rainy daze

tabitha is sick, cold or flue or something. summer illness is the worst. i went to the farmers market to sell a few cucumbers this morning and pick up the coop order. no one was buying. i made the following signs cucumbers 3 for $1, organically grown and japanese long heirloom. these missouri hicks don't care much about organic. there was a stand selling some stuff with seven dust (malathion) still covering the veggies. they had an inferior hybrid 5 for $1. they were twice as small. to the ill informed smaller normal cucumbers are better but these japanese longs are best at the size that i was selling. i ended giving them to some friends. in the grand scheme of things, it was probably better to have given them to a family that will truly appreciate them. kassi went with me. she is my precious angel.

it has been raining a slow rain all afternoon. i am just hanging around in the house this evening. the kids are holdup in the house. i set up a large train track for tristan. he hasn't played thomas the tank engine in quite a while. toly plays toly-zilla and wants to destroy the entire complex. there has been much strife over keeping toly away and interested in other things. he just wants to play trains with his big brother.

tabitha is making borscht for dinner. a nice treat with fresh beets, dill and merlin roast. i attempted to join the "local summer" meme but received no reply. no big deal cause just about any give night we are 95% zero mile dinner. most comes from our little farmstead and what we can't get local (pepper, olive oil, grapeseed oil, and so on) we get in bulk. we kind of take the view that we an are isolated farmstead of an hundred ago. it is naturally a lessor carbon footprint than the processed grocery store paradigm.

one way that i could really make a carbon footprint difference would be to get our solar thermal system up and running. once the bathroom is finished it'll be much higher on my agenda. the root cellar is so close to being finished it is almost sad. i like the process of life better than the material accomplishments. but having a finished root cellar will be great.