The Weekly Digs #188

The cold has officially moved in and is not going anywhere, I think most of the country is experiencing this sudden winter weather! I am spending more time inside trying to wrap up the pantry but I also still need to do some picking of vegetables before they freeze.

This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure can be found here.

This post contains affiliate links. Here is the full disclosure.

Preserving

We have been freeze drying more apples and I canned 14 quarts of chicken broth. We needed to clear out the freezers some because we sent our turkey’s to the butcher. 

Saying goodbye to the turkeys

Last year we butchered the turkey’s ourselves but it was definitely a little more difficult because we didn’t have big enough equipment for it.

Our scalder wasn’t big enough, which made the feathers way more difficult to come out, and the plucker also couldn’t quite do it’s job without us holding the feet because there wasn’t enough space for the bird to move around. 

When a friend of ours told us an Amish butcher would do them for $7 a bird, we figured that was way cheaper than buying larger equipment and worth it not to mess with it. 

We saved a male and a female for breeding next year, and 7 went to the butcher.

In the Garden

We picked a big bowl of beets, carrots, radishes, chinese cabbage, and green onions. I made a really tasty cabbage slaw to go with some pork that Cam smoked on the grill. 

I also pulled tarps off one area of my garden and we are preparing to seed cover crops there. 

Cam’s parents were also in town the last few weeks and got a bunch of compost for our garden! I am very grateful, since it’s a big project and it’s good to have it now so I can put it down before winter when everything freezes.

Other than that, we haven’t done much else out there. I still need to plant my garlic. I’m about a week behind on it. Hoping to get it done this week, as long as the ground isn’t frozen. 

Planning out the Garden

My sister Amy has put a ton of effort into creating a 2023 garden planner! I’m so excited about it. I love that it’s really pretty, which makes it more fun to fill out. It’s also super functional and 300+ pages long!

I will be using her planner this year and show you more about it in the video below. You wont find a planner like this anywhere!

YouTube video

She has a bound version of the planner, available HERE. But there is also a more economical PDF version that you can print yourself if you prefer HERE. I have both versions, you really can’t go wrong either way. It just comes down to your personal preference.

Amy wrote a blog post with more information about her garden planner HERE.

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5 Comments

  1. Wow! I am really impressed with the planner! She did a superb job. Too bad many of the things are too far off my Zone 4 area. Like a soil test in February, I’m under a foot of snow and the ground is frozen down at least a foot. I do the tests in November. I plan the gardens in November also and have the seed orders in before Christmas as some of the companies offer discounts. But given all this, I am still really impressed by her work!

  2. Wow wow wow! That planner is literally everything you could ever need, she really thought of everything! I love seeing planners to help guide me in noting down certain things. Being in Northern Ontario Zone 2b I have a hard time using planning resources from bloggers since my climate is so different but the informative charts are definitely helpful! Thank you for sharing Becky!

  3. I planted my garlic two weeks late…it’ll be fine. I bet your slaw was yummy, too. I can’t get my family to eat fermented kimchi, but I serve it as “slaw” that first day after the salt has sat on it and they eat that. Haha! 😉 Good job, Amy!! Cool planner!