Apparently no one told you it's spring. It snowed today!
It's nice not to need the alarm clock to wake up, and we are settling into a routine. We get up, make breakfast (today we filled our tiny cabin with smoke making bacon. Whoops.), and get ready to start our day with absolutely no rush at all. I love the commute - I step out the door, and I'm there.
My day usually starts with a trip to the outhouse. It's about a 1 1/2 minute walk, so it's important not to wait till things become too...urgent.
Stay tuned for an interior view.
After breakfast come chores, which involve feeding and watering the mature hens (the cluck clucks), feeding, watering and moving the young chickens (the mini cluck clucks) to a new patch of grass, and watering the sheep and the goat, Pearl. Then we open the hoop houses and move on to whatever needs to be accomplished during the day.
Today we took all the tiny lettuces, spinaches and scallions that were living in trays and transferred them to the field that will be their home for the next 4-5 weeks until they are harvested. I learned about spacing, planting and watering.
That's Nate watering the row on the left. Afterward, we had to cover them, what with how it's still snowing. I learned how to make a trench with a wheel hoe (that's an ingenious little device!), and I learned a good technique for burying the edges of the row cover so the wind doesn't carry it off. There was still time before lunch, so we "fished" the garlic. You probably don't want to know, but that means putting this stinky organic fertilizer emulsion, which is made of fish parts (lots of nitrogen!), on them by mixing with water and applying via watering can. Let me tell you, that shit stinks, and it's pretty much impossible not to get it on you in some way or another. The only way I could get the smell of my hands was to touch a lot of raw onions! Yeesh!
Then it was time for lunch (Aaron, if you're reading, please skip this paragraph), and we headed back into town to the pizza place (The Winterport House of Pizza). The sandwich and burger we had there yesterday were pretty good, so we decided to check out their gluten free pizza today. It was also very tasty, and they've got some pretty rockin' chocolate chip cookies, too. See, we haven't settled into a routine yet in which we will make our meals ahead of time so we can get back to our normal, healthy way of eating (yes, Aaron, I am on track with my supplements!). It's going to be super awesome, because once things start to ripen, we can pretty much have our fill of farm fresh vegetables, and then it's going to be a whole new world! I can't wait!
It started snowing while we were at lunch, and the temperature dropped significantly. Apparently the high today was a whopping 40. So after lunch we got to do some work in the greenhouse, where it was a balmy 60 degrees. I loved this!!
First, I got to make mud (and who doesn't love making mud?). Then, I got to use this fun tool to make the mud into 2-inch blocks into which Nate set tiny seedlings that had been grown in tiny blocks of soil, maybe half an inch square. They're so tiny because greenhouse space is prime real estate, and not everything germinates, so it's just not efficient to start seeds in the larger blocks. Making the soil blocks and putting them in the trays was kind of like building a sand castle, and I'm super happy when I have my hands in soil, so it was like playtime for me.
Then I planted 288 pepper seeds of four different varieties. (I know this because the tray has 12x24 slots.) I really like planting and transplanting things.
We finished up, closed up the hoop houses, pet the goat, stared at the sheep, fed the cluck clucks and the mini cluck clucks, and collected these beauties:
I do love these fresh, never refrigerated eggs that I collect with my own hands (a first for me). And yep, I sure did put them
all in one basket! They have the yellowest yolks, and they are so tasty!
We collected some more firewood from the woodshed, got the wood stove going, made dinner (I'm so glad we brought the grill with us) and some treats, and did some relaxing.
It's other muscles that I forgot I had that are making their presence known today, but it's okay. After a little protesting, they settle in to their new activities, and it is as if they are merely waking up from a long nap. My body knows how to do these things; it has just forgotten after years of domesticity. Each day, as I get a little more dirt under my fingernails, I grow just a little more feral...and a little more free.
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