We'd like to give a few of our neighbors bigger gifts then our usual tray of cookies this year, so last night I started baking for those. Mini-loaves of Irish soda bread are baked and in the freezer, as are msome mini-loaves of Challah. I made one tray of brownies, and will cut those into squares, freeze, then defrost and dust with posdered sugar when I pack them up. Still to be made - some kind of nut brittle, macaroons, and of course cookies. (though probably just one type, since we do a big cookie exchange at my aunt's house) We'll also tuck in some homemade preserves and a jar of our honey as well.

I'm working on a messenger bag - the first of this style I've put together. Hopefully it will come together nicely. I have some time before I need to finish the other project on the sewing talbe, so I'm going to take a break from gifts and sew Gi up a nightgown in a pretty batik I have leftover from a quilt back. Poor kid is getting her two bottom canines and has been miserable the past few nights, but hopefully they'll break through soon.

We've made progress in finding a Togg buck...one farm in PA has several bucks and referred us to a farm in Jersey where one is leased out to right now, and she also mentioned that she has one of her own bucks there....we may not need to buy one after all (hooray!!!) I'll just be happy once the girls are bred and we can sit back and wait for babies. (a two month + break from milking will also be nice)

We're in the midst of christmas preparations here - bought a few presents, working on making/finishing a few more, and coming up with the Christmas Eve menu - it'll be Trinidadian this year, along with the traditional Puerto Rican roast pork and pastellas. Grilled marinated red snapper, calaloo soup, roastbake, sorrel.... My folks surprised us yesterday with a new dishwasher for Chirstmas, so that will certainly make a houseful of guests easier to handle!

The last of the pumpkins will go out to the pigs tonight, and then we'll set up the (fake) Christmas tree and bring in some holly for the mantel. The temperature finally dropped and we've been reading in front of the fire every night - very nice.

Georgia finally took the leap and started walking on Thursday, though she still thinks it's more of a novelty then anything - most of the time she still crawls from point A to point B.  

Ouside the hens are in full moulting mode - the barn is covered in an inch of feathers. We didn't have any eggs laid yesterday, three the day before. We have a mix of older hens and spring chicks, so hopefully if we tweak the amount of light they have in the barn, we can keep some laying all winter. With about thirty dozen in the egg fridge, I'm not worried about running out, but I like to get at least a few eggs a week for the amount of food we're putting into the flock. The pigs have been a bit less active, spending most of their time in their house with this cold biting wind that kicks up every day. We've started a serious search for a Toggenburg buck since we're having trouble getting stud service. I'd still like to lease a buck this year, but if we can't then I'm hoping we can at least buy one. Our last resort would be to breed them to a registered Nigerian and sell the resulting "Mini-Toggs", but we'd like to avoid that if at all possible since we'd like to keep a doe on to add to our herd. The girls still give us as much milk as we need, so hopefully they will continue to produce well for a few more months, and we can get them bred by the end of January....

E and J had quite a productive weekend with the wood splitter - it was a real monster, so big E had to tow it home hitched to his truck, but wow, it certainly does the job. No matter how big the log, that thing sliced through them like they weren't even there. They were able to split and stack the three large piles closest to the house over the weekend, which gives us enough wood for at least two winters, even if we sell enough to cover the cost of renting the splitter (90 dollars from our local rental company). I'm hoping the rest of the cordwood keeps fine for another year piled up where it is - it should be ok. One cool discovery - when they were splitting the maples nearest the goat pen, one big log split open to reveal a river rock embedded dead center in the wood - the river rocks are landscaping materials the old owners had surrounded that stand of maples with when they were first planted. It's drying out now, and we're brainstorming ways to scale it down to bring it inside for our "natural history room".

Gi came down wiht a stomach virus, complete with an ER visit on Thansgiving evening, so she hasn't been herself for a few days,. She's getting better though - yesterday she ate three full meals and slept well. Poor kiddo. In between tending to her, I managed to quilt a bit, and blanched and froze three bags of kale/swiss chard, one of broccoli, and three of halved and steamed brussel sprouts. We'll probably have more kale from the garden if the snow holds off. I also cleaned out about 3/4 of the chicken coop , and all of the worst areas where the majority of the hens roost at night. So far I'm happy with the way the wood shavings are holding up - it's been pretty wet, and they're not packing down like the straw tends to.  I need to take some more old bedding out of the other side and add shavings there - maybe today before the baby comes home from my folks. We'll see. :)  

Last night, as we all snuggled up surrounded by the dogs, I was so grateful to be home - and to know we don't have to travel again for a LONG time! Dave's wedding and reception were both a blast, but we're exhausted and have a list a mile long of things we'd like to get accomplished here on the farm before snow fall.

