Year Ends Goals

Every year, we set goals on Solstice evening—and then evaluate what we learned and accomplished this year.  Some years are more impressive than others. This was a good year; I had achievable, practical goals, and I wrote them in the front of my notebook so that I remembered what they were through the year.  What a concept!

Goal One: Common Good Knitting. AKA working my way through the backlog of yarn in the closet. I figured that if I knit twelve projects from the big green bag, it would shrink significantly. It did. I made two sweater vests, which took up the bulk of the yarn, as well as hats, mittens, socks, and several potholders.  I also sorted out about ten skeins that I was never going to use and sent them onto other homes. The bag is not empty, but it is much smaller.

Goal Two: Track the solar panels and the garden weekly. I also accomplished this one. Mark created a little spreadsheet to track production and usage every week and we posted it as well. I had no idea, really, what an impact a cloudy day can have on your year’s production! However, we should just break even in March, when the solar cycle begins again. We are now neutral in electrical use.  The garden records are a little more spotty because I lost track of the week of the year several times.  It was still better than last year.

Goal Three:  No big projects.  We were very successful here. No projects beyond rebuilding three garden beds in March happened this year. This means we still do not have solid benches for the picnic table.

Goal Four: Greens this winter. I am getting there. There’s a pizza’s worth of arugula and a few kale leaves out there right now, along with some solid old collards which we will eat with Black Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day. There are also a couple of small cabbages which show some serious frost damage.  There’s still a lot of work to do on this goal, like getting the January King cabbages planted earlier so that they have some heft going into the fall. Next year.

Next year’s goals?

1.       Work life balance—I’ve got a busy year ahead.

2.       Cabbage at Candlemas, 2018.

3.       Deal with: couch, woodstove, benches, windows, and greenhouse.

4.       Continue working with the season extenders, like my beautiful hoops.

And, yes, they are written in the front of my notebook.