2008...finished, 2009 Here we come!!
So we're nearly done with another year... how did it go?
List of 2008 years goals.
• My goal for personal health this year is to get to 190 lbs consistently. I want to get to this goal by June 1st. At this time I want to begin exercising more vigorously to increase my muscle tone.Well, this one went well to begin with but finished off pretty weak. I made a good point in the beginning of the year to get on the stationary bike and got myself in good shape to ride to work, which I did. Late in the summer, though I had a few things get in the way, and had a long cold that kept me from riding and from there it pretty well went down the tubes. I'm still lighter that I had started at, but not at my goal of 190.
• I want to start phasing out more meat in my diet. I am not planning on going fully vegetarian, I love meat too much, but I have over the last year realized that I feel more healthy and full of energy when I eat a mostly vegetable diet. I'd like to get to a point where all the meats that I do eat, either come from local producers, or that are meat or fish that I harvest myself. I think I will be much happier and healthier, eating really good meat once in a while rather than poor quality meat regularly.I think I did pretty well on this. I do still eat meat regularly, but we've really integrated a lot of different things like TVP, grains and such. Still have work to do on it, but progress has been made.
• For my garden this year, I want to really get a head start on it. I want to prepare early and get a good start so that I am able to get a good early season crop. I also want to make an effort to plant things that I can over winter, such as potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, squash and onions. I made available a good bit of space in the yard this fall and I want to make sure that I use it.Did really well on this I think! I was able to get a lot of early cool season crops of lettuces, peas and cabbages in and added a few new ones like kohlrabi
• I want to begin moving my garden towards having more open pollinated and heirloom varieties and to begin a seed bank for myself to save seed from one year to the next..Once again, I feel pretty good about this one. I managed to save seed from four tomato varieties, radishes, coriander, basil and carrots. It's a start and I'm happy with it so far.
• Another thing that I want to start doing is recycling. I know I know, I should be already, but it's not readily available to us, and we haven't been making the effort other than when we have a bunch of cardboard..This has made a huge difference in our home. We set up a small pale in the kitchen that we collected all of our recyclable materials in and I regularly dropped them off at my office. A welcome side effect of this, that should have been expected, was that our trash can was rarely full through the year. There was a noticeable difference in our waste stream; a welcome site!
Food production totals for 2008:
This year A~ and I set ourselves a goal that, although we didn't advertise it, was to reach 500 lbs of food grown in our garden. I'm very proud to say that that goal was exceeded! Our final, end of year total for homegrown produce was........drum roll please...... 521 pounds!! And that's not counting the eggs. Even though our girls didn't start producing until July 12th, they blessed us with 771 eggs through today's collection. It still amazed me how fast they add up. I forgot to mention so I'll add it now, but I did a little experiment from Nov 12 - Dec 13th. I didn't mean for it to end up as exactly one month, rather to test how long one bag of our feed would last through the winter when the chooks are eating a lot and it is primarily feed based. I wanted to see what kind of egg production I got with little to no additional lighting and during the short daylight hours. The result was 135 eggs in 31 days. That translates to 11.25dozen or approx. $33.75 (based on $3.00/doz) to a $13.00 bag of feed. Good return for a slow production period, but I digress...
So then, what to do for 2009? I have a lot of things that I want to do, some reruns from 2008 and some new goals for 2009. Let's run 'em down...
List of 2009 goals.
•I want to basically redo my personal health goal for this year. I got close and, honestly, I think I can do better.
•A~ and I have a lot of garden goals for this year. We have already added quite a few feet of new garden area in the form of the lasagna beds this fall and we want to add another whole section to the front side yard as well. All in all we're hoping to be able to triple our harvest this year and shoot for 1500 pounds.
•What to do with 1500 pounds of food? Well, we hope to also increase again the amount of food that we put up and preserve throughout the season. We're also hoping to be able to participate in our local farmers market, to at least a small degree, and met a woman from a local women's shelter that would be more than happy to take any extras that we have throughout the season. We both agree that finding ways that we can give back to our community is a goal worth making!
•Finally, as I mentioned in a previous posting, I will be participating in the Master Gardeners course this year. Besides that being the realization of a longstanding goal of mine, I want to parlay that into even more community activity. This year I want to again host a beginning gardening course, but even more than that, I want to begin laying the foundations for a community garden in my home town of Syracuse UT. There will be more to come on this so stay tuned.
Another thing, although not really a goal per se, is with regard to blogging and writing in general. I was able to realize this year that when I put my mind to it, I'm a pretty good writer. I've been honored to be invited to write for a couple of other venues and look forward to doing that this year. Perhaps I'll even have the opportunity to make a small income from it this year as well. I also have some ideas that I'm working toward for this blog. Nothing concrete yet, so again...stay tuned for more.
I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone that's stuck with me this year, and wish a very warm welcome to those who've just found me. I look forward to a great new year with all of you, building community, sharing information and finding all the possibilities in life.
Happy new year all, and God bless.
Peace...
P~
List of 2008 years goals.
• My goal for personal health this year is to get to 190 lbs consistently. I want to get to this goal by June 1st. At this time I want to begin exercising more vigorously to increase my muscle tone.Well, this one went well to begin with but finished off pretty weak. I made a good point in the beginning of the year to get on the stationary bike and got myself in good shape to ride to work, which I did. Late in the summer, though I had a few things get in the way, and had a long cold that kept me from riding and from there it pretty well went down the tubes. I'm still lighter that I had started at, but not at my goal of 190.