We arrived in San Antonio, TX on Thursday afternoon, and Geogia was pretty good for her first plane ride. The biggest problem was that our seats were all in different parts of the plane, so we had to stake out the two next to hers and then try to get people to switch with us. It worked for all four of our filights, but next time we all fly somewhere I'm going to try to arrange to have our seats together beforehand. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel right on the riverwalk, and once we un-packed we met up with Dave, Karen, and everyone else who was in town to go to El Siete Mares, a local mexican seafood place outside of the city that had awesome fish, says E. He had a whole red snapper....he's still talking about how good it was. :)

The next day we explored the Riverwalk - what a beautiful place. It was definitely more impressive then I had imagined. It's a bit surreal though, since down in the Riverwalk it's lush, tropical, full of busy restaurants, and tourists, and then up on street level the rest of downtown San Antonio is pretty worse for wear. The class/racial differences are astounding. A chocolate covered apple and a trip to the pharmacy for diapers later, we met up with everyone and headed over to the San Antonio zoo...it was nice, under a lot of construction, but it was cool to see the different types of animals you can keep when the weather is temperate all year round - LOTS of rhinos, I think the most we've ever seen in one place! I used the opportunity to practice with my camera - I'm slowly getting the hang of it, though we realized when we got back that the lowest quality setting turns out grainy in many pics, so I'll be changing that setting...it's not worth it for 20 extra pictures.We had planned to go to Seaworld, but they were closed on weekdays, which is how we ended up at the zoo.

Dinner was at Boudro's, a bistro near the hotel where they had great garlic mashed potatoes, and delicious made-at-the-table guac. Before dinner we went to Penner's, which was probably the highlight of the trip. E wears guayaberas to work whenever he isn't in court, and his, originally his grandfather's, are shwoign their age. Dave and Karen had gone to Penner's for guyaberas for their wedding, and Dave had been talking itup ever since. It was great - we walked in and there were guayaberas in every style, size, and color. The little boy ones made me wish I had a little boy to wear one - so tiny! E came home with two nice new ones, as did Dave and Nick. 

Saturday was the reception at Karen's uncle's house on base - a Texas BBQ. It was nice to see everyone again, and Dave's sister Sarah was able to come down for it too. The whole thing waqs very liad back, and afterwards we met up with everyone on the Riverwalk, ate at a cool vegetarian/Tex Mex place, and went to the Amy's there - I guess the first one is in Austin, and that's where Karen always went for ice cream. A few hours of sleep and it was back on the place to come home.

Everyone fared well while we were away, and by Sunday night we had retrieved Harri and the goats so things are slowly returning to normal. Lots of eggs to wash, lots of leaves to rake (once it dries out around here), and lots of sleep to catch up on. :)

We've been back for a few days now, but I'm just now catching my breath. The whole farm family hit the road for Uncle Dave's wedding in Durham, North Carolina. Leaving a farm is so involved we don't do it much, but after procuring two wonderful girls to milk our Toggenburgs, our neighbor to feed and water the pigs, goats, chickens, and cats, and depositing one dog each at my parents and in-laws, we were *finally* ready to go!

We took Rt 301 down, a long meandering route along the coast. It was a nice drive - much prettier and more relaxed then going through Washington, DC and Baltimore. I'm also not much of a highway driver, so with this slower route I could do a bit more time behind the wheel.

We left Thursday AM, and Gi slept through pretty much all of the drive, so was up and raring to go all night long. It was actually a good thing, since there were plenty of folks more then happy to hold, snuggle, play and otherwise entertain her into the night while everyone got aquainted. We made Dave a backyard chicken house for their wedding gift as I mentioned before, and so had loaded the car down with that along with some other supplies he would need. We decided not to bring actual chickens on the eight hour dirve for obvious smelly! reasons, but just a few miles outside of Durham what did we hear but an ad for the state fair in Raleigh. If you need chickens, a state fair is the place to find them!

