your kitchen table is now the home of several dozen tadpoles and various caterpillars/cocoons in different stages of a development, and there are 30 chicks in a brooder in your basement. Or you just might be crazy. :-)

P.S. I promise only 5 of the chicks are for us. The rest go out to the farm. Does that make me less crazy?

So a week after after we took last year's lambs in for slaughter, three of yews decided to (surprisingly early!!!) birth five new lambs. The timing is kinda eerie, as they appeared the day after we got old lamb meat back ( Read more... )

People gush over hand-made craft items, made-from-scratch food, and home-grown veggies, but no one ever waxes poetic over hand-washed laundry.

When I was a kid, my family had a great mid-October tradition, we'd drive out in the country to get our Halloween pumpkin at this place where a guy had his front yard covered in pumpkins that he grew and a farm stand filled fresh apples, sweet corn, beans, and other fall goodies. The thing I remember the most about that place was how much I loved ( Read more... )

The other day I went to an "open to the public" talk about the importance of local agriculture at a nearby community college by Joel Salatin, the pasture farmer made famous in The Omnivore's Dilemma. He said a lot that I agreed with (but nothing I hadn't heard before), and a lot that I wanted to argue with (but nothing I hadn't heard before). ( Read more... )

I accidentally bought seeded grapes from the grocery store. DAT was very excited about finding seeds in his grapes and wanted to plant them. I gave him a bottle of water and open up some potting soil on the back patio, and all by himself without any immediate supervision (I watched through the window as I did dishes) he carefully filled the pot ( Read more... )

So DAT made a mother's day card at pre-school. It has things on it that the kids could tell an answer to and the teacher would write it. Here's what it says ( Read more... )

So my parents live in West Tennessee where all the flooding has been happening, and they live near a lake. The good news is the house is not underwater and no tree landed on their house, the bad news is the following ( Read more... )

While driving from the farm to pick DAT up from pre-school, I stopped at a light and a guy with a fedora, a large (sheathed) knife in his belt, and a whip wrapped Indian Jones style over one shoulder walked right in front of me across the street ( Read more... )

This has been the week of many slight disappointments. Nothing major, nothing really depressing. I'm just feeling ever so slightly bummed.