Beyond

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder. If that makes me naive, then so be it.

Monday 16 June 2008

where to start

Direction would be a good thing right about now. Lazy days of summer? Ha!

The lawn is still long and will continue so until the tractor is fixed. Unless I mow it with the push mower (and here I fall over laughing slightly hysterically). Uh-huh, a couple of acres of long grass with the push mower. It'd be easier to bring a few cows over and let them graze my lawn, except that my garden would be decimated and there would be a bit of ... um ... cleanup after. And I thought the dogs were something to pick up after!

The farmers' market last Saturday was loads of fun, selling and chatting and feeling very grassroots about life in general. Meeting farmers and beekeepers and such. R did a great job on both the selling and chatting fronts. We are selling preserves - jellies and pickles and jams. The bread & butter pickles sold well and the cranberry-wine jelly was also a big hit. We got to know some of the customer base and saw that there was definitely a market for sugar-free products. The sweetener will coast a lot more than sugar, though. I am contemplating going to every coffee shop in the area and stealing all the little sweetener packets on the tables. But then I'd be blacklisted from Timmy's and we just can't have that, can we?

So this week we have jellies, more pickles and such to make.

The rat is still at large in the coop. There are various trappy things around. I'm considering explosives.

New layers (12) will be arriving next week, as well as this summer's farm experiment: a dozen chicks to raise for our own farm-raised meat. They'll not be in the coop until either the rat is gone (but then, how do you know? Do they leave forwarding addresses?) or the chicks are large enough to not be a snack for it. Of course all this means a coop cleaning before the new birds and redesigning the outdoor run to allow for more birds and keeping the meat birds separate from the layers (since their feed is different - calcium supplemented for the layers' eggshells, higher protein for the meat birds to grow nice & plump).

The garden is growing well except for the chickens' raiding. The one poor broccoli plant that had survived the pre-vacation raids disappeared yesterday. Then hens whistled and looked away when I asked them what had happened. Perhaps a fence is in order. More things to plant (or re-plant, as the case may be).

Annuals in the planters around the house would be nice. So would weeding the flower gardens. Yup.

M starts her four-lesson tennis sessions tomorrow night. Botany/survival/orienteering day planned with other homeschoolers on Thursday. Gotta get R and A registered for some archery lessons. Band rehearsal Thursday night. A's birthday Thursday, her party on Friday.

Oh, and buying a pavilion tent today will also be on the list for the market and other outdoor events. We had one that involved some 1,837 pieces of pipe carefully labelled by the Committee for Completely Screwing up Anyone Trying to Build a Tent and several hundred plastic joints put in by the Sub-Committee for Making Sure One Piece is Missing, but the market organizer saw it when we came and very kindly let us use one of his that comes out of the bag, unfolds like an accordion, and is ready to go.

So, a-shopping we will go for tents and produce and sweetener and maybe, just maybe, the nice man from the tractor store will call back from D's message and come to our rescue.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

I'm so proud of R. Do you think it's still ok if I bring over cupcakes?
Hm...maybe I'll bake my infamous vegan pumpkin scones...of course I'll be charge of fee of display and selling. Makes sense to me...would that be cool?

barb said...

I think for this week at least we'll just do our preserves. I'm still getting the feel for how everyone decides to bring stuff in. There do seem to be some unwritten rules about not duplicating what others are doings, mostly as a courtesy and to make sure the market has the most variety it can.

It's a cool group of people, though. It was good to talk to them and get some pointers. There's a real team feeling, everyone happy to help out the others.