I thought I should also mention a few words about my chickens, and the dirt we received.  My babies are no longer babies.  They have quintupled in size since the last time I chit chatted about them.  They are all getting their feathers and eating a ton.  They grow up so fast (sigh).  Now on to the dirt.  We ran out of topsoil.  Wait, let me re-phrase.  Paul ran out of topsoil for row construction, and he put in a call about a week ago to the topsoil mine to get some more.  The woman behind the desk said ‘yeah no big deal, we can do it in the next couple of days’.  That was about a week ago.  Today she told Paul that she forgot to write it down, and now he’s at the bottom of the list, and that we would not be getting dirt for another week and a half.  She didn’t leave him there though.  She gave him the option of having another man deliver it.  Only his truck was less than half the size of their truck, and it was only $10 cheaper.  And Paul was actually considering it!  I said just wait, and they’ll try to get to you next week.  But low and behold someone cancelled their load tonight, so the folks at the top soil mine called Paul and delivered it tonight.  Hallelujah!    

So….looking at my stats, I seem to be going static every couple of days.  I’ll try to make it more interesting.  Today we sold lettuce to a new consumer.  Jammin’ Java on the Fayetteville square is the new proud owner of 5 lbs. of organic spring mix.  Thank you for your patronage.  We also received 96 pepper starts from Bean Mountain Farms (thank you Herb).  The Bean Mountain Farm is not going to be growing this year, and is only selling starts.  So we bought them to turn and sell the peppers to the restaurants that Herb sold to last year.  They are long skinny italian peppers.  I don’t know what to do with them (cooking wise) but I’ll figure it out, and let everyone know.  Oooooh, maybe I should add a recipe page.  Let me think about that, because I know how popular “vegetable humor” is doing.  

So, Roy emailed us the other day, and here is the tiniest excerpt: It is great to see all that work coming to fruition. On the blog it looks like it just sprang up. there really isn’t any way to convey the amount of work that goes into something like that.  I think he’s right.  I could bore you all with all of my day-to-day chores.  For instance, I turned my compost pile today.  I was also thinking about taking a picture of my finger.  It’s bruised and swollen a little around the knuckle from the scissors I use to cut my lettuce.  I bought them at the dollar store, so it serves me right I guess.  Or I could talk about how my trapezoid muscles are up at my ears they’re so tense.  It’s not glamorous work, but somebody has to do it.  I’m fulfilling my civic duty, harvesting lettuce to satiate people’s hunger one $10 salad at a time.  So please, for me, and for others out there like me, say a little prayer before you eat your greens and say thank you for all of the hard work that may not be broadcast, but is done for you.

Ehemmm.  Let’s see, where do I begin?  Ok, I’d like to first and foremost like to thank our heavenly Mother, Mother Earth.  For without her, there would be no being in general, so yeah for being alive!  Next, the family of the light up on the hill, Light and Johanna.  Because I needed some extra hands to pick lettuce yesterday, and they were just the right hands.  Finally, the Greenhouse Grille for their fiscal responsibility to their local farmer.  Thank You.

We harvested 8.5 lbs. of lettuce yesterday, from just one row.  Today Paul wet out and picked another pound and a half to make it an even 10 lbs.  I rinsed all of it today, and we packed it into tubs, and rolled on down to the Greenhouse Grille for a little photo shoot. 

BAM!  It starts now, I think it’s safe to say we’re officially farming!

I LOVE our new chickens.  At first I felt scared, and responsible, but overnight they won my heart, and I am here for them.  I took some more pictures of them, but I’ll post them tomorrow.

Big news.  We picked up some chickens about an hour ago.  We got them from a guy who raises them.  His name is Duane, and he’s from Winslow, AR.  We got a mixed batch of breeds.  They are all female (15 in all), Paul has their breeds written down somewhere, but I don’t know what they are off hand, besides the fact that they are indeed chickens.  WOW.  So here we go.  Do we have any experience in the chicken arena?  Paul’s parents raised some when he was a kid.  But that’s it.  That’s where the experience stops, and the real world begins folks.  The great chicken experiment.  It’s like having new babies, and extension of our family.  Now we’re really tied down, or so it seems, and they’ve only been here an hour.  Poor things.  Can’t wait to name them.

Not EVERY time, but sometimes.  It froze here a few days ago, and we covered our lettuce up with some heavy plastic to insulate it a smidge.  However, it still received some burnt spots here and there.  The arugula is especially suffering.  I don’t know what it’s problem is.  Some bugs must be eating it, because there are tiny little holes here and there on some of the leaves.  Whateve’s, who likes arugula any way?  And do I have pictures today?  No, I do not.  Please use your imagination, and I’ll see what I can’t do for the future.  Until then readers…FANS…keep it rockin’. 

Paul and I managed to have some seeds pop up .  I don’t know how.  Mother Nature does crazy things.  About 99% of our tomato seeds popped up.  Our bell peppers (which were planted at the same time) have only had about a 20% success rate.  I don’t know what their deal is.  Maybe they just take longer.  We managed to keep the shop around 80 degrees with the wood stove.  You can’t win them all I guess (but prove me wrong bell peppers!)  Our genovese basil was 100% successful, as was our lemon and lime basil.  The thai basil is sleeping in with the bell peppers, it is having a pitiful performance.