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Larder Assessment Sheets - late spring is a good time to walk through your home food storage stash and see what you are low on and what you didn’t eat at all. This helps you plan for the preserving season to come. These simple sheets help you do that. Read the original post where this downloadable first appeared here.
Download in: PDF
Do It Yourself or Hire A Pro Flowchart – a fun way to sort through the confusion surrounding what projects we should take on and which are best left to the professionals. There’s enough pixels in this graphic for printing, should you need to tape this flowchart to the fridge. Read the original post where this downloadable first appeared here.
Download in: PDF
Year Round Planting Guide - This database will help you get the most out of your year-round garden. Includes varietal suggestions for vegetables that are grown in multiple seasons (e.g., cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower) as well as suggested starting, sowing, transplant and harvest dates for the Maritime Northwest. Customize based on what you grow and your bioregion and microclimate. Read the original post where this downloadable first appeared here.
Download in: Excel | Numbers (Mac OS)
Seed Inventory Organizer Database - This spreadsheet will help you keep track of your ever-growing collection of seeds. Keep this database up to date and you’ll have the organization in place to bypass seeds you really, truly don’t need (duplicates, etc.) and the freedom to add great finds to your collection without worry that you are wasting money. Read the original post where this downloadable first appeared here.
Download in: Excel | Numbers (Mac OS) | PDF (Blank)
Eight Acres Customized Seed Inventory Organizer Database -Farmer Liz, an NW Edible reader who blogs about her Australian homestead and self-sufficient farming at Eight Acres took the original seed database (above) and made it her own. She added some cool features like auto-lookup of nominal seed life and auto-highlighting of out-of-date seeds so you know what to use up first. Liz has kindly made her version available for all to download and use, too. Thanks so much, Liz! Awesome work!
Download The Eight Acres Version in: Excel
Annual Produce Planner - This spreadsheet will calculate quarterly and annual produce harvest goals based on what your family eats weekly. A fantastic way to plan what you grow, this spreadsheet was inspired by one of the many fantastic planning tools in The Urban Farm Handbook. The co-author of that book, Annette Cottrell, has made her original spreadsheet and more available at her blog, Sustainable Eats.
Download in: Excel 97-04 | Excel 07-10 | Numbers
“Santa Slip” Free Chore Stocking Stuffer Card - A cute, free stocking stuffer for kids, these “Santa Slips” will print out on standard print-your-own business card sheets and tell the recipient they can get out of a chore, free. Read the original post here.
Download in: PDF
Customizable No-Stick Canning Jar Labels – Look ma, no stickers! An easy way to dress up your jars without breaking the bank on branded labeling stickers. Open and customize with the name of your preserve, the date and your name. Adjust the font and colors too, if you want. Prints out on 8.5″ x 11″ paper (print on heavy duty paper for best results). Cut out the circles and screw the ring on over the label. A circle cutter will make the cutting-out process a snap. Tension holds the label in place.
Regular Mouth - Download in: Word | Pages | PDF (PDF is blank circles)
Wide Mouth - Download in: Word | Pages | PDF (PDF is blank circles)
Year Round Planting & Planning Calendar- I have used all kinds of methods to organize my planting, and a simple grid showing what’s growing in each bed month-by-month has been the most useful.
Simple Monthly Menu Planner - I use this in conjunction with the Freezer Inventory Sheet to rough out what protein components I’ll be using through the month.
Download in: Word | Pages | PDF
Simple Weekly Menu Planner - Sometimes I like to go into more menu planning detail. This weekly form has space for planned lunches as well as dinners.
Freezer Inventory Sheet - We keep this magneted to the freezer and cross things off when we pull them to defrost for the week.
Download in: Word | Pages | PDF
Monthly Budget Fun Card – Essential to staying on top of the day to day spending. Read more about how we use the Fun Card here and here.
Download in: Word | Pages
Some pseudo-legal stuff: I put these tools out into the world wide web for free. Even though I’m not selling them, they remain my intellectual property. Use them, share them (be a dear and link back here if you do!), enjoy them, modify them as you need and make them work for you. But don’t try to actually make them work for you. In other words, if you turn around and try to sell these free tools to people, you deserve to get eaten by a Jabberwocky.
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