• I want to start phasing out more meat in my diet. I am not planning on going fully vegetarian, I love meat too much, but I have over the last year realized that I feel more healthy and full of energy when I eat a mostly vegetable diet. I'd like to get to a point where all the meats that I do eat, either come from local producers, or that are meat or fish that I harvest myself. I think I will be much happier and healthier, eating really good meat once in a while rather than poor quality meat regularly.I think I did pretty well on this. I do still eat meat regularly, but we've really integrated a lot of different things like TVP, grains and such. Still have work to do on it, but progress has been made.
• For my garden this year, I want to really get a head start on it. I want to prepare early and get a good start so that I am able to get a good early season crop. I also want to make an effort to plant things that I can over winter, such as potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, squash and onions. I made available a good bit of space in the yard this fall and I want to make sure that I use it.Did really well on this I think! I was able to get a lot of early cool season crops of lettuces, peas and cabbages in and added a few new ones like kohlrabi
• I want to begin moving my garden towards having more open pollinated and heirloom varieties and to begin a seed bank for myself to save seed from one year to the next..Once again, I feel pretty good about this one. I managed to save seed from four tomato varieties, radishes, coriander, basil and carrots. It's a start and I'm happy with it so far.
• Another thing that I want to start doing is recycling. I know I know, I should be already, but it's not readily available to us, and we haven't been making the effort other than when we have a bunch of cardboard..This has made a huge difference in our home. We set up a small pale in the kitchen that we collected all of our recyclable materials in and I regularly dropped them off at my office. A welcome side effect of this, that should have been expected, was that our trash can was rarely full through the year. There was a noticeable difference in our waste stream; a welcome site!
Food production totals for 2008:
This year A~ and I set ourselves a goal that, although we didn't advertise it, was to reach 500 lbs of food grown in our garden. I'm very proud to say that that goal was exceeded! Our final, end of year total for homegrown produce was........drum roll please...... 521 pounds!! And that's not counting the eggs. Even though our girls didn't start producing until July 12th, they blessed us with 771 eggs through today's collection. It still amazed me how fast they add up. I forgot to mention so I'll add it now, but I did a little experiment from Nov 12 - Dec 13th. I didn't mean for it to end up as exactly one month, rather to test how long one bag of our feed would last through the winter when the chooks are eating a lot and it is primarily feed based. I wanted to see what kind of egg production I got with little to no additional lighting and during the short daylight hours. The result was 135 eggs in 31 days. That translates to 11.25dozen or approx. $33.75 (based on $3.00/doz) to a $13.00 bag of feed. Good return for a slow production period, but I digress...
So then, what to do for 2009? I have a lot of things that I want to do, some reruns from 2008 and some new goals for 2009. Let's run 'em down...
List of 2009 goals.
•I want to basically redo my personal health goal for this year. I got close and, honestly, I think I can do better.
•A~ and I have a lot of garden goals for this year. We have already added quite a few feet of new garden area in the form of the lasagna beds this fall and we want to add another whole section to the front side yard as well. All in all we're hoping to be able to triple our harvest this year and shoot for 1500 pounds.
•What to do with 1500 pounds of food? Well, we hope to also increase again the amount of food that we put up and preserve throughout the season. We're also hoping to be able to participate in our local farmers market, to at least a small degree, and met a woman from a local women's shelter that would be more than happy to take any extras that we have throughout the season. We both agree that finding ways that we can give back to our community is a goal worth making!
•Finally, as I mentioned in a previous posting, I will be participating in the Master Gardeners course this year. Besides that being the realization of a longstanding goal of mine, I want to parlay that into even more community activity. This year I want to again host a beginning gardening course, but even more than that, I want to begin laying the foundations for a community garden in my home town of Syracuse UT. There will be more to come on this so stay tuned.
Another thing, although not really a goal per se, is with regard to blogging and writing in general. I was able to realize this year that when I put my mind to it, I'm a pretty good writer. I've been honored to be invited to write for a couple of other venues and look forward to doing that this year. Perhaps I'll even have the opportunity to make a small income from it this year as well. I also have some ideas that I'm working toward for this blog. Nothing concrete yet, so again...stay tuned for more.
I want to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone that's stuck with me this year, and wish a very warm welcome to those who've just found me. I look forward to a great new year with all of you, building community, sharing information and finding all the possibilities in life.
Happy new year all, and God bless.
Peace...
P~
Labels:
goals,
New Year,
resolutions
6 comments:
Keep trying on the personal health thing, it will make a HUGE difference in the way you feel. Once you find something that works for you it will be easy (at least I think so). The great thing is that gardening is great excercise so you've already got something you love doing that's healthy!
Happy New Year - may this year be better than the last!
Those are great goals. Best of luck and Happy 2009!
Wow- to publish your resolutuions, then repost with updates one year later? That takes stones. Hmm. Maybe I should try that.
Those nice crocks will help you with 1500 pounds of food, for sure.
I've enjoyed reading your blog, post on!
Great job with your chickens, you must be keeping them warm to keep the egg production up and the feed reasonable.
Blessings in health and the garden in 2009.
I'm impressed; making new years resolutions is easy - but remembering them after a year and keep track on how you fared is a master skill.
Hm, like Ilex I'm tempted to do the same. Could be a good start up post when I'm "coming back" from vacations.
Great post! Loved seeing your original goals and results. I haven't doesn't specific goal setting for FY09 yet but this gives me inspiration to do so.
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