Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Second Part of the Story

Yesterday I didn't get to finish the story of the beaver because it was getting late and I had to take care of Lara, so I'll finish today. Anyway, I was laughing because I "stole" my own tree back from the beaver and put it up as a new corner post. I'm not very good with fence building and the post is up crooked, but it will do. If you take a look at the top of the post you can see where the beaver almost chewed through it. What is really ironic though is the fact that here I have put up a 10' high woven wire topped with 4 smooth 12.5 gauge wires fence to keep varmints out and the first thing I saw after I tightened up the wires was fresh deer poop next to my new chestnut crab tree! Now, who do you think has the last laugh? I suppose the moral of the story is, once you build a fence, you are always building a fence!

I think Spring is finally here because last night I heard the cricket frogs in the marsh. We need rain though -- the water in the marshes is so low that our dog had no trouble running in the marsh by the field. That really troubles me as I don't remember the water in the marshes this low since the mid-70's. Where is all the water going?

I got a lot done between yesterday and today. I finally was able to find out where to get my farmers market hanging scale certified: a girl from DATCP returned my telephone call of the previous day and e-mailed me a list of scale certifiers that service northern Wisconsin. It turns out she was from Park Falls so that made the call a bit more at ease for me, and it also turns out that the nearest certifier is in Tomahawk. I called the company and the guy was really nice. Because the cost of gas is going up and my scale is small, he asked me to mail him the scale and he will square it away for me and mail it back. That will really save us both some time. The way people are able to amicably work out exchanges up here really is neighborly -- it's as if living in Wisconsin is like living in a big neighborhood. I also got a call from Hunts engine repair in Marshfield who we bought our BCS from. We needed a new air filter so I called John and he called me today to let me know he has the filter and prefilter for me already. He'll drop it off with his brother at the Phillips Airport and next week when I go to Phillips I'll pick it up and get the check off to John. Did I tell you I signed up to go to that conference in June to check out the commercial kitchen? I am looking forward to that. Today I also ordered some 100% biodegradable produce bags for the farmers market stand. The company's name is Brenmar. They have all kinds of packaging for food, but there is a $100 minimum - not including shipping and tax. It was more of an expense than I wanted to make, but the bags should last me (I hope) a good two years. The business is building, slowly but surely.

Tomorrow night is the poultry certifying class up in Ashland from 6:30-10:00 p.m. That will be a long day. Tomorrow morning I think I will clean out the chicken coop.

Well, I have to check out the UPS web site so I can get my scale off to BSI Scales, Inc. in Tomahawk. Talk to you soon.

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