YESSSS! There here! / 100 ft diet.

Some of them at least. I anticipate a couple of more next week. So now the fun begins.

I have some things that I want to be able to accomplish before planting this year. Actually they're not just things that I want to do, they're things that I need to do. And as with so many of my other todo's, I want to take advantage of this space for setting out my goals and using you as my peer pressure to make sure that I get them done. I've have not, to date, used any kind of garden journal or rotation schedule; the only thing I've ever done is a crude drawing with some rectangles for garden beds and some scribbles for what I wan to plant there. This year I hope to do a little better. I don't expect to be anywhere near the level of detail in Farm Mom's logs, but hey, I gotta start somewhere.

So here are the immediate goals.

• Identify and list the crops I want to grow this year with the help of my wife and the kids to that I can ensure we grow things that are not just novel or "different" but that we will actually eat.
  
• Plan and illustrate a garden layout for where I will plant those crops. This needs to outline the areas, plant dates, and ETH (Estimated Time of Harvest.)
  
• List plant by dates, especially for the early season cool weather crops and any plants that need early starts.
  
• Design a basic cold frame to be built out of the re-purposed window frames I acquired this fall.

I'm sure this list will end up being incomplete, but it is at least the immediate things that I know for sure that I will need to do. I really want to try to optimize the space that I have available this year and get more consistent food from my 1/4 acre.

That brings me to my next thing; the 100 foot diet challenge. I don't generally participate in a lot of the challenges and group participation things out there like the Dark Days of winter or the one local meal challenges. I admire them, and honestly I do try to incorporate a lot of the things that I read on them in my day to day, but this is not really my area of responsibility in our home. Sure I cook a meal here or there, and have been known to make a little artisan bread on a rainy weekend, but this is an area in which my wife excels, and I honestly have no desire to impose (More than I do already that is. Thanks for putting up with my yogurt and bread experiments lately honey.)
The good folks over at Path to Freedom have started a challenge that I can really get behind though; "The 100 ft Diet Challenge". The garden is my area of responsibility and the place where I really enjoy focusing. I hope to be able to really get a regular and significant amount of food from our yard this year. This challenge will really help me to stay motivated about it. It will take me a while to be able to really get a start with having any100 ft meals other than some of the pickled and preserved things that we have in the basement, or some sprouts that I make weekly. If you are a kitchen gardener, or even just interested in it I encourage you to take a look at their site. At the very least, they are a incredible family and worth the read.
Till tomorrow,
P~