YOU HAVE BEEN WEIGHED AND YOU HAVE BEEN MEASURED!

I had been meaning to do this for a few years, but never got around to it, so we started keeping a Food Harvest Diary in the kitchen, with some kitchen scales, and keeping a record of everything we harvested from the garden and brought into the house to eat.

We started our Food Harvest Diary on April 1st 2013. We use a small notebook with weight measurements for all produce, seed yields and other goods produced or grown onsite here. Eggs are counted, not weighed. We’ve missed the odd day, and even week, here and there, so we guessed fairly close to accurate recordings.

You would be surprised just how much food, in weight and numbers, you can grow, harvest, eat, process and share in a year. We haven’t done it yet, except with eggs, but some people also calculate roughly what the dollar value of their harvest is each quarter, 6 months or year. The savings speak for themselves!

Taking eggs for example, we’ve saved approx $2,275 on eggs, in the 15 months we’ve been keeping the diary, based on the average price for organic/ethical/free range eggs in supermarkets at $7 per dozen. Can’t complain about that … and they’re all fresh organic eggs straight from bum to tum! Big thanks to our lovely feathered ladies.

Starting a new tally from June 30 2014, I’m looking forward to recording our yields over the months and the next year and seeing what we produce and what more can be produced. Winter is always interesting with heavier weight produce like potatoes, carrots, yams, sweet potato, pumpkins, chokos, etc.

Since 1st April 2013, here’s what we’ve harvested and brought into the kitchen. Weights are approximate, rounded off to the nearest 5 or 10 grams. Eggs are counted.

2,932 eggs (that’s 161.5 kg of eggs)

10 kg Madagascar beans

16 kg other bean types

10+ kg pigeon pea

175 kg pumpkins

5 kg squash

10 kg various cabbages and mustards

10.5 kg various chillies and capsicums

13.5 kg leafy and Asian greens

2 kg figs

10 kg eggplants

8 kg various tomatoes (mostly cherry tomatoes)

21 kg various zucchinis

3.5 kg various radishes

15 kg mixed herbs

50+ passionfruits

5 kg daikon

4 kg snow and other peas

2 kg Ceylon spinach

5 kg Brazilian spinach

12 kg chokos (green and white)

4 kg cucumbers

4 kg kangkong

6 kg potatoes

3 kg carrots

5 kg sweet potatoes

5+ kg edible weeds

5.5 kg seeds saved

That’s almost 400 kg of food harvested in 15 months. We’ve been here 4.5 years, so a rough guess would be that we’ve harvested approximately 1.5 to 2 tons of food. The cost savings, the freshness, the personal satisfaction and the health benefits all contribute to our urban farming addiction and passion. We hope you join us in growing, havesting, saving, eating and sharing more of your own food … and keeping a food harvest diary yourself.