The most productive members of the loco family this summer have probably been the chickens, who just peck things and lay eggs all day long, whilst being extremely loud and probably driving the entire neighborhood nuts the entire time. This inspired me to come up with what is probably one of the better ideas of my long and illustrious idea-thinking career — the “cluck collar.” This device would be very similar to a bark collar for dogs, only it would be very small so as to fit on a chicken’s spindly neck. If any of you know of a product developer looking for genius ideas that improve lives, let me know.

At first I was worried that they were MY bees and they had gotten too crowded and swarmed. So I put on my bee suit and went down to check things out. It turned out that all my bees were accounted for. (No I did not count each individual bee.) But I realized, hey, there’s a swarm of free bees in my yard. So dad put on a suit, we got a cardboard box and dad held up the box while I swept the swarm of bees into it. Then we took it down to an empty bee box and dumped ‘em in. Voila! New beehive.

If you or someone you know lost about 10,000 bees and you want them back, lemme know. Otherwise… finders keepers!

Aren't they cuuuuute?

We had quite a year. Thank you all for reading our little blog and letting us share with you. The number one question we have been getting lately is whether we are embarking on a second locavore year! Well, it was fun and interesting, challenging and confusing… yes, even frustrating at times. But we did what we set out to do; we tried it out and we learned what’s realistic for the long term and what’s not.

Going forward, there are many things we will continue to do and some things that we just don’t want to do anymore! We’ll still get local meat and milk, grow a garden, can fruit and buy local products when we can. But we don’t want to spend another winter without fresh produce. I’ll still make cheese and Angela will still make yogurt… but no one wants to make bread. We will probably still do a lot of cooking with honey but I’m looking forward to using sugar for baking again.

I personally am gearing up for a great summer homebrewing season and spent yesterday foraging in the neighbors’ yards for dandelions and whipping up a fresh batch of dandelion wine. Today I transferred it into the fermenting jugs but I had a little extra that wouldn’t fit, so I invented possibly the best cocktail known to man by tossing in some decidedly non-local rum, grand marnier and a squeeze of lemon.

We ran out of some things this winter and spring- carrots, pears and apricots for example. We still have garlic, frozen berries, a couple of jars of peaches, a little corn and a lot more stuff in small amounts. And some things we have so much of we’ll never get rid of it, like salmon, fava beans and tomato sauce.

Ok, you’re probably wondering what we got at the grocery store on on our first non-local shopping trip. We bought butter, Sunchips, crackers, cookies, rolled oats and some hard lemonade! Dad got dates and corn chips. I picked out bananas, peanut butter, mayo, mustard, some decent sandwich bread, and cheese I didn’t have to make. Angela wanted rice milk and my mom bought a whole bunch of… vegetables!!

The nicest thing about being done with locavoring is that when we don’t have time to make things from scratch we can just go to the store instead of going without it. It takes a lot of pressure off.

Thanks again for sticking with our sporadic blogging. We may not be locavores anymore, but we’re still loco so keep checking back for our amazing tales of morel hunting, beekeeping, drinking and more.

Lime tree miracle

We thought it was a gonner but apparently it was just dormant. =)

Lunch: Leftover beef and veggie stew from last night.

Dinner: Pork steaks (my nephew raised the pig for us) cooked with sliced purple onion and sauerkraut followed by gooseberry cobbler — sooo good! This summer we cooked up the gooseberries with honey and a little tapioca (on our list of exceptions) and froze it to enjoy during the winter.

Some of the gooseberries that we picked this summer. Thanks again to Sara for helping out!

Lunch: Zucchini pancakes that Da-Jin from the Daoist Hermitage taught us to make and yogurt with canned pears and toasted hazelnuts. To make zucchini pancakes grate some zucchini, add some salt, cover and let sit 30 mins or until there is quite a bit of juice in the bottom of the bowl. Add flour (we used local soft white wheat flour) and mix. Fry in oil.

A zucchini from our garden which has been stored in the garage since summer. It is interesting how it turned yellowish on the outside and the inside. It tasted good and fresh!

Dinner: I made a hearty winter stew with a zucchini from our garden that has been stored in our garage since summer, our frozen diced tomatoes, beef broth, our carrots, green beans from Carver Farms, ground beef, our garlic, purple onion from Carver Farms, wild rice, honey, salt, and our ground sage. We topped our soup with grated gouda cheese that Anna made.

After Dinner: Anna and I went to our neighbor’s for a wine, cheese, and chocolate get-together and we brought strawberries from the Spokane area and a bottle of Anna’s dandelion wine.

Anna testing the Dandelion Wine this summer. She made this wine before our locavore year started. It is not made from completely local ingredients, but I'm pretty sure the dandelions were local =)!

Lunch: I thawed some green beans that we picked at Carver Farms, chopped them up, and scrambled them with an egg. I topped the scramble with our homemade salsa and had toast topped with olive oil (on our list of exceptions) and salt (on our list of exceptions).

Dinner: Happy hour and appetizers with friends in Moscow.

After dinner: I made yogurt earlier today and I really can’t resist having some when it’s done incubating and before it goes into the fridge. I had it with canned plums this time.

Making yogurt is easy and way better than store-bought.

Lunch: So, I brought the meat/wild rice/ garbanzo mixture from 2 nights ago and a ground pork patty from last night to work today, but just could not force myself to eat it. I don’t like eating leftovers too many days in a row and I don’t do well with legumes (I’ll leave the details out), so I went out to eat. I was so excited because the sandwich I bought had fresh veggies on it. One of my friends mentioned how strange it is that I get excited about sprouts!!! When you locavore your priorities change. I also get excited about oranges. If someone had put an orange in my stocking at Christmas I would have been very happy.

Dinner: Mom made baked potatoes with our fava beans, our carrots sautéed with our garlic, sautéed onions from Carver Farms, sprouted lentils, and a delicious white sauce that had some of Anna’s feta cheese in it. Food heaven!