slight change
on Nov 21, 2009 in greenhouse sorry to create another obstacle to commenting but i'm putting word verification back into service. i don't know if it is the holidays or what but i have been getting way too much spam commenting lately. i'd rather post more often than have to spend...

play park
on Nov 13, 2009 in cutting wood rootcellar greenhouse my wood cutting area has morphed into a complex and dangerous play area. ramparts and bridges divide the separate "rooms" (rounds). very dangerous.the kids balance has improved ten fold since this "park," as the kids call it, has been here. toly's do...

useful tools on a farmette
on Nov 11, 2009 in farm all tarps are not equal. this tarp is like the kind you can buy at the local farm store. the plastic that is used is actually woven as the tarp.as you can see here it frays under mild repeated stress. these kind of tarps are not designed to hold up u...

regular updates
on Nov 1, 2009tabitha, my lovely wife, has committed to blogging every day this month november. go over and visit her blog if you don't already read it.today i mowed the yard the highest setting possible to chop and bag the leaves. i put the leaves on the northern...

halloween thwarted = mumps
on Nov 1, 2009a person might think that diagnosing a simple childhood disease wouldn't require a CT scan. escalated to a fear of bone disease a huge dose of IV antibiotics were applied. ok, our doctor is great but tragically uninformed about any childhood disease...

rome in costume
on Oct 27, 2009tabitha made link (legend of zelda) costumes for the kids. yes they all wanted to be link for halloween. rome is really cute in his. tabitha just finished making it. she had made all the kids costumes and rome's was the final one.the swords that i ma...

courage
on Oct 19, 2009 in cutting wood i finally mustered the courage to cut that leaning tower of pisa the electric company left in my front yard. no matter how many times i cut a tree with a larger diameter than the length of my chainsaw blade it always freaks me out a little. my saw di...

greenhouse 1.2 filled
on Oct 18, 2009 in greenhouse i got up early and started filling the raised beds with dirt. we decided to save the final compost for the top layer. i dug the dirt from around the compost bins and some by the door of the old hog pen. the dirt was great, as good as the compost that...

greenhouse 1.2
on Oct 16, 2009 in greenhouse we cleaned out the greenhouse. it had a huge castor bean plant and a large fruitless tomato plant in it. i took out the old shelves and we loaded all the pots and seed starting stuff into the wheel barrow. with the floor clear we discussed a layout f...

sweet potatoes
on Oct 15, 2009 in greenhouse garden here are some of our sweet potato harvest. they were so easy to do and flourished. we'll be allocating a much larger portion of our garden to these little (big) favorites next year.the black plastic mulch method proved a grand success. all we did was...