Dark greens, raw milk, and an afternoon of birdsong and fresh, warm air. Yes, please.

It's been a difficult week. Coupled conveniently with monthly shifts in brain chemistry, the past couple of days I could have done without.

Up until last night, when he and I had a cookout on the wood stove on our porch. Cracking open a jar of last season's pickled carrots, and snapping deadwood off the willow tree next to our house to use as roasting sticks. Watching the light drain out, in a pile on the floor, until the mosquitoes came.

I am envious of the folks who get long weekends. Scheduled reprieve, written in stone. Untouchable. In the Summer, no less. It's been long enough now that, thinking about it the other day I realized that I associated such things with being in University. With being a kid. It's easier that way, I do think.

Tomorrow we figure out how to fight for a spot in a market that's decided it doesn't need any more small organic farmers. (One, btw, is apparently the magic number- and it's not b/c that farm doesn't want us there.) I start working my way through the 13 page offer to proceed that we got last week (yay, costsharing! yay, honey extractor, and books, and infastructure and a vaguely frightening number of other things). We give the go-ahead to our C&E intern to create a non profit for us. And we plant, plant, plant, plant, plant (plant, plant).

But for now, I need a beer.

Baking in our tiny kitchen last night, two of us, while he serenaded the room with his guitar. In bed at midnight, they, up at 6:30 to harvest greens and fiddleheads, while I snuck an extra hour of sleep. She is such a lucky thing to have found. At 20, so committed. I've missed waking to a house that smells this delicious.

The first market is this morning, in 30 minutes. Rain is forecasted all day. Still, in the park near the river, I'm excited to make up a thermos of tea and spend it there with friends.

An aside: hearing myself be called/considered "older" by this new generation of conscious kids is still a trip. What a deceptively accelerated time, the mid & late 20's. A few years ago I was a kid, now I'm an adult. The line is not blurred- but where did it come from.

Okay, coffee and getting out the door. Happy Saturday, folks.

Holy cold. Day five and I've mustered up the strength to wear real pants and tidy the house. Feed myself things. Not sleep for 16 hours. Of these I am happy. Last night I was more miserable than I remember being with a cold since I was in grade school.
This aside, it's sunny as all out there, and this evening, I got this text. Life is a-ok.
PS: That's organic turkey litter he's referring to.

I have been sick socks for days and days. Time is up, for it to be over, I'd say. Payback for not getting sick all Winter?

I want nothing more than a box of cereal to eat for the next three meals, but the interns are picking up our groceries when they go out for theirs, and I, red nosed and pajama clad, have to set a good example. Cereal, in Canada, is disturbingly overpriced; it's not in their budget, it shouldn't be in mine. Welcome to farm life.

Speaking of farm life, I have good feelings about this years' crew; I have good feelings about this year. It's a happy thing.

Less of a happy thing is all of this wet and cold. Dear Spring, don't you know we need you?

And that's the sort of post you get from me when I haven't washed my hair in three days. End.

Also: Last weekend we visited the local goat dairy, thinking of getting a couple for ourselves, as the failed vegans that we are. Low light (inside a huge barn in light of new babies and mid-April snow!?), and total distraction at the hands of herds of baby goats (!!) meant mostly blurry shots, but I like this guy (and because you probably weren't at your neighbour's goat dairy last weekend, I'll share it):

A post I just put on the farm blog:

I learned of this project (click) a couple of years ago, but bumped into it again today, and was reminded of the Earth Day post we did a couple of years ago about the Pacific Garbage Patch because the two are in no way unrelated. Chris Jordan traveled to Midway Atoll in 2009 to photograph the effects of the Pacific Garbage Gyre on the Albatross populations there, specifically the chicks who, 2000 miles from the nearest continent, are fed remnants of our poorly discarded plastic by their parents who mistake it for food. The photos (click) here, speak for themselves.

On the eve of Earth Day, these lead me to reflect upon the largely unseen, but no less profound, impact even those of us with the best of intentions have on this planet of ours.

It also brings into question the things we, like the foraging Albatross, mistake as food, but that's another post altogether..

To a lifetime of consciously- and continually- stepping up our efforts, and to putting our energies behind the things we believe in.

To Earth Day, folks.

Six sets of hands here to help us these days; the two of us make eight. Two more interns arrive before the start of May. And we may be taking on a young cook once school is out. It's officially the new season in these parts.

This morning, it's tea and pajamas and a rug covered in stacks of photocopies. A (very) Rustic Guide to Farming, V.1. A workbook of sorts for the kids, times six, one page at a time. I think they're about 50 pages each.

Yesterday we visited an elderly neighbour who had a deep freeze for us in his basement. His kitchen and livingroom were lined at the ceiling with all of the blue and red ribbons he had won in the past from farming. A small garage had been converted into a chicken coop, and he had built a couple of small stalls in his walkout basement for chicks he was raising. It was perfect.