Ice House - Dorset, VT

I try not to swear too much in this blog and everything but:

Holy shit it's fucking cold in this house.

I'm sitting about 6 feet from the wood stove, which is cranking. It's so hot the kettle that sits atop it is at a near boil. The heat is just not reaching me, or my freezing toes. I was going to upload some pictures (finally), but damn it I am not leaving this couch or taking my coat off of my legs. If I get up for more than a minute I might have to warm up the spot om sitting in all over again.

Anyway I turned on my camera to see what was on there and I realized I had a TON of old photos that I never bothered to delete, even after upload. I was going through enjoying the old pictures of the plants growing in the greenhouse and the Levis kids looking so much younger than they do now, even though the pictures are not even a year old, when I stumbled upon it. My favorite picture ever! I had it as my desktop for months. I thought I had lost it when I had my hard drive replaced because I hadn't backed up most of my pictures last time I did a back up. I love this picture so much, it's just so freaking cute!



The point is, it made me change my mind. So here are some freaking pictures.



Brussels sprouts are so weird. I think they were a gift from outer space. Crash landing.



Kale forest

Teleion Holon - Manchester, VT

OK, OK, Let's talk about the farm. Where did I leave off? After that crazy week of hot, summery weather Southern Vermont went back to Spring. It's been doing it's fair share of raining and it's not cold, but having jacket ready is a good idea.

We're a little more than half way through the tomato planting process. One greenhouse is done and Elyssa and I started the other one yesterday. The greenhouse we use to start the plants was so full of tomatoes it was hard to find room for new things. It's nice to get them out of there and into the ground where they belong.


The tomatoes make the back of the van look like a jungle

I'm going to try and remember my camera today to make some photos of the finished greenhouses. The smaller greenhouse has really wonderful beds in it. We put down the mud we got from the bottom of the pond, covered it with peat moss, mixed in some lime and chicken poop and then went over all of it with the tiller. What we ended up with was a fluffy raised bed that is so easy to plant in that we don't need a shovel. The tomatoes were into it.

We've got three new WWOOFers coming this weekend. One today and two more on Sunday. Elyssa, Oliver and I have been working crazy-long days to get all of this stuff done; it will be such a relief to have three more helpers. We spent some time getting more organized so that it would be easier for the three of them to get quickly into the swing of things.

Bonnie and I took all of Wednesday to clean out the basement, clean out two supply closets, get those supplies together to put in the closets, and we made up the new WWOOFer rooms. I love the basement right now. I've been harassing Elyssa to go down there and look at it while it's still clean. We got rid of most of the stuff that was junking it up, but I suspect that more junk will make its way down there and the cleanliness won't last. But maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.


A bag of overgrown potatoes we found while cleaning. At first glance we both thought they were a bag of white sticks.

One thing I'm very excited about is that there will be three more people to split up the letting out of the chickens at 5:30AM. I know everyone thinks that we get up at start work at 5AM everyday because it's a farm, and maybe that's what other farmers do, but we don't. I think the veggies like to have the early morning hours to themselves anyway. Anything earlier than 6AM is just mean and those chickens are the meanest.

Some cool news:
Solving the problem of "Range Anxiety" in electric cars
Europe pisses off Canada

Teleion Holon - Manchester, VT

What a fun day we had a few days ago! We decided to clean up the weeds in the big greenhouse that had our salad all winter. As the weather has warmed up the weeds kind of took over a bit and the salad got a little overgrown. Bonnie and Talula even came to help out and the chickens did their part. Guv was at daycare, so he missed all the fun, and Eden slept through most of it.



The plan was to pick out most of the weeds, move the chickens in there for a few days to let them get the rest of the salad and weeds and bugs, and then move the chickens out to Teleion Holon for the summer. The weeding went pretty quickly with so many people.


Helping Daddy

The chickens were not so interested in moving into the big greenhouse, they just wanted to eat and run. Right now half of them have moved in and the other half are staying in the smaller greenhouse that has been their home all winter and become very muddy. We leave the door open during the day so that if they want food and water, or if they want to go into the other greenhouse where food and water have been provided without having to search for it, they can do that. At night we close the houses up as best we can.