Early Friday morning E, Gi, and I took Dave to the biggest state fair I've ever attended. Fried food was consumed, (new sights to me were a stand called "Fool the Guesser" and food stands selling fried pickles and fried green tomatoes, though none of us have yet to figure out the technical marvel advertised as "Fried Coke"), and we went on a quick tour of almost all of the livestock exhibits (sadly, we somehow missed the goat tent). There were hundreds of dairy cows, as Friday was dairy judging, and I wanted to bring every Jersey heifer home with us! Thank goodness we didn't bring a livestock trailer with us :) In the poultry tent, we got lucky and found three un-attached hens for sale, most were being sold in pairs, and we quickly boxed up our finds and headed back to Durham. We came back with a pretty Buff Cochin, and two Aseels, a breed I'm not too familiar with.

Chickens in hand, we headed over to Dave and Karen's CSA farm. They had traded in the remainder of their CSA shares for flowers for their small, backyard ceremony, and we loaded the back of the jeep with loads of fresh cut cosmos, along with a box full of mesclun for the night's party.

Vegan chili, rice, bread, and salad were made, and E and I went to settle in at my cousins' who kindly let us bed down there for the remainder of our trip. After Gi went to sleep we headed over to meet some of the locals and other family who had arrived. Saturday morning we set out to do some "market research" - and get breakfast - at the Durham Farmer's Market. I guess the laws are less restrictive there, but what fun it was to see and talk to so many people selling eggs, cheese, meat, and baked goods. We picked up some new egg distribution ideas for the winter, as well as some produce ones too - I really liked the idea of selling pots filled with mesclun - cut and come again salad!

The wedding was a simple, small affiar in their backyard, accompanied by the clucking of the new chickens. A friend Dave met while working in Guatamala did the service, and it was short, sweet, and simple. Afterwards we went out to a local restaurant committed to local agriculture, Panzanella, for lunch, and everyhting was delicious.

That night, E headed over to play board games, but Gi and I hit the sack early - we were all exhausted! On Sunday monring we had a nice leisurely pancake breakfast with our cousins, and then dropped by Foster's Market to have some hot chocolate and say goodbye to everyone who had gathered there for brunch. We made good time coming home, but it was still rather late when we pulled in, and we're still getting back on track.

All the animals fared well while we were gone, though Rooster the cat must have gotten into a brawl as his nose in one big scab, and Lucretia went to the vet with her goat-sitters since they were worried she had mastitis. She was just being stubborn and not letting down her milk for them, but a shot of oxytocin seemed to fix that. Just after we got home our friend Kim asked if we'd like a goat house her boyfriend was getting rid of. We couldn't say no to that, so Kim and her kids came over and we took the truck down to New Hope, PA to pick it up. It turned out to be a molded palstic calf hutch, which should be great for the pigs all winter - it's much lighter then the wooden chicken shed they currently use, so it'll be easier to move as well.

Our traveling adventures aren't over yet, as wedding: part II, the reception :) is a big texas barbeque in San Antonio. It'll be Georgia' s first plane ride, and my first time in Texas. Should be exciting. Right now, though, I'm grateful to be HOME.   

While the baby seems to be fine, aside from a new tooth coming in, E and I are down for the count with a nasty cold/cough/sore throat combo. We've been trading off morning milkings....Luca is still tied up, and none too happy about it, and Gibby is upset about the whole situation so is harder to catch now too.... Gibby was also in heat least week which might have been one reason she was so friendly at first, I'm not sure. Either way, the lead rope isn't a very workable solution, so I'm VERY ready to build a holding pen. E said we should use some t-posts and wire, whihc would be a bit faster and cheaper, but I don't know...I was thinking something a bit more permanent and sturdy.... Another option is to use some t-posts and wire to subdivide the pasture, keeping the Toggs in the much smaller portion until they get more used to us. I'm going to dig around behind the barn and see what we have back there today after work, then hopefully go out and get the materials ASAP. If we go with t-posts and wire to subdivide the pasture, I can get them in the ground myself, though we'll have to build or buy a gate, which will be the tricky part. If E is still as sick as he was this am, we're not going to be doing that tonight though.   

Thier milk production is up after their heat cycle, which is nice. We've made molded goat cheese and yogurt so far, and we'll probably make some cheese again tonight. We don't like to drink milk that's more then two or three days old - it can aquire off flavors by then, so we try to process it beofre it gets to that point. I'm keeping an eye on cream separators on e-bay - if we can find an old one in WORKING condition, it'll be much cheaper then buying one new. Once we have that I'll try my hand at butter too, maybe some ice cream. Ciao for now.

