I’m a huge fan of Sharon Astyk‘s. I love that she can look at everything going on in the world, and see it as an opportunity for growth, for change, for setting up a good life. I find her stuff to be both honest, and optimistic (unlike most peak oil/climate change/financial collapse readings, which are kinda like Mad Max, and quite disturbing).

So it’s with some glee that I announce that we’re going to be participating in her Independence Days challenge. Head on over to her blog to see how it works. I’ve added the widget to my blog, to let folks know that I’m participating, and I’ll post my wrap-up on Saturdays, or as close to it as I can manage. Because we’re on a boat instead of on dirt, it’ll be pretty heavily modified sometimes. But I think it’s important for folks to see that, if we can do this, anyone can, and any steps towards independence are good steps.

Here’s my first installment, for the first week of March:

1. Plant something – This weekend, I’m planning the early crop in our garden box at Big Daddy Community Garden in Oakland, and I’m starting herbs in pots on the back transom.
2. Harvest something – Picked lemons from my benefactor in Oakland
3. Preserve something – Juiced the lemons and froze the juice, dried some of the peel.
4. Waste Not–  I’m looking into the local farm cycles, to see what kinds of bulk purchases we can get in on.
5. Want Not – We did two entire days of errands on foot last week. Woof!
6. Build Community Food Systems – I’ve been bagging on all my neighbors to get some preparedness together. It’s amazing how resistant people are to simply having a bag of beans and a bag of rice available, even though a lot of these people go to Costco and could easily afford it. So I continue to harass the people nearest me physically.
7. Eat the Food – We made our own lara bar knockoffs. Pretty good, and a great replacement for sugar mayhem.

So that’s us, for this week. If you’re thinking about joining up, let me know in the comments, and be sure to leave a link to your blog, so we can share each other’s progress, and be encouraging.

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