Free Kittens!

Wilson and soon-to-be-adopted friend.

(this one is yours Mom:)

Foraging

Once again we are benefiting from an abundance

of unwanted citrus in a friends yard.

We picked enough oranges to squeeze and freeze 15 quarts of juice...

...and we still have several more trees to plunder :)

Broccoli

We are eating the last of the broccoli this week.

We had planted several in the front yard a couple weeks after the other broccoli plants in the garden but they seemed to be stuck in a state of suspended animation for a month or so. I wasn't sure we were going to get anything off them, but they finally woke up and developed nice big crowns.

Broccoli soup for lunch last week, and as a side dish for chicken tonight...yum!

Sweet Potatoes

Starting slips in the kitchen window. Hoping to get these in the ground by the first of May.

That's our Boy!

Let the bragging begin....Wison graduates this year from Exeter Union High School and has managed to put himself in the number 7 position of the top 10 seniors. Yippee Yahoo!

As well as having brains, Wilson pitches on the baseball team, plays shortstop and 1st base...

....and is one of the teams top hitters.

Way to go Wils!

View from our Front Door

Something to brighten my day.

Now I must go pay taxes...sigh.

Potatoes

We have been digging up potatoes for the past couple weeks, tho the plants are not flowering and not ready to be completely pulled up they are producing edible (and delicious) little spuds. Every couple of days when I decide potatoes would be a good side dish, I go out in the garden and search in the dirt. Usually I just feel around under a plant, trying not to disturb the littlest spuds, until I find one big enough to pull up and ta da!

What's strange to me (and this is only our second year growing potatoes) is the difference in size of the tots attached to the same plant. Yesterday I found a couple that were quite big, tho they still had the lighter, undeveloped skin of 'new' potatoes. Hard to know just what we're going to find under there, but so far we've eaten over 13lbs. of potatoes...Yum!

(egg is in photo to show size)

...tee hee :)

Never explain yourself.

Your friends don't need it, and your

enemies won't believe it.

-Belgicia Howell

....thanks sis

Transplanting Tomatoes and Peppers

As the seedlings get bigger, their containers must also. This week I've been transplanting the not-so-little pepper and tomato starts into their new homes to give their roots a bit more room to expand.

And as the weather has improved we also transport the trays to the garden during the day to soak up the sun.

Tomatoes don't seem to mind being uprooted and moved, and with each move they get planted deeper into the soil so their roots can grow along the stem.

It helps to pinch off any side branches.

Dirt filled to the top.

Peppers do not get the same kind of transplant instructions, they go in like pretty much anything else, soil line stays the same.

For today the newly disturbed plants stayed under the shade of our pecan tree. And not all the tomatoes got new homes.....must find more 4inch pots.

Happy plants :)

We Found Sam!

It's been kind of like playing Where's Waldo, but for almost 2 months now we've been searching for a familiar face in a sea of Army green and this morning Steve succeeded. Maybe we would be the only people to recognize the stance, the nose (sorry Sam) and the widows peak....but that's our boy!

Their brigade is the last of the Army troops still in Haiti. He continues to protect engineers inspecting buildings for stability and making sure the make-shift camps are fully prepared for the upcoming rains. Someone set up a basketball hoop so the guys are playing a little ball on their day off.

Their expected arrival date back in the states is May 1st.

Me Too!!!!

Joel Salatin is a farmer, lecturer, and the author of a number of informational books about food and farming. His farm — Polyface Farm — is a family-owned, pastured-based, beyond organic operation located in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and Salatin was featured in Academy Award nominated documentary “Food, Inc.” and in the book “Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. Here is an excerpt from a recent interview.

-------------------------------------
Annie Corrigan: You call yourself a Christian-Libertarian-Environmentalist-Capitalist Farmer. Let’s break that down, title by title…Christian.

Joel Salatin: I am a Christian, and I think that the Judeo-Christian ethic calls us to realize that we are stewards of creation – that we are not to just rape it, pillage it, whatever, we are to steward it – and lays down certain principles of growth. When God made it in Genesis, the plants were to reproduce after their own kind. And genetic modification doesn’t make plants produce after their own kind. So, you know, even to that point, there are some nuances of order and a template there to live by.

AC: Libertarian.

JS: I don’t think every time there’s a problem, we need to look to the government for a solution. I think the government is the problem on many many things, and if we would free up entrepreneurial innovation and not give corporate welfare and special concessions to big business, and create regulations that aren’t scalable and always hurt the little person more than the big person, the size of big outfits (I’ll use that word loosely) would crumble in of its own bureaucracy.So, instead of artificially propping up big dinosaurs, we should let the dinosaurs collapse and fall so that a phoenix can rise from the ashes.

AC: Environmentalist.

JS: I am a tree-hugger. I think that it is important that salamanders have four legs and frogs remain fertile. And I have a real problem with the Christian-right stereotype that has put a lot more emphasis on dominion than on nurturing. That tends to balance out the dominion part.

AC:Capitalist.

JS:I don’t apologize for running a business that makes a profit. We too often just push the profit under the rug, but at the end of the day, profit is the life-blood of a business. We can’t make improvements, we can’t make creative innovations unless there’s a little bit of money left at the end of the day to put into something new.

Full interview here.

Hope

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, and you are Mine.

When you pass through the waters;

I will be with you.

When you walk through the fire;

you will not be scorched.

Isaiah 43:1,2

'So This Is How Liberty Dies...With Thunderous Applause'

-from Star Wars III