It was a fantastic week in the reclaimed foods department at my local market. Fantastic!
We were able to salvage:
- 2 personal watermelons
- 2 cantaloupes
- 3 heads of lettuce
- 1 banana
- 8 apples
- 3 pears
- 6 pounds of potatoes
Wahoooo! Talk about a nice variety of free food.
The chickens were pretty happy with their chicken scraps as well. Fresh melon, soft pears, lettuce, and grapes too.
And wait, is that a wee bit of kale I see next to Hilda’s foot? Life is good.
Oh, and guess what? Yesterday, we collected 9 eggs. NINE! In one day. It appears our backyard egg farm is up and running again. I’d say scrambled eggs and at least 1 “breakfast dinner” a week are back on the menu.
Sweet diggety!
Peace Out Girl Scouts, have an eggcellent day.
~Mavis
Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past 11 months?
Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.
Angie says
I have not yet plucked (ha!) up courage to ask for free scraps but content myself with the marked down produce! (I’ve only got two chooks so it wouldn’t really be worth it). But I HAVE had some great ‘wins’ over the last few weeks including some lovely melon which I couldn’t see anything wrong with (great grammar!) and several bags of vine tomatoes which have promptly been turned into sun/AGA dried tomatoes – some with thyme and some with basil.
My two girls seem to have got back in the swing of it over the last few days too. (Maybe the sunshine has had something to do with it?) I have had about 6 eggs over the last 5 days which is not bad considering SOMEONE is a bit of a Lazy Hen!
Love reading about your exploits Mavis. Every time my husband sees me with a bunch of Kilner jars or a new book about backyard self sufficiency he says: “Mavis again right?” 🙂
Greetings from the Isle of Man
Angie
Debi @ACountryGrandma says
Am curious as to how you convinced the produce department to let you have cast offs. Every time we ask, they say they can’t give them to customers.
Mavis says
I stopped by my favorite produce market to inquire about possibly picking up “scraps” for my chickens once a week. Although the shopkeeper was a little hesitant at first, he finally agreed to let me come by once a week and pick up whatever scraps were available on that particular day. The reason he was a little hesitant was because people had come in before asking for free scraps, and then they don’t show up, leaving him with boxes and boxes of rotting produce. So I thanked him {profusely} and promised I would be back on the set date to pick up the scraps.
moniqu says
How do you arrange to get this stuff? From a grocery store?
Michelle says
How many chickens do you have now?
Mavis says
Many. 😉 Ha! Don’t want to say exactly because of the HOA. How are you Figgy? What’s new?
Marie says
Ok – now I believe we are soul-mates as I have been a gardener for many,many years but the Queen of Clean post today shot me right over the edge! Her books are my standard “wedding gift” to everyone! Haven’t found a trick of hers that has backfired. Just need to really adhere to her suggested cleaning cycles and I’ll have it made!
I commented back when you were moving rocks and suggested that you protect your back by using your thigh muscles to lift with rather than your back. If you are like me, you probably ignored the warning as “you are young and invincible” as I was and you just want to “get it done today” until that first ambulance ride to the hospital for back surgery catches up to you. Trust me. It happens.
Now I want to build raised beds to eliminate all of the bending & wonder if you used landscape cloth under your wood framed beds? Don’t your carrots need to grow “deep”?
Do you have trouble with raccoons, mice/rats, deer or moles?
Keep up your blog -it makes me smile!
Lisa says
You did good Mavis! This is what we got in our two boxes this morning:
10 bags of romaine lettuce, 6 bunches of organic carrots, a big bag of mini carrots, 6 heads of brocolli, 7 apples, 8 pears, 4 orange peppers, 3 yellow peppers and 2 potatoes. So grateful because I had just fed the last of the carrots/lettuce to the animals and were in need of more. 🙂
Mavis says
Wowza! Nice work Lisa.