SPRING IS COMING

It may be hard to believe, what with the weather forecast for tonight, but Spring is coming! Here
is a picture of our snow drops that have actually been blooming for a couple of weeks now. We are plugging away. Today Greg is cutting down and cleaning up trees that are to close to barns & green houses and in fences around the house. Tomorrow we hope to start planting some of our transplants of greens out into the hoop house.

Sunday the Callaway Food Circle is having a "Meet the Farmer" time at the Callaway Electric Co-0p Building in Fulton from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. You can meet the farmers and other producers that make an all Callaway County food system possible. Learn how to plant a container garden, See how to save money by making your own laundry soap, order a box of produce for every week in the growing season (CSA). Sample local meats & products. So bring out the whole family! Hopefully this will be a well attended event by farmers and consumers both. So pass this information on to anyone who is interested in where their food comes from. We will be there and also selling eggs!

LIFESTYLE OF HEALTH AND SUSTAINABLITY

Time is marching on and so are we! I went down to Springfield for the 29th Annual Missouri Small Fruit & Vegetable Conference. I left Sunday afternoon so I'd be there bright and early Monday morning. It was very interesting with talks on marketing, pests and pest management, grafting of vegetables, (which we will be trying to do on tomatoes this year!), blueberries, strawberries, etc. It ended Wed. at noon. I got some good information and contacts, learned more about how to make our blog better, but I went down with a bit of a back problem, which only got worse. So Wed. morning when I tried to roll out of bed to get to the conference it didn't work! My husband & parents ended up coming down to get me, so I didn't make it to the Wed. session, but I do have the power point presentations in my packet, so all is not lost! While I was gone, Greg worked in the big greenhouse installing a sprinkler system to keep our seedlings watered, and take some of the work off of me! Yeah!

I learned a new term, LOHAS (I had not heard of it before). It means Lifestyle of health and sustainability. So if you practice this principle you can refer to yourself as a LOHAS! I think that would apply to you if you are trying to live a healthy life by exercising and eating healthy. Part of eating healthy would be to eat locally grown food. I think we all know that the fresher our food is the healthier it is. By buying local produce you are helping to sustain the local farmer's and the economy.

So along this line of thinking, I've got some web sites you might find interesting and useful. To stop junk mail and save 1 1/2 trees per household per year, you can as Direct Marketing to remove your name from their list. Go to http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist to make your request.

Use clean phosphate free detergents & cleaning supplies. Go back to basics using the cleaning supplies of the early 20th century which include vinegar, baking soda, salt, borax & soapy water. For recipes go online to Klickitat County Solid Waste: SolidWaste@co.klickitat.wa.us.

For more information and ideas you can go to http://www.thegreenguide.com or http://www.50simplethings.com.

Also don't forget our local in town recycling curb service. Or you can always take your recyclables to Kingdom Projects. O.K. so now I will get off my soap box!

CSA Memberships Coming In!

We just wanted to update you and let you know that we have seven families signed up and on board to receive their boxed produce when we start up in mid to late April. Most of these are 1/2 shares so all total right now we have 4 1/2 shares signed up for. Our goal is around 25 shares total, so there is still plenty of room for you if you still considering or know of anyone else who might be interested. Thank you to all who have signed up and those of you who have shared this idea with your colleagues and friends!

This week we've hauled a couple loads of horse manure from the William Woods Stables; we are trying to get a couple loads each week. This really is a Community supported enterprise!

We also have planted some tomatoes, and they are starting to sprout. Today I replanted some of the greens and herbs that hadn't sprouted yet from the planting a couple weeks ago.

We got the big greenhouse cleaned out and now need to get it running so we can move some of these starts over and get some more going. Our little greenhouse is getting full. Some of the herb cuttings are starting to roots, so will need to be potting them up in a week or two. We have been ordering supplies and seeds, and they are starting to arrive, things are moving right along!

ROOFS ON THE HOOP HOUSES! YEAH!!!!!!

We awoke at 6:30 a.m. this morning and saw that it was relatively calm so headed out to try to put plastic on the hoop houses! Greg is very relieved to say that we got both houses done except to repair the ends on the oldest house. But now when we get the rain they are calling for this week, the ground in the hoop houses will remain dry and workable! Also, now the ground inside will start to warm up. The next project I will start to work on tomorrow is to clean out our big greenhouse. Last year we had two volunteer gourd vines come up and they pretty much took over the whole house! But we got several really nice big gourds that hopefully will dry and I will get to paint or craft on next winter! That is what I really like to do.

HOOP HOUSES

Here is a picture of our 3 hoop houses. The ones on each end are the ones we are working on. The tops are a single piece of plastic that goes over the entire roof and is secured down at the edge where the curve ends and the sides start. The sides are another piece of plastic that is attached and hangs down, and can be rolled up to vent when it gets warm. The white all along in front of the hoop houses are the strawberry beds "bedded" down for the winter with row cover "blanket"!

EGGS - "FRESH AS THEY GET!"

Thought I'd also mention we have fresh eggs for sale! Even though it's winter you can still get farm fresh eggs from us! These are some of this mornings batch. We are getting about 4-5 dozen a day right now. Last fall we ordered 150 chicks and they will start laying about mid March. It takes 5 months for chickens to reach maturity and start laying! We cull our 2 year old chickens every winter and buy chicks every fall. That way we can maintain our egg production, because as many of you may know the older the chickens get the less they lay!

GREENS ARE SPROUTING!!!!

Well you'll be happy to know that most all of the greens that we planted the other day have started to sprout! Today we planted 9 flats of tomatoes! I'll let you know how they come along. Hopefully we've got all the pesky little rodents taken care of and they won't be bothering the seeds anymore! We worked Sunday on the hoop houses some. But the wind is not cooperating with us. We only got one end on, so have a ways to go. But things are progressing!