My sister is a spreadsheet queen. She made a Garden Harvest spreadsheet for us in Google Docs. We use it to track our harvest from year to year. As I posted in an earlier entry, last year my goal was to grow 500 pounds of food from my property. I missed my goal by 75 pounds with a grand total of 425 pounds of food for the year of 2013. Not too bad considering a few months were spent landscaping and I couldn’t put anything into the ground during those months. The spreadsheet has been super helpful in tracking all of these numbers. Rows show harvest dates and columns show types of vegetables. For some vegetables, I wanted to track how prolific certain varieties were so they each got their individual column. For example I had 5 varieties of tomatoes last year, the persimmon tomato being my most prolific at 99 pounds.  Then my sister provided a total tomato poundage column so I would know how much of my total harvest came from tomatoes. She also included tabs so we could track from year to year. This also helps me keep track of when I am harvesting things which should also help keep a record of variability over time.

Anything that makes it into my house, gets weighed. I keep a scale, colander, notepad and pen on my kitchen counter. After weighing things I enter my totals into the doc. This year my goal is for over 500 pounds. Wish me luck!