all that food! If you eat a lot of each of these things you really can whittle away at your shopping cart. I eat salad pretty much every day from June to October and feel satisfied for the year. Why bother buying California lettuce for several winter salads a week when I just ate fresh homegrown salad every day for 5 months?! The change of fare is welcome by that point.

It doesn't take much space to get yourself eating locally either. Try a hanging basket of nasturtiums--you can eat the leaves and flowers in salads, burritos, or in dressings and sauces. A window box of lettuce goes a LONG way. A pot of garlic adds mild garlic flavor to anything and everything--just snip the greens as you need them. Anyone can find a berry in Juneau. Carry a mug and fill yourself up whenever you're out. It's amazing how a little can go such a long way in pancakes or muffins. Take little steps and before you know it you'll be running like a toddler. It's really that easy once you give it a try!