July 6

I got off pretty easy today--not too much time in the heat and humidity.

This morning was packing day for the CSA's. Luckily, I was in the barn for most of it, washing kale, kohlrabi, chard and napa cabbage (in very cold well water up to my elbows!), then filling boxes.

Lunch in the air conditioned house.

There was a couple of hours of misery moving the meat birds to some new grass. We closed them into their shelter, and I moved the fence. Because they're still kinda stupid and they won't just follow us, the grain, or even each other around, we had to catch them all and put them in crates. Move the crates out of the shelter, move the shelter into the newly fenced area, then bring them back into their new space. (Speaking of stupid, some of them had to be physically removed from the crates...)

We were going to move the Working Girls, too, but the belt broke on the lawn mower.

While H and C worked on the mower, I somehow got lucky enough to move into the house to work on updating the newsletter for the CSA members. I listed out what is coming in their boxes, and inserted recipes for most of the veggies. (H had already picked out the recipes.) Before I knew it, it was the end of the day.

I was still really dirty-feeling even though I was really only out in the sun for a few hours.

I think I sent most of you the link to the Winona Daily News article about the farm. The big news is that #1 the article appeared on the FRONT PAGE of the hard-copy paper, and #2 there was a picture of C and I weeding right under the headline! (Our pic was even bigger than the one of H?!?! What's up with that???) The bad part is that the silly reporter wrote, next to the pic of C (age 21) and me, "Young and Middle Aged Going Back to the Land."

Middle Aged?!? Excuse me?!?! Ha ha!

CSA boxes, week 5: Kale, napa cabbage, kohlrabi, green onions, garlic scapes, and the full-sized shares got a few small summer squash. (Can't believe it's week 5 already.)