Lest you think I fell off the face of the planet, I thought I’d show you what I’ve been up to. It’s autumn, so it’s time to harvest, as I mentioned in my last post. But it’s also time to preserve. A faulty clip holding up one of my pantry shelves necessitated pulling all of our canned goods out of the pantry while Matt did repairs. I just had to take a picture, because, well, I was surprised myself at how much we’d put by:
Wow, that’s a lot of food and you should see our freezers–both of the ones in the garage are completely full! And of course, now that harvesting and preserving are well in hand, it’s time to prepare the yard for winter so that we’ll be in good shape for next spring. Typically, we start our fall clean-up sometime in late winter and finish in a mad dash as things are greening up in the spring. This year, a gorgeous Indian Summer has let us make huge progress in that arena.
One thing we did was sifting compost, and as I promised months ago when I interviewed Drummond Lawson, I finally took pictures of the disposable omop sheets in various states of decay. My non-scientific assessment is that it takes about a year in normal home compost conditions for these to break down. A whole year’s worth were definitely not there when we sifted, but close to it. Take a look:
Oh, as an aside, I threw a Seventh Generation diaper in the bin this spring, and it also did not break down. It certainly shrunk and darkened, just like the omop cloths, but I don’t think I would have possibly had enough composters to do any sort of home diaper composting just do to the sheer volume. That level of composting is going to have to be up to municipalities to implement, and I hope they will someday soon!
So that’s life here at ChezArtz. Matt’s crazy travel is almost over (he comes home tonight!), we’re excited about Halloween, and nervous about Tuesday. But over all, on the up and up 
But don’t expect me to be blogging daily again any time soon. I’m kind of enjoying the vacation…
5 comments
Ann says:
November 4, 2008 at 10:01 am (UTC 2 )
I have had great success composting diapers. I threw in about 20 old ones a couple of winters ago. All that was left in the spring were snaps and the fuzzy serging thread. It was very cool to see how easily and quickly they broke down.
Ann
Hatchet says:
November 3, 2008 at 8:16 am (UTC 2 )
That’s an impressive collection! I finally finished up turning my remaining tomatoes into sauce a day or two ago. I definitely don’t have the collection that you do since I didn’t purchase a canner. Next year, though.
Instead, I have a freezer with a bit of this and a bit of that and a quickly diminishing supply of green beans. Man! Those bean were gooood!
Oh and we just found 3.75 lbs of potatoes that survived my wild squash adventure! I can hardly wait for next year!
Julie says:
October 30, 2008 at 7:42 pm (UTC 2 )
The funny thing is that we started canning this season with strawberry jam back in June, so it has sort of slowly accumulated. I don’t feel like I spent the whole season canning and, with the exception of a mad tomato-processing run this month due to a ridiculous (and accidental) order of 80 pounds of tomatoes, I haven’t been really pushing to get things done. It just sort of happened, but man, my larder is stocked, to be sure! You should see my freezers!!! Oh, and we’ve got enough pickles to feed a small nation
Nicole says:
October 30, 2008 at 7:04 pm (UTC 2 )
Holy moly that’s a lot of canned goods!
Yay for nesting in fall…and for husbands coming home
crunchy domestic goddess (amy) says:
October 30, 2008 at 5:21 pm (UTC 2 )
you’ve certainly been keeping busy, haven’t you? super impressive (and beautiful really)!!