Independence Day Challenge-Y2, w10

...Or is it Tuesday night already???

The weekend flew by and this week is marching along briskly as well. My blogging habit has slowed a bit, but that is partly because I have been under a dismal "spell" of late and sometimes I feel like I only blog when sad, frustrated, hurt, worried, etc. I do have happy moments; this year just has not been one with many of them.

All that being said I found something (a new project like I need a hole in my head) to make me smile (altho, later I did find myself once again the victim of my own contentment-sometimes it feels like every mile of strength I find to push myself out of this fog and forward, another force pushes me back five). I do plan to share my new project with y'all very, very soon!;)

OK, on with the update...

Planted: Hmmm...I don't think I planted anything this past week. However I did de-plant a whole bunch of weeds.

Harvested: eggs; a few tomatoes (mostly cherry, but I did find one big yellow one in the garden in the heirloom patch. I need to dig out my notes to see what it is called); raspberries-red from U-Pick and black from the wilds around our place (I tell you the taste of wild raspberries is indeed the taste of my childhood); two pounds of early blueberries at U-Pick (Shawnee begged for them); cucumbers and lots and lots of zucchini and summer squash. I also harvested a handful of mulberries which have turned sweet and yummy. I need to harvest a multitude of them this week for jam or syrup. I'm glad I waited because the early ones weren't nearly as flavorful!! We also had our hay field baled and got 11 measly bales. Obviously we need to reseed.
Herbs: red clover, stevia leaves (from broken branches off a houseplant that fell); sage; basil; oregano

Preserved: put baled hay in barn (does that count?); froze the two gallons of red raspberries and one quart of the black raspberries (would have been more, but we all snacked on them); dried the herbs and stevia. Hopefully once I get some projects caught up I can can up the raspberries before the tomatoes start coming on strong.

Reduce Waste: Used cloth or no bag option (need to improve here, been bad lately); recycled; saved glass jars for leftover storage; drove as little as possible (but still horrible in this dept and it has been much, much worse in the past two weeks due to Sr's work injury. he is on "light duty" and has to go in to wrk regular 8 hour days for 40 hours. The problem is his work is far away from us. Normally, he would not drive back and forth to a main building. This is really hurting the budget and makes me quite sad and frustrated. He should have been back to his regular duties by now, but the state he works in has a really f-ed up workman's comp system and he has not been "registered" yet. This means no paycheck for the two weeks he has been hurt. I could literally scream my head off!)

Prepped & Storage: toothpaste stored, beer

Eat the Food: last year's canned sauerkraut with our own grown sausage and grilled zucchini. This category is giving me fits. I think I am going to revamp it a bit, but that will be for next week.

Community: Frequented local U-Pick for the raspberries and shared them with in-laws. Gave eggs to neighbors and relatives.