just some photos

i know that i'm not national geographic. these are our flowers in bloom right now.

meet henry and luna

henry has the brown spot on his head. the kids love them. they will be farm dogs and live with the cows and chickens. we hope to sell milk and other excesses. tabitha had trouble with a local pervert and has been traumatized ever since. i hope big scary dogs that are very protective will turn the tide in her sense of security.

boca burgers the non vegetarian kind. i mucked out her pen today.

we have been struggling as what to do with boca. she would make a good mama in a herd but any amount we could sell her for wouldn't cover the cost of naturally farm raised beef. we could raise her up and get her bred back and sell her with calf. that might cover the amount of the beef we could get out of her in a few months. if we raise her to be a mama that would take over a year. we need the meat in our freezer now. so the decision has been made for us.

our tomatoes are really taking off.

these are the omar's lebanese.

here are our cherokee purple.


pumpkins, the eating kind.


tomatillos


swiss chard


long haired boy.

one of eight in the entire state.

want some tea?

the blue twisty is for decoration.

we ate our first summer squash this morning for breakfast. in the next few days we'll become inundated. the next thing should be cucumbers. then comes the holy grail of the garden--tomatoes. aah glorious tomatoes..

ok i'm back now... i drifted off for a minute there.

we ordered two hundred and fifty gallons of propane today. it should be delivered next week. we'd have liked to order another hundred gallons but the price is crazy. we use it only for cooking and the seldom emergency drier run. tabitha has many many loads of laundry and puts all of them on the line. she saves us tons in propane bills. we heat exclusively with wood. so that saves us even more. i don't know how many people are gonna make it this winter. we are so lucky to have our wood stores.

i hope to work on my root cellar this weekend. i have moved most of the rock laid out next to it. it was in the front yard--some of it still is. i bought some cement dye to color the mortar. i plan to keep it deeply hidden--deep mortar joints. there is always some mortar that shows so i hope to color it similar color to the rock. i have a small stomach ache and don't feel up to lifting heavy rock right now.