Saturday, June 26, 2010
Feeling the Transformation
According to my astrological solar return chart, this year has a majority of my planets in "cadent houses", which means, in short (at least according to my way of thinking), a year that sucks. I am a Scorpio with an Aries Ascendant and Aquarius Moon -- think forward motion, right now. I don't deal very well with the flux cadent houses present. This is a very difficult year for me. I am trying my best to be open minded and flexible, but I can't seem to escape the irascible and overly emotional feelings I have about most everything. I want to move forward on projects, but Universe keeps knocking me back two steps for every forward one I take. I feel like a lemon being scraped on a rasp. I am being skinned, and I wonder what will remain after the process.
Anyway, lots of things are changing, and although I hate the ups and downs of it, I do think that the changes are ultimately good. My little voice keeps telling me not to worry and to just batten down the hatches. I keep thinking of the line in the movie Contact where Mr. Haddon asks Ellie, "Wanna take a ride?" Hmmmm.
I deleted my Facebook account. I removed the farm from the savorwisconsin.com web site. I closed the Yahoo farm web site and gave up our domaine. I dissolved the farm as a formal business with the State and closed the business e-mail account. I will close the Windows Live site if I can remember how to get to it. (I set it up and then promptly forgot about it.) I will continue to sell from our farm and at the Phillips Farmers Market when I have enough produce to make the trip worth the gas expense. This blog will be our only window to the world at large, and if you want to contact me, you can do so either through a blog comment, or you can email me at joycepaski@gmail.com. (Spammers and creeps will be promptly ju-ju'd.) My plan, if you want to call it that, is to do the best I can to take care of my family, help my neighbors and friends, and to simply survive. If that makes me a nut case, well, forgetaboutit.
Besides listening to my meditation music to help me gain some equipoise, I've been working out in the garden. I love my garden! Got the potatoes hilled and the corn and winter squashes hoed. The hops are growing like crazy, and most of what I planted seems to be coming up. Alot of the squashes didn't germinate: Baby Blue Hubbard and Delicata were the poorest. Unfortunately, it is too late here to replant winter squashes because of our short growing season, but there are a good number of New England pie pumpkins that are coming up, and hopefully I can keep the varmints off of them to harvest some of those.
We've been getting a lot of rain and the plants don't care for it. I tell you, it's either drought or deluge. With the last big rain I heard on the NOAA radio that one of the dams near Phillips was at capacity and people below the dam needed to be ready to move to high ground. Our creek is high and so is Deer Creek. It wouldn't take much more to flood over the road. I haven't driven down FF toward Mercer to see what the water levels that way are like, but I'd bet the water is pretty high around the low points on the road and at Lake of the Falls. Even with all this rain, it will take a lot more of it to recharge the water table from the past years of drought.
Well, that's enough prattling for today. Take care!
Anyway, lots of things are changing, and although I hate the ups and downs of it, I do think that the changes are ultimately good. My little voice keeps telling me not to worry and to just batten down the hatches. I keep thinking of the line in the movie Contact where Mr. Haddon asks Ellie, "Wanna take a ride?" Hmmmm.
I deleted my Facebook account. I removed the farm from the savorwisconsin.com web site. I closed the Yahoo farm web site and gave up our domaine. I dissolved the farm as a formal business with the State and closed the business e-mail account. I will close the Windows Live site if I can remember how to get to it. (I set it up and then promptly forgot about it.) I will continue to sell from our farm and at the Phillips Farmers Market when I have enough produce to make the trip worth the gas expense. This blog will be our only window to the world at large, and if you want to contact me, you can do so either through a blog comment, or you can email me at joycepaski@gmail.com. (Spammers and creeps will be promptly ju-ju'd.) My plan, if you want to call it that, is to do the best I can to take care of my family, help my neighbors and friends, and to simply survive. If that makes me a nut case, well, forgetaboutit.
Besides listening to my meditation music to help me gain some equipoise, I've been working out in the garden. I love my garden! Got the potatoes hilled and the corn and winter squashes hoed. The hops are growing like crazy, and most of what I planted seems to be coming up. Alot of the squashes didn't germinate: Baby Blue Hubbard and Delicata were the poorest. Unfortunately, it is