-S

I'm not nearly as sick of the goats as E is at the moment, but last night he was heard to scream to Lucretia that he was a. going to sell her and shortly thereafter, b. he was going to kill her. I guess the first option was at least better for her health... She is just so skittish - once we get close enough and grab her collar she's a joy to milk, and easy to lead, but grabbing her collar is an event in and of itself. We don't keep our goats in the barn, partly becasue there's no stall to put them in, but mostly because we don't want our milk to get contaminated with all the hcicken manure and dust, since the barn mainly serves as our very large hen house.

After another long battle this am (which I'm gald I wasn't present for), E caught her and put a dog harness on her, then attached that to a lead rope, and the lead rope to one of the run-in sheds. Not a perfect solution - leaving a goat tied up for any length of time makes me nervous, but it'll do for now. I'm thinking about sinking four posts into the ground in an 8 foot square and nailing boards to that three or four high - it won't make the pasture look too junky, and we'll have a "stall" of sorts for Lucretia till she calms down and also for any bucks we rent so theyr'e not with the girls 24/7. It might also make a nice creep feeder for the kids if we ever need that. It's even more frustrating since her sister Gibby is so well trained after less then a week that all we have to do is open the pasture gate and she runs out, down the driveway, into the garage, and jumps up onto the milking stand!

We've decided to sell Dharma and Esme, and maybe Faunus, though I may keep him till we get a buck kid to wether next year. I'll miss the minis, but the Toggs are so much more practical for what we use them for. We cultured some milk with yogurt and rennet and made some delish molded goat cheeses this weekend - they were a hit when L and A came over for dinner as well as at my mom's brunch the next day.  

We're up to our ears in goat related "stuff" this week. I spent an hour or two combing through our filing cabinet to find Esme's misplaced pedigree papers (finally found them) and then went outside to see that what was one goat with scours (we had attributed it to being a grain hog) has escalated and spread to the two kids, who are in pretty bad shape, Faunus the worse of the two. I jumped in the car for my second trip of the day to the feed store for antibiotics and electrolytes, then to the pharmacy for Kaopectate.

After much chasing (when we build a full scale goat shed someday, it is going to have a stall!!! The goats love being on pasture, and do fine with their three sided sheds, but man, when they don't want to be caught! ) and wrestling them last night, I managed to medicate everybody who was ailing, and this morning we discovered that they are more then happy to eat their grain/hay cube meals even when drizzled liberally with "the pink stuff", so that makes giving them the kao. easier. Tonight they'll get their second dose of a five day course of antibiotics (sulfur-di methox. 1 ml/10 lbs body weight). Faunus definitely wasn't his usual self this morning - even one day of bad diharhea can dehydrate a little guy like that, but I have my fingers crossed, since the antibiotic does seem to be working, that he'll rebound and we won't lose him. Poor guy...

In better news, Esme has been pretty good in the milking stand, and we've arranged to trade for one Togg and buy another from a breeder/commerical dairy in PA. We're still arranging a meet up day and time, but hopefully that will happen soon. Laurie Ann breeds Toggs down the road, so we'll have close access to a buck, an issue since large dairy breeds in our area are few and far between. OK, I'm off...just a few more hours and I can run home to tend to the sick goats... 

While we certainly sell our share of vegetables and eggs at the farmer's market, we do our fair share of buying/trading too. Last week we brought home Northslope's farmhouse pears and sweet red and orange peppers, two bags of hot chiles to string and dry since we didn't plant drying chilies this year, half of a watermelon and a load of sweet potatoes from ER and Sons, fresh mozzarella from Griggstown farms, a loaf of challah and a mini-bagueete from the Village Bakery.

Our first local meal of the week was non local pasta mixed with sauteed summer squash, zuchinni, sweet peppers, onions (from ER and Sons), garlic (from Northslope), and some non-local olive oil.  Delicious!  

Our season isn't over yet - we have another month of slowly ripening tomatoes from a late all-heirloom planting, lettuce, arugala, kale, radishes, and the carrots and beets which will be racing to beat the first frost. Any green tomatoes will go into salsa verde, which we eat a LOT of around here. :) I used to grow tomatillos, but we like it just as much made with unripe tomatoes, so now I just wait till the first frost.

