Archive for March 15th, 2010

Independence Days Update 1: Plodding Towards Spring

Sharon March 15th, 2010

Hi Folks - Sorry I didn’t do a first ID update this past week, but I was travelling.  So this is my first official post of year three!

Let’s see, what happened in the last couple of weeks.  Well, Frodo/Ring Bearer the goat boy came home to live here, bringing his musky-scented self along.  He bred one of our does the first day, so all the relevant bits seem to work.  We’re looking at a lot of babies in August.  Jessie and Bast should deliver in May (we think), with the rest of them following in late summer.

Our ducklings arrived on the same day as Frodo, and they are doing beautifully - Isaiah, after weeks of agony finally decided to raise crested ducks for the fair.  Simon was planning on raising cochin chicks, and those arrived while I was gone - but all of them were dead.  It was the only time (in many years of ordering poultry) that that’s happened - the box must have gotten left in the cold somewhere or something, but it was horrible for the boys.  They will re-ship, but it was a pretty miserable thing.

I’ve been starting seedlings - I put off most of my greens until after I came back so that they wouldn’t pop up before I came back (Eric would never notice ;-) ), so it has been a busy green-starting kind of week.  Also the snapdragons, which I love because I love to watch bees go into them, and which the kids love because they are cool.  Tomatoes are all in, as are peppers and eggplant. 

The snow is down to about 6 inches (from 4 feet at the beginning of March), which is good.  The flooding basement isn’t quite as desirable, but is probably an inevitable result of 2 inches of rain and the rapid transformation of a foot of snow to water.  The daffodils are up a couple a couple of inches, and the weather is supposed to be fairly consistently warm for a while.

Otherwise, I’m ignoring everything.  Book.  Book.  Book.  I’ve never really managed to get my groove back with this book, and it is going slowly and painfully, but it is mostly going.  I only consider returning the advance and bagging on the book two or three times a day now.  But there’s only two weeks left.  Sigh.  Ok, done whining now…for today.

Plant something: Broccoli, kale, chard, lettuce, various other greens, snapdragons, tomatoes, hot peppers, eggplant, sweet peas.

Harvest something: Eggs, Milk, willow bark

Preserve something: Not a thing

Waste Not: Made applesauce out of some of remaining apples, cut up extra softening sweet potatoes for slips, the usual composting, recycling and feeding things to other things. 

Want Not: Got a new batch of sourdough starter from my step-mom to replace the one that leaked all over.

Eat the Food: Made an applesauce spice cake to take to a friends’ house, ate a lot of chametz (grain based things) before passover.  Nothing particularly exciting - soba noodles in miso broth were the best.

Build Community Food Systems:  Gave two talks at least partly about food, otherwise, nada.

How about you?

Sharon