Sunday, February 15, 2009

my goals for the year

Yes, it is the middle of February, and I'm only now getting to my goal list, but here goes anyway! The furthest from home my list takes me (aside from my trips to Narnia) is Arkansas, but that is okay. My home is lovely and my family a joy, and I need to work on our home and my little urban homestead.

1. Can enough tomatoes, juice, and sauce to last until the end of next summer when I have more tomatoes

2. Can enough jams and jellies to get us through next summer (2010) when I'll have more

3. Grow raspberries and blueberries and blackberries around the house

4. Make and freeze a massive amount of basil/mint pesto

5. Learn how to knit socks. I can at this time only knit washcloths and scarves.

6. Finish a quilt

7. build a chicken coop so we can start chicks in spring 2010

8. Build a root cellar in Narnia (we have on our property a wooded area by a creek with a gas lamp that we call Narnia)

9. Repair the gas lamp in Narnia

10. Make homemade Lacto fermented pickles

11. Take the kids peach picking in the summer early in the morning

12. Run a 5K. This will be tricky because I hate running more than anything else in the whole universe ever. However, I keep setting this goal. My husband loves to run and always wants to run with me. It is good for me, so I should probably step up and just do it.

13. Visit the western heritage museum.

14. Rid our home of more plastic, especially in the kids toys.

15. Start and maintain sourdough and use it regularly.

16. Move to grains beyond wheat, rice, and oats on a regular basis.

17. Grow potatoes in a trash can. How awesome does that sound!

18. Make Narnia look a bit nicer, since right now it is overgrown and full of fallen trees from the Ice storm a couple of years ago.

19. Increase my food stores to six months, and make sure we are not only eating them, but rotating them.

20. Dig for diamonds in Arkansas

21. Go camping at least three times

22. Live with the heat at 66 in the winter and the AC at 80 in the summer

23. Go fishing a couple of times a month

24. Take a gun safety course and learn how to hunt

25. Go hunting

26. Butcher whatever I can manage to kill on my great hunt

27. Eat vegetarian at least twice a week

28. Increase my veggie intake to the USDA recommendation

29. Make Parmesan cheese, and start making homemade ricotta and mozzarella again.

30. learn more kids songs to sing with them


Whats on your list this year?

5 comments:

Tara said...

Wow, your list is inspiring! And your own little Narnia...how fun is that?! I love it!

I sure hope you blog about the things you accomplish on this list. I'm especially curious about growing potatoes in a trash can and just the other day I was thinking about doing a sourdough starter! :-)

Gem said...

Do you have a link for making Parmesan? We go through lot of the ground stuff, but wow would it be so much healthier to make -- I don't know what is in the elcheapo stuff I buy!

Queen Bee said...

We're trying potatoes and finger carrots in 5-gallon buckets that we got from a local restaurant. I'm looking forward to seeing how yours turn out!

Tina

Amanda said...

That's quite a list of goals!

I want to can a lot more tomatoes this year, too. I grew a TON, and spent several days canning. But somehow it still wasn't even half as much as we wanted!

Dig for diamonds???!!!

Erin said...

There is a diamond state park in Arkansas where you can mine for diamonds and keep what you find! Pretty cool. And the bee is VERY into rocks

http://www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com/