rain delay

Starting to burn our way into our spring planting dates as the rain continues to sludgify every open soil surface. The brief periods of dry coming up in the forecast won't help much either but I'll sure take every hour of open sky I can get.

Nonetheless, it's a beautiful winter day in early spring.

Winter working

It's a rainy day but the work goes on in our big greenhouse. We've spent the last couple days cleaning it out after last year's tomatoes & a brief stint of chickens. Dad tilled and fertilized a bed for our first lettuce and cole crops while I was hauling out debris. We'll probably start planting later today.

Dad's heading into the doctor's shortly to (maybe) get his chemo if his blood tests from yesterday came out ok.

Mt. Fielder is putting on a lovely show of fog and trees this morning while Sparky and I enjoy our morning tea time.

Hoping your day is peaceful and lively.

Signs of things to come

We're putting together one of our last seed orders. Holy Cow! the prices have skyrocketed. This and other expenses will have to be passed on to our customers which will not be well received.

This shows exactly what is happening throughout our economy. And hints at just how bad things can become in a very short time.

Hooray! for Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Keep up the good work Scott, it's time for the reasonable and realistic people to put their foot down and tell the whiners to take a Waaa!mbulence out of town.

It's still winter

I could feel the bony grasp of the ol' hags hand through my moccasins this morning.

Forward thinking

Our Egyptian buddy Sandmonkey has an idea for them that sounds like a good idea for America too! A way to circumvent the gridlock of our Dem-Rep dichotomy.

A call to freedom

A fellow I've followed for about 8 years now, the Egyptian Sandmonkey has posted this extremely moving piece about the situation in Cairo. It is a must read cry to duty and a warning to all those of us who wish to live out from under the thumb of tyranny. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Update: Some a-hole authoritarian has shut down Sandmonkey's site. Until it comes back up, here's the Google Cache of his very fine prose. SM was arrested and beaten after writing this, trying to take medical supplies to his people.

Re:Update: SM has gotten home and seems to be well, hopefully he's resting now. More details on his twitter account. The pigs stole his phone... No offense to actual porcine.

Winter morning reflection

On a lighter note, it's cold and foggy here. The first hole in the sky is shinin' through on Mt Fielder.

Sunny winter day

Today should be round 2 in the fruit tree spraying battle. Really soaked the almond trees yesterday. Apples and pears get it next.

Enjoy this fine day on planet Earth.

Spring's a comin'

Already getting busy with spring anticipation. Also would like to get at least 1 of my software projects finished and released before we get too busy and lose the rain time.

Hope things are sailing smooth for you.

Happy New Year !!

May your 2011 be 1 better than your 2010 ;)

Great Xmas

What a fun, comfortable family Christmas we had. Kept the house warm with a roaring fire while we exchanged presents. Then we packed up a bunch of snacks & some perogas and drove out to see big Sis for the evening.

So now it's easy for me to wish the whole world a Happy New Year too! It's always kinda weird as the last few days play out. We can all use the extra well wishing.

Mid Winter start of planting season

Dad filled a couple of 288 trays yesterday with fresh made soil and I've just about got the plant/sprout room cleaned up. Gotta buy a few seeds but should have early spring greens planted before new year.

I've been having a good time in the dark mornings writing on some software for android apps. Should have my first apps up on Market in a month or so.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Good skygazing to you!

Hooray! Full lunar eclipse tonight! Got my eye on the radar images, looks like there's a clear spot on the back of the next front. Should be through in about 2-3 hours, leaving (maybe) an hour window for viewing right around 10:30. Good sky gazing to you! Thanks Uncle Bob (Amos) for getting me into the stars.

Showery Fall Wind-down

Headin' out to do a little prunin' on the apple trees between rain showers. Mt Fielder is looking quite pretty on this rather temperate late fall day. Hope you're all being productive and/or having fun.

Fall ruminations

Wouldn't you know it, just when I overcome a couple of hurdles and start to make a little progress on my software endeavors, the rain goes ahead and moves out. Darn! good weather means outdoors work.

Not that we were totally sedentary in the rain. Yesterday Dad and I dug a trench in the big greenhouse to drain one of the air inlets and then we fenced an area in which to slaughter the hogs. <-How's that for not leaving a preposition at the end? Also set up a tarp cover for if it's raining, probably the reason it stopped all butterfly effect and stuff.

So we'll probably kill the hogs this weekend sometimes, not sure if I should post pics of that.... probably not a good idea.

Hope y'all are enjoying the fall wind-down.

Cooke's Frontier: Virtual Cookie Exchange on the Frontier!

Here's a neat-o chance to win some Xmas gingerbread goodness from my niece! Give it a whirl. Deadline is tonight at mid-night. Sorry about the late notice.

Cooke's Frontier: Virtual Cookie Exchange on the Frontier!

Red Alert Klaxon's a'ringin'

Well, the United States government is taking a swipe at having total controlling power of its citizens food supply. Check it out here. Senate Bill 510 currently in line for a vote in the next 50 days or so will hand enormous power over to the government's bureaucracy. It will allow the imposition of extra-judicial punishments (i.e. without recourse to either judge or jury) on citizens. It will create a new class of criminals from one group of innocent people.

fall recovery

Getting our fall legs back under us after the colds & closing. Also had my laptop die on me so that complicated things for a bit. Finally knuckled under and bought a new HP presario which I got pretty cheap on sale. So far it's quite nice. Still, even cheap it cost me more money than I could really afford. Gonna have to hunt me up some winter software work or design some sellable apps.

Anyways, still a lot of clean-up to do in the fields, harvest a last little bit of winter squash, maybe help Bro butcher a couple of hogs.

It sure has been a lovely fall, lots of good color.

fall slowness

Been fighting an intermittent head/chest cold for several weeks now. Sort of comes and goes with fits of coughing and spurious fevers.

Add to that the rains, short days and post-sales-season let down and you get some major slowness going on around here. Just doing a few "baby step" things each day, catching up on reading, email etc. Making plans to spend some of my time writing some software ("apps") for android. Have all the software, sdks and all that downloaded just need to buy an android phone now for testing. Got my eye on an HTC phone.

Y'all take care and enjoy the fall colors.