Next year we are going to experiment with using landscape fabric or black paper mulch  with our transplants. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cabbages, kale, and swiss chard will all be planted that way, which will hopefully allow us to focus our weeding efforts on keeping our mesclun and other direct seeded crops weed free.

We'll be getting more serious about our early and/or fall onions in the hopes of a good storage crop, at least enough for our own use, and plant a ton more scallions - they fly when we bring them to market. Same goes for leeks - a LOT more leeks. They grow well from seed here, and there's no reason not to grow more of them. Hardneck garlic from NorthSlope farm will go in soon, we just need to decide where to plant it.

Mesclun mix is one of our best sellers, so we'll be expanding that, including a large spring planting of arugala.I'll also be starting my nasturtiums in early spring this year - they don't bloom for us in the hot months, and they got off to a late start this year.

We've grown plenty of tomatoes this year, and our pantry is stocked, but we realized at market the common varieties just don't sell through mid-summer. We'll focus on three very eye-catching heirlooms in color and shape - I'm thinking one highly lobed red one, Purple Krims, and one with lots of red and yellow/orange streaks. Hopefully they will catch people's attention  and our tomato sales will go up. We'll be growing sweet million cherries, a variety of grape tomatoes that our neighbor has developed over the years, and yellow pears. That will give a nice colorful mix of super early tomatoes. We'll have romas in too, but may not bring them to market as they don't sell well. Our peppers and eggplant suffered from weed competition but the mulch plans for next year should help with that, and we had some nice purple bells, sweet bananas, and asian eggplants.

Early spring root crops will be increased, as we didn't have enough this year. I'm going to go with french breakfast radishes - a favorite at market, a wide variety of colors of carrots, and plenty of chiogga beets. We also know now that we can never grow enough snow peas, so we'll double that planting. We prefer them to the sugar snaps, even though the sugar snaps fill out a pint basket faster.

Sucession planitngs of beans and squash will be stepped up - it's easier to get them in and out of the ground over and over again then relentlessly battle the squash bugs and mildew on older plantings. We didn't have good results with purple snap beans this year, so we may stick to green and yellow.  Dragon langerie performed well as usual, so we'll plant plenty of those. Summer squash doesn't sell all that well, but the squash blossoms are a huge hit at market, so we get two crops out of that, and we skipped winter squash this year, which we're missing now, so next year we'll fill a few mulched rows with acorn, butternut, hubbard, and spaghetti squash plants.  

Potaotes did better then expected, so we're increasing our plantings and trying for two crops next year, with a regular spring crop harvested in July and then baby new potatoes in the fall. We may try sweet potatoes again for our own use in the mulched beds since we start them from slips.   

The edamame were fun, but too labor intensive, and the brussel sprouts won't be ready before market is over, so we may skip them in favor of more red and green cabbage- people love the mini cabbage. :)

As far as perenials go, our much abused and moved around aspqaragus will finally get some major TLC, mulched heavily as it emerges next spring, side dressed with compost, and the random stragglers left from various moves transplanted to the main bed. If we can manage that, we should be able to get a nice harvest the year after.We'll see how the strawberries fill in and the rhubarb comes up, though soft fruits are one of those things I'm more then happy to go to other organic farms to pick and bring to market. In June we'll pick and sell strawberries, in July blueberries, in August blackberries, and then raspberries if we have time in September.

Bring on the seed catalogs :)  

It's all about chickens around here lately...I had the "brillaint" idea to move thier feeder and waterer away from the enstboxes, and voila, not only are they NOT stepping on or pecking at each other's eggs, but all three nest boxes on that side are miraculously in use - a first. I hope it's a trend. One of our barred rocks has been looking poorly and I realized she was eggbound yesterday evening...a little bathroom surgery and we'll see if she survives (I got the egg out, but she was probably eggbound for 48 hours, so her odds are iffy) Poor girl.

