Introduction

Hello Steemit,

Man do I feel like a lot of progress has been made since my last post 3 months ago. Last November I updated you all on the work I was doing at The Local Food Center in Mansfield Missouri and last December I updated you all on the progress I've been making on my book list. Since my last post on Steemit I have left Mansfield Missouri and am back in Louisville Kentucky. If you'd like to learn about whats going on please continue reading!

Lazy Sundaze

One of the reasons why I enjoy hosting the Lazy Sundaze Broadcast is because some great ideas surface from talking and brainstorming with the listeners. Another reason I enjoy hosting Lazy Sundaze is because of the community and the creativity of those you may meet. For example, @soundwavesphoton and @amymya worked together and created an intro song for Lazy Sundaze, @pechichemena came up with an idea to send dippin' dots @paintingangels for what I would consider a fun sensory experiment. Overall it has been really fun for me to interact with other people and meet a number of characters in the cryptocurrency space through @msp-waves . If you are interested in Food, Tech, Media and Experiments - tune in to Lazy Sundaze at 9pm UTC on Sundays.

In this post I want to update you all on three quality ideas that have surfaced from Lazy Sundaze.

Closet Garden

Late last year the idea of creating a garden with a gravity fed drip irrigation system came up during a Lazy Sundaze show. I began prepping for planting in my back yard at the time, but I few months later I moved from Mansfield Missouri back to Louisville Kentucky. The space I was in became a little more limited, so I had to scale back the garden idea to fit in a closet. Here's what I came up with:

I purchased an LED growing light from Amazon. I then made a trip to Homedepot to make a small platform for a plastic box to sit on top of it. I filled the plastic box up with an organic seed starting mix and threw some seeds in it and hoped for growth. I don't have any experience growing produce indoors so I have no experience with how much this garden may yield, I do not know too much about spacing plants either. What I do know is how to loosely approach doing an analysis on the costs involved with growing produce in a closet. I'd like to get a rough idea on how much it may cost and how long it may take to potentially grow the ingredients for a salad on a small scale. It has been a little under a month since planting basil, cilantro, lettuce and garlic and here is how things have grown:

Here are some of my thoughts and take aways so far:
I do not want to try to grow garlic again
I'd like to research more about spacing for optimal growth. (I've come across methods such as square food gardening)
The basil and cilantro seem to grow pretty well.

Seeds, Tubers, and Homesteader's Co-op

While I was talking about Steemit and E-Commerce with @pennsif, he recommended that I reach out to someone named @sagescrub. After introducing myself and having a conversation with @sagescrub I was given the opportunity to schedule an interview. The interview ended up getting rained out but the Lazy Sundaze audience and I were able to learn a little bit about @sagescrub and the work he was doing on @homesteaderscoop. If you are interested in listening to the interview with @sagescrub please let me know I may have a recording of the conversation.

During my conversation with @sagescrub I was able to tell him about my original ideas of experimenting with gardening that I mentioned above. He was very happy to hear I was considering experimenting with gardening and offered to send me a wide variety of seeds that can be found at @homesteaderscoop. They recently came in the mail and my new dog Jacks was a little curious:

Thankfully, Jacks was more interested in the plastic bag that the dhalia tubers came in than the tubers and seeds themselves. The variety pack came with Dhalia Tubers, Fava Beans, Blue Hubbard Squash, Peas, Black Tuscan Kale, Spinach, Arugula, Burdock, Queen Anne's Lace, and Purple Orach. I also purchased Jerusalem Artichoke from @mountainjewel on @homesteaderscoop. It is in the black bag (I have not opened it yet).

I have no experience growing any of the seeds mentioned above but I am looking forward to attempting to grow the arugula, spinach, kale, and maybe peas in the closet garden when I start over. Before I moved back to Louisville I had a lot more space, but now that space is limited I will have to be more creative on what I grow and where I grow it. A big thank you to @sagescrub, @pennsif and @homesteaderscoop. I look forward to sharing the results with you all.

Fruit Leathers & Equipment

During Lazy Sundaze I think @torico and/or @amymya and I started talking about fruit leather. We were talking about blending fruit into a puree and then dehydrating it. If you are familiar with Fruit by The Foot or Fruit Rollups, fruit leather is similar but made entirely of dehydrated fruit. To make the fruit leather I used an immersion blender to mix peach, blueberry, kiwi, and lemon juice. I made another variety that added dates. I used a scale, Kill A Watt Meter and stopwatch to record data such as electricity use, mix time, ingredient cost, ingredient weights, dehydrating time, and plugged them into a spreadsheet I made on Google Sheets.

I am looking forward to seeing what kind of food can be made using the dehydrator. I'd like to collect data on anything that I do with it. To be honest, I'd like to continue collecting data on all of the equipment/projects mentioned in this post. I could even potentially use the dehydrator to dehydrate the basil and cilantro that grows in the closet garden. Who knows what I'll do. But that sounds pretty fun right?

If you'd like a more in depth look at the fruit leather idea please visit https://www.instagram.com/learningtobeafoodentrepreneur/

A summary of my trip to New Jersey/New York December 2018

Finally, in December of 2018 I made a trip to the New Jersey/New York Area to see some friends of mine. Here is a video summary of the trip I put together quickly!

That's it folks, I'm looking forward to showing you any changes that happen or progress that is made in my next post! If you'd like to stay up to date with these projects, ask questions, or join the community centered around Food, Tech and Media - join my discord https://discord.gg/jVDsqtx

Thank You For Your Time,
McKenzie Gary