Day 14

We had a good day today! Beautiful weather. We're supposed to be getting rain tomorrow. Hope it comes through!

We harvested some asparagus today. It froze overnight Wed, so most of what HAD been up was lost. But, we still got a couple pounds of it.

Planted 500 strawberry plants. "Bare roots" she called them. Just a little bit of plant (a couple inches, maybe) and 6"-8" of root. They might produce some berries this year, but the CSA members that pay extra for strawberries will be getting them from another local farm. Next year, her plants will be able to fill the CSA requests.

One of the baby calves has been eating dandelion flowers! (They only have lower teeth right now!) And one of the others is trying to lap milk up from the top of a bucket (rather than sucking it from a nipple). My, don't they grow up fast!

We also built two composting toilets for the outhouse (used for pizza nights). It's a regular toilet seat, but it sits on a plywood cube. Inside the cube is a 5 gallon bucket with sawdust in it. After you make your "deposit" you sprinkle more sawdust (from a bin also in the outhouse) over the top and you're done. When it's full WE will dump it into a special compost bin. The temperature is monitored (that's what makes it safe to use eventually) as it composts over a 2-year period. Then it can be used in gardens. The outhouse will not smell as bad as the port-a-potty she had last year, because everything is covered with the odor-absorbing sawdust, and it's emptied more frequently. And, no chemicals.

Oh, and I also got to use a "Flame Weeder"... a snazzy contraption that's hooked up to a small propane tank and rolls over the weeds. Actually burns them away! How fun is that, barbecuing dandelions!?!?!