I may have found a lead for the rest of our flock increase - need to negotiate pricewise if she still has them, but the ad was only a week old, so I'm hoping. Swinging by Roger's to pick up eggs and I'll call her when I get home. If E isn't working late, we'll probably try to buy them later tonight. I'd love to have enough eggs on our own to bring to market (without selling out), though I'll probably keep up my connections with Karen, Laurie Ann and Roger - always good for small local farmers to stick together! Tomorrow is busy - pick up eggs form Karen's, maybe from Laurie's, then strawberry picking - I'd like to get at least 20 lbs if Gi cooperates - and then to my mom's once we drop all that off. I also may start picking mesclun tomorrow night - the weeds are doing as well as the lettuce this time of year, and it takes a lot more time to harvest. Last week we didn't give ourselves enough time and only brought ten bags or so when we could have probalby harvested another ten on top of that. OK, Bathroom duty calls.

Still on the hunt for laying hens, but the egg numbers have been steadily rising since Saturday, so I think the new girls are FINALLY starting to lay for us here. We've been eating from the garden at long last (we could have gorged oursleves on radishes weeks ago, but we're not radish fans, so those go to the appreciative customers at the farmer's market). Mesclun topped with fresh sea bass caught by our neighbor, and last night broccoli rabe with pasta. Broccoli rabe is ridiculously easy to grow, and matures SO MUCH faster then broccoli - ours is just starting to think about heading up now - we'll definitetly plant it for the farmer's market next year. This year we just have two small patches - an experiment, since we'd never grown it before. The sugar snap peas are coming on storng, with the snow peas close behind. Not sure if we'll have enough to sell at market - we'll see how they look in a few days.

We have the weed wacker fixed so in between the frequent rain storms, I'm out there clearing the paths around the cabbage and kale - almost three quarters of the way done, and the veggies appreciate the breathing room. We have a mess of baby kale that I'd like to space out a bit better, maybe transplant to the fenced garden, but we'll see. I'm trying to really stick to the adage - take something out, put something in - this year. We'll be cutting the mini cabbage any day now, and I have some tomato and pepper starts waiting to take their place, and I'll space out the now half grown leeks since some are a little too close together already.  Busy, busy. Internet's down at home, so I'll be posting when I can.

I was thrilled to death last night at finally learning how to mow with our utility tractor (when we bougth it last year my big pregnant belly didn't fit in the seat) and immediately set to mowing dow the three foot high pasture grass that grew up while we were in the midst of repairs. Darkness fell, and I headed inside (E and the baby had already finished planting some volunteer fennel from the herb garden into the rhubarb patch and weeding the chickpeas - I had NO IDEA chickpea seedlings would look the way they do... you learn something new every day :) And then Bam! my allergies exploded. Eyes swelled shut, nose wouldn't stop running - at 1 AM I finally took a benadryl and that let me sleep. Feeling better this am, but annoyed I won't be able to knock back some more of the overgrown field. I guess I'll resume mowing duties once E gets the flowering seedheads down. Sigh....

Gi has a nasty cough, so E took off today and they were headed to the doctor's office. Hopefully she'll be back to her usual self soon. This weekend's big projects (the chicken coop/barn re-org/ and goat pen clean-up) didn't leave much time for gardening, but the running list we made last night includes weeding the three sisters garden and planting beans and winter squash in there, weeding the cuke/bush bean bed, weeding the emerging mesclun beds, turning over and planting the old mesclun bed with starts we picked up yesterday (romas, some round eggplant, a few pepper varieties we didn't start from seed). The list is endless (broccoli needs hoeing, everything needs sidedressing and mulch) but that's what we're going to start with.

Our next door neighbor came over with some striped bass he caught this Saturday and I'm going to cook a filet up for E tonight - I've been a vegetarian my whole life, and E has since college, but as part of our bigger committment to eating local, ety. he's been thinking about trying to work locally caught fish into his diet - I'm fine with it, but I'll have to dust off my carnivore-cooking skills. He's also thought about learning how to butcher and clean our chickens - it would make for a much more sustainable system since if we used the young roos for food, we could hatch out our own chicks, etc. Right now we order day olds to cut down on the # of roos we have - speaking of which, I've got two at the moment that would love a new home, a Black Sumatran, show quality, and a pretty big guy, trying to figure out his breed. We're keeping one of the Black Sumatrans as a flock guardian - they're mellow, relatively friendly roosters. We're also looking to find a home for our last guinea hen - I don't think we're going to buy more, and she's miserable without any others.  OK, off for now.

We have our tent, and have practiced setting it up and knocking it down.

We have a couple of nice white tablecloths to cover our table, and two eggs cranes and a board for a secodn level.

We have a sign - still need to rig it up to hang from the top tent rail.

