A working (wo)man’s day is never done

I’m not going to lie.  I’m a little upset to be moving during fall harvest time.  I was getting excited this season because we were successful at multiple plantings and even had fall crops in the ground.  Now we have to dig them all out and move them across town, dirt and all.  We have been moving wood and garden tools and dirt for the last week or so.  My little frame is worn out already, even though this is the beginning of this new adventure.  Yesterday, we moved two cords of wood and stacked it for a neighbor and moved a whole twenty foot row of dirt.  Then, Paul dug a new twenty foot span and double dug it, (a lot of work for those of you who don’t know) so now it’s prepped for a new load of dirt to go on top of it today.  At the end of all this I will either be stronger, or mentally insane.  Hopefully it’s the latter.

For real

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/09/10/last.beekeeper.film/index.html

I LOVE fresh pinto beans!

The other day I cooked some of the pinto beans that I grew this summer.  Let me just suggest to you to grow your own.  DELICIOUS.  I mean it.

Did I mention we’re moving?

The family is currently in transition into a new hood.  Farm and all.  Just a jump over to the east side of town, it should be very interesting.  I, we, live in a pretty small place right now, smaller than yours probably, 900 sq. ft.   Comfortably.  The new adventure chops off 300 of those sq. ft. and involves solar power and a very large hi-fi.  And some of you thought I was crazy already!  A new farm space, a new adventure awaits us all next season.

There are two sides to every coin

With gardening, it seems as if there are fifty sides of the coin sometimes.  The longer I do this, the more things I learn about the delicate dance with time and nature.  There alone are 100 things to think about.  One thing I’ve learned this season is “post-production”.  For instance, we grew pumpkins this year, some for carving, some for pie.  Seeds planted, thunderstorms three times a week, pestilence, etc. etc…now what?  So I picked them when the plant was almost dead.  I noticed that the stem boring grub also likes to chow into the face as well.  Now, I’m throwing pumpkins into the compost daily because of it.  Lesson learned I guess, pick them sooner, deal with the bugs.  Also, when you rely on mother nature nothing is a given.

You think you know, but you have no idea!

Cut and paste.  Then consider buying a water filter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html?_r=1&hp

Does this make sense?

This is a story about a green Mc Donalds.  Okay.  You can do all you want to produce this “ideal” green image of yourself, but your food is still poisoning people.  Why don’t you put all of that money to improve the beef-like product and the like?

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/04/08/mcdonalds-green-restaurant-uses-25-percent-less-energy/

I don’t know what to say

This is a movie trailer for a flick called No Impact Man.  I watched it and cried, can’t explain it.
http://www.noimpactdoc.com/index_m.php

YES! YES! YES!

www.freshthemovie.com.

Take three minutes and watch this movie trailer.

This made me so happy, you don’t even know

There is a tree stump in my backyard that my children like to climb on and jump off of.  My solution?  Plant things in front of it.  So, we planted some giant sunflowers and I also added a few black beans to the mix to just see how they grew, a little experiment if you will.  If you think about it, all grains and legumes are seeds, plant them and they will grow (go figure).  Well, my black beans have matured and the kids and I picked them.  I was over the moon!  It was so satisfying to know how easy it was to satisfy a need.  We are bean eaters in this rowdy bunch and we are going to grow beans like mad next year!

They were a tiny plants, didn’t thrive too well because the sunflowers shaded them.  However, we picked all of these pods.

There they are!!!

You like that?  I like that!  I yielded about a quarter of a cup.  Not spectacular, but I have about ten pinto bean plants out in the garden that are thriving and reaching for the sky…this could get really exciting in about another month!