The salad greenhouse looks great with all the weeds pulled out and the chickens doing their thing. We even fixed the greenhouse sides so that the wind wasn't blowing them all apart and wreaking havoc. I'm so excited to move the chickens out, clean up, and start planting!


I got one, but it's gross. What do I do with it?

I also want to point out that I've updated my links section, as promised. I am also going to try and end each post with a link or article, or something I find noteworthy. For today, I'll kick this thing off with two links:
Are the lab rat's days numbered?
Iowa Court Voids Gay Marriage Ban

Teleion Holon - Manchester, VT

After a few days of staying in bed, I'm feeling much better. Most people, after being sick for a while, eventually get over it and feel better and go on with their lives. Well, I apparently don't do that. On the day I was finally feeling better I got a canker sore just so my body could prove how much it hates me. I don't mean to be a big baby about this, we've all had canker sores, they hurt a little and then they go away, no big deal. This one keep getting caught on my tooth, but I'm trying to ignore it. The thing that bothers me the most is that after a month of being ill, I really just wanted to be better. Well now I can't sleep so well on my left side. Bonnie gave me some clove essential oil, which is pretty amazing. As soon as you put it on you can't feel the sore anymore. It lasts for a long enough time as well. I haven't been using it lately because it doesn't really hurt so much anymore and I had a feeling it was making my cut angrier.

Enough of that. I finally ventured out into the greenhouse a few days ago to see what I had been missing. I took a bunch of wonderful pictures of wonderful growing things. The cucumbers in particular make me happy. They grew so fast and they look so cheery and happy. I also moved my sprouted eggplants to bigger soil blocks yesterday. It's so great to finally be planting after months of winter and trying to find ways to stay busy. I've been living on a farm for 6 months and I haven't done much growing and planting.

Last night we had a little house meeting where we talked about what needs to get done this week. We started off the meeting by saying what kind of machine we felt like (I felt like a soil blocker, but then later reconsidered and decided I felt more like bellows because I'm coughing so much), and then we talked about our favorite and least favorite things we've done since getting here. I mentioned the fact that we are growing things now and the incident with the moldy hay.

This week looks pretty good. More planting and transplanting. Some people who want to help Bonnie and Oliver buy a farm are coming by on Tuesday so we've been cleaning up a bit for them. On Wednesday we're going to visit Jay's property in Jamaica (yes, Jamaica is in Vermont). And then more and more planting.

I had some pictures to put up, but I can't seem to find my camera at the moment, which is odd. I'll look around for it tonight and maybe add some pictures later.

Teleion Holon - Manchester, VT

I'm tired of this being sick thing. I've had some kind of cold since I got back from NY. I'm thinking it may have been two or three colds all in a row, not counting that short-lived stomach thing. I'm so glad today is a day off because I feel pretty awful and I need the rest. The kids have been sick as well and I'm thinking we just keep giving things to each other.

Yesterday Oliver gave me the project of installing outlets in the greenhouse to have a system of fans that circulate the air and are all on one switch. Normally this is the kind of job I would really enjoy, but I just ended up frustrated because I couldn't focus very well. Oliver had to explain things to me several times because I just wasn't able to follow him. Guv was also at my feet talking about Oliver's birthday (which is not until summer), so that made it even harder. Finally I told Oliver that I needed to go inside and get a bit of lunch and a break and then I'd be able to focus.

When I went back out I got the general idea of the whole thing and started working. I've never installed outlets before because that's not really something I would normally do in theatre. Generally the power you need is already there in some form and we rarely use Edison plugs anyway. I understood what I had to do, but the chair I was standing on was just a little too short and the sun was really in my eyes. Oliver and Jay offered me their sunglasses which helped, and I should have had the sense to go and get something taller to stand on, but I just wanted to get it done. It's 90% finished now, it just needs a male Edison for the end beginning of the system and a switch. The whole project took me so much longer than it should have, but I'm happy with the result and once it's totally complete it'll be so useful.

To end, I will post some pictures of what's growing in there.


Onions


Kale


Kale