We have radishes (though a few have cracked with our recent monsoon like weather!), mesclun, scallions, mint, oregano, and bearded irises ready to harvest and bring to market.

We have a weekly flier of info and recipes in rough draft form - I need to finish that tonight.

The egg fridge has about ten dozen eggs in it, packed and ready.

We need to make a sign to post our products and prices - I'll probably go with a white board, and though we're using recycled bags from the grocery for this week, we should buy a bale or two of the biodegradable produce bags I've been scouting out. 

Today after school I'll be out there weeding, mulching, and planting the remaining space with bean and flower seeds.  I'm nervous we'll be absolutely pathetic in our offerings compared to the mega-farms we're selling ear to ear with, but we have to try... Sat. morning we'll be up bright and early, picking, washing, and packing and then we're off to hopefully get there by 8 am for a 9 am kick-off. 

Well, let's see...working backwards....

Yesterday though sleepy (see Mondays' adventures) we replaced the old mailbox with a nice new gray one. I still need to paint the mailbox support but it already looks so much better. I'll start on our new farm sign tonight while we watch day three of Texas Ranch House. (After pricing farm signs we decided to make our own for now. We also priced orgnaic feed and came to the same decision - our eggs are cage gree, pesticide and antibiotic free, but at 20 bux a bag we can't afford certified organic feed - maybe if people were willing to spend 6 bux a dozen on eggs!!)

On Monday night Gi banged her head on the coffee table reaching for a toy - since she's so tiny we decided to be on the safe side - 6 hours, one emergency room and four X rays later we came home with a healthy baby and all crashed into bed.

On Sunday we went to a bbq where E and friends dissasembled a massive climing wall from his friend's garage, destined for re-assembly in our basement. That afternoon I also planted the rest of the seed potatoes (yellow and white) and weeded.

On Satruday we spent over 300 dolalrs and came back with an overflowing truck of farm supplies (it was the anual 15% off sale) In the truck were bags of feed for all the critters, 100 feet of 5 foot welded wire, some extra t-posts, a new battery for our solar fence charger (we're going to test it tonight - hopefully that was the problem since we bought it used), a new hose (SOMEBODY ran over one of ours :) and salt for our well filtering sytstem.

We manged to expand the goat's permanent pasture by over a third, and at the same time eliminate the need to mow on that side of our dirveway, and then we were off to Circue de Soleil on Ranfddall's Island. Amazing. My favorite part was the floating lady suspended by giant balloons who drifted around the audience - so cool.

On Friday Gi and I headed to Princeton to meet with Amy, where we shoppped and had dinner. I bought myself a copy of Martha's baking book, which I've had out from the libary for weeks now :) and a charm braclet to put the gold baby shoe my mom bought for me on so that I can start changing my necklaces again. 

On Thursday we went out for my birthday and on Wednesday ...oh! too much. I think I'll stop there.

The gardnes are perking up - the brassicas and leeks are finally showing some vigourous new growth, and I sidedressed them with composted goat manure this week. The mesclun under the row cover is thrivin - lesson learned! Peas, spinahc, and radishes are all up and growing. The peppers, tomaotes, and eggplant under row covers and cloches are still looking miserable, but they're alive, and with any luck, they'll start sending out new growth soon as we move into May. All four grape vines succumbed (what seemed like overnight) to powdery mildew, but I'm hoping if I clear all the infected vegetation they'll at least leaf out again and recover this year. (They're too young to be fruit bearing this year anyhow) I also may buy some sulfur spray since I was planning on getting some BT and Surround for the fruit trees and such. 

Every day I plant another 4 or 6 peppers and tomatoes - the ones inside have been in here for far too long, next year I'll hold back at least a month on starting those seeds! The peppers are faring better then the tomatoes, but hopefully both will bounce back once they're outside. Herbs are up for the six packs - once they have a set of true leaves I'll pot them up into those to grow for another three weeks before our first marke day. 9 -10 eggs a day are coming from the hens - I'd like to get at least 5 more laying birds by the time market starts so we're looking for ways to do that. (I have 12+ chicks of various ages in the brooder so if they survive to lay next year, all the better)  And that's life here. Mind if I take a nap?

We moved the pigs' fence last night - now their enclousre is the area where a new garden will be, that I'm more then happy to have them root up, NOT in front of the one gate to the spring garden. With the cold and wind, I don't think baby and I will be able to put in the early season seeds, but maybe on Sunday....

All the seedlings look so pitiful this time of year when they first go in, but I know most of them will bounce back...it's just hard to imagine that in a few months they'll be large and healthy, the spindly little things.

We evened out the old raised beds and put in the broccoli, kale, leeks, red and green cabbage yesterday. I just remembered looking at this I was going to write down the dates I started the seeds - I'll make a note of that next time I'm out there and add it here. :) It's supposed to rain all week so that will help settle them in nicely. Seeds to start in the spring garden include peas (sugar and snow), spinahc, swiss chard, direct seeded kale, radishes, and carrots, along with oniuon sets and red and baking potatoes (the blues are already in). I need to add some dirt to the side beds before seeding those, but hopefully by next weekend.

Oh, and if anyone wondered how we did at the auction this weekend, we were pleasantly surprised. There was only one other person interested in buying poultry, so we were able to get two show trios (for the young hens) for 8 and 9 dollars respectively, and 9 chicks for 20 - some black australorps and some polish. Now to find someone who wants to buy two fancy pants black sumatran roosters!

I'm going to bring home the seedlings we started in the classroom tonight - red cabbage, mini green cabbage, dino. kale, two types of broccoli, and leeks. I may not get themm in the ground - esp. if the pigs don't cooperate! - but I'll at least start hardening them off in prep. for getting them out there. I WILL, if it doesn't rain, put in the rest of the blue potatoes later today, and maybe the strawberries by Sunday. We have a livestock auction on Sunday so I'll have to see. Other chores on the agenda are putting the mowing deck back on the tractor, & returning the battery to the feed store where we'll get our onion sets, seed potatoes, and food for the barn cats.  Maybe even that apple tree. :)

This is the second year for this auction, and last year the prices were sky-high, more of a "generous donation" then actual bidding, you know? I'm hoping this year is a little more like a regular auction and we can pick up some chickens. Not sure if I'll buy chicks there, especially since I can get pullet chicks from the feed store in a few weeks, but we'll see.

I wasn't great about recording when I planted seeds so far this year, but if I write down when everything winds up outside (with whatever seeding dates I can decipher) that will still help in planning next year.  

Since we're still waiting for the pigs to get used to the electronet, they are still in and out of the spring garden. Hopefully we can ease them out this weekend. I cleared the area where we had asparagus last year, and made that into a small square foot plot, with six squares of spinach, six of swiss chard, and six of kale, all direct seeded, demarcated by radish rows. I put a short woodchip path in between that and our temporary asparagus bed, and found some nice aged bedding to throw over the asparagus roots that survived the move - I don't think many did, but we'll try to make a permanent spot for them this year and keep them there so they can start setting down soem more permanent roots. Next to that little plot I spread out some cardboard and started to cover that up in anticipation of planting the all blue potatoes that just arrived (curing right now). None of these new beds are ideal, but I needed to get SOMETHING in the ground! Hopefully the pigs will cooperate and give me my nice big spring plot back ASAP!

I also worked on clearing the honeysuckle off of the lilac, much to the delight of the goats, and started cleaning up my herb bed - the oregano is coming back nicely, as are the three cluimps of chives I divided and moved. Not sure how the rosemary and thyme fared, but I have rooted cuttings from last year I can move back out there as soon as the bed is ready. I'm trying to keep one step ahead of the thistle that is the biggest problem in that area. I'd like to put down some manure and mulch before I plant the parsley and basil, and add a few clumps of garlic chives if I can find them at a nursery. The combination of white and purple chive flowers would be a nice addition to our mesclun mix. I'm moving the surviving strawberries from their ragtag bed to the herb garden as well, in the hope that they'll keep down the emerging thistles somewhat. We're starting a new strawberry bed this year of Honeyoye, which are supposed to be a good organic variety for us here.

Updated to add: I put in about half the blues in a lasagne style bed (lots of composted mulch over cardboard), and started another bed the same way to put the rest in. Then more lasagne beds, I think, for the strawberry beds. My goal is to get things in pretty soon after they arrive - last year things sat around and suffered for it. Oh, and I think we're going to buy another apple tree this weekend- they have some great two or three year dwarf granny smiths at Agway - my favorite! (We planted three apples, three peaches, and two or three pears last year - they're tiny, but they survived their first winter)