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It is a busy weekend here with friends and family visiting from out of town, projects to get ready for school, canning tomatoes, and soccer starting. We had a great weekend camping and are starting into the routines for fall in an attempt to prepare for school starting September 5th. DH is working on the last of the tasks to finish the outside of the barn. Next he will begin the inside work. He is also putting up fencing to move the pigs to a new location. In addition to working on canning, I am trying to finish knitting a shawl for myself for fall. All is well but we are busy homesteaders. I did complete a project putting together 2 helpful spreadsheets. The first outlines all of the preserving we are doing. I am keeping details on the date, fruit/vegetable, food item, processing method, size of container, source of the item, my goal of how many, and how many I actually do. I am also tracking quantities and how much I have paid if I purchase from another farm. This spreadsheet helps me to plan what needs to be done and inventory completed items. From this spreadsheet I know that I plan to put up 975 packages of items and I have about 26% completed. The second spreadsheet calculates all of the amounts I have or plan to put up and breaks it down into a monthly usage. I divide all of the preserved quantities by 8 months since we eat fresh about 4 months out of the year. From this spreadsheet I know how many times per month we can eat tomatoes, corn, broccoli, peaches, etc. This helps me to make sure that I have enough food preserved and that I am incorporating it into our meals at the appropriate rate. This sheet also helps me to set a preserving goal of 60.2 packages of vegetables per month and 30.1 of fruit. This amount allows for 2 vegetables a day and 1 fruit. I only use 1 fruit because I don't calculate in juices and jams which are additional fruit each day. For vegetables I also supplement with fresh to make our 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day on average. It should be noted that I don't calculate how big a serving is or how many servings are in each package. I preserve each package based on it being 1 serving for my entire family. Also, an additional piece of information is that while I will have preserved enough fruit for my family to meet my goals I am about 18 servings of vegetables short each month. Next year I will be able to use my spreadsheets to try and bring up the vegetable count. I am putting in a fall garden to see if I can add to the vegetables.
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