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.