Happy Halloween!

There's a cool old cemetery down Newton Road, just off Wire Hollow. I made my spooky pilgrimage there the other day - maybe I'll get the guts to go tonight and look at it in the moonlight, on this All Hallow's Eve. The oldest stone I could read was from 1857! There were plenty of crumbling markers, covered with moss or fallen down, that were illegible so maybe they are even older. It made me think of how long people have lived and worked in this valley and how lucky I am to be here. There's still plenty of room in Huxley's Cemetery, I'll have to see about reserving a spot.

Catch of the Day

The mother of all radishes, a throwback, one in a thousand occurrence. About 3 pounds, funny & freakish & beautiful beauty heart.

Dad's home!

My father went home saturday with a newly implanted 'Defibrillator' or some such. It speeds up his heart a bit, and he was feeling so good, he was trying to get get some more land to expand his garden! Whoo dad! He celebrates his 82 nd birthday on Nov 2, his e-mail is wdewilde@iw.net if you want to send him a birthday greeting.

Dad!

So while I'm writing about the dump and listening to yet another inch of rain falling on our satsurated farm, my brother calls to tell me my 80 year old father is in ICU. His heart stopped briefly, but luckily he was already in ER and stabilized quickly. We could really use some sunshine here now!

Coal Dump!

We went to Dairyland Powers informational meeting last night. Not very exciting, our local power supplier relies mainly on two old coal burning plants. They decided or were forced to install a scrubber to remove pollution from the exhaust. It involves injecting large amounts of lime into the stack to attract, soak up sulfur, nitrates, mercury, titanium, etc. So when previously they could sell their ash to be mixed with cement, now it is not suitable for that use and they want to creat a new landfill to 'store' it until they find a use for it. They take it out of the air and risk contaminating the ground water with it, not much of an improvement! Unfortunately the place they want to condemn to put it is in the middle of an organic farming community. It is several, probably 5 miles from here, but up-wind and almost up-stream from us and is on and adjacent to other organic farms. They don't have a clue about the strength of the organic customers, but what was more disturbing was when talking to the chief chemist, it was clear he did not know much about chemistry. The whole group did not instill confidence that they knew what they were doing. The driving force for them was clearly in the words 'lowest immediate cost' as far as tipping fees and transporting. We'll keep you posted as we learn more about the 'proposed dump'!

Paranoia - Sleep Destroyer

I didn't sleep at all last night, just thinking about bugs. The evil faux lady bugs came in from the fields last week and they love Richard's wooden house & my log cabin. They were super active while it was warm and then they seemed to disappear once it cooled down. I knew they weren't really gone & that I'd be dealing with them all winter long; I figured they had crawled into the cracks & crevices of my little cabin. Little did I know that they had taken refuge behind ALL my clothes! I have hooks on the wall that jut out far enough to hold several hangers; my walls serve as my closet (you need to get creative in a 10x10 log cabin!). One cool night last week, I needed a hoody that was hanging against the wall. When I moved the clothes to the side to reach what I needed, I was horrified to find a clump of the beetles hiding in the dark behind ALL my clothes! I ran out of suction in my rechargeable hand vacuum and I kept finding more hiding places. They keep crawling out of the woodwork. I can hear them skittering around on the ceiling and in the corners and in the windowsills. And then I think I feel them drop onto me in my bed and then I can't sleep. Woe is me.

Maybe I'll have time for a nap today. It's a foggy, rainy day and I've created the perfect October playlist: Billie Holiday, Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, The Band, Nina Simone & Elliot Smith.

Cover crops

We have several fields put to bed for winter. The one pictured is seeded to oats and peas on raised beds. The field was subsoiled after compost was spread. The oat/pea mix will winter kill and in spring, one shallow tillage pass will give us a field that can be planted early to give an early crop of salad, spinach, cilantro and radish.