May 16, 2006

Wow.. I guess that I have been busy. I have been slacking off on the ole' blog here.

Got the Spring issue printed and back from the people who collates, staple and trim it yesterday. Started at 5-something this morning putting the Spring issue in with the Winter issue in their envelope and then watered my greenhouse, garden and front flower beds, packed the magazines into separate boxes according to country ( we are up to 5 countries DTTR is in now - we are international!), scrambled to the Food Co-Op that I am the coordinator for, spent from 9am to 6pm there and escaped for a little bit of time to send the magazines to the post office. WooHoo.. finally done and gone. Now to print again in 2 weeks and then send out the Summer issue.

While I was away from home today, my bf put together a raised strawberry bed for me and our friend painted an 'interesting' sign on my greenhouse.Last weekend we got the entrance gate up, brought in many many many yards of gravel for the driveway and got the driveway widened out for the semi truck.We also got the poultry pen done and it only needs a gate yet. This coming weekend we will get the turkey pens done and also bring our wiener pigs home. Chicks are growing well, eating alot. I have to feed and water them 2x a day this week, next week I am sure it will be 3x a day.

I conned teenager to dig the trenches for me after it took me 40-some minutes to dig one.. hey.. it is the second time I have gotten to use a shovel in at least 10 months!! We got all the potatoes planted though. I sorted out the 5 varieties I have been saving in wicker baskets all winter in the mudroom and it was nice being able to sort out all the varieties. yellow skin and pink sprouts, yellow skin and yellow sprouts, blue skin and purple-blue sprouts, red skin and yellow sprouts and red skins with pink sprouts. They are (in order- if I have not messed up) Kennebec, Yukon Gold, All Blue, Red Pontiac and All Red potatoes.

All the hummingbirds until yesterday so far have been males. They have been up here about 2 weeks now? Yesterday all the females showed up. I thought it was interesting .. I will have to keep note of that for next year and observe if they do the same thing.

On the other wildlife note, we seem to have a male (?-- we did not stick around to ask it what gender it was) black bear about the size of a VW bug car. My bf.. who has seen alot of bears, says this guy (?) is a HUGE bear. We now no longer walk alone out back and always take the bear dog with us when we have a crowd and even when I am working in the garden, I am always aware who or what is within a good distance of me.

One injury this week. My bf and his dad were working on the D3 Cat and between miscommunication on BOTH their parts and not following through on a thought, my bf almost lost his hand between the rollers of the track of the Cat. He is not broken, but very swollen and debrided of skin. I am so glad that we have a skookum first aid kit. He agrees we can add more stuff in. With medical help being extremely far away in case of an emergency, I just prefer having everything that we can here 'in case of'.. PLEASE, please. please.. do stock a good first aid kit at home and take classes! (See the Summer 2005 and Winter 2006 issues for what to put into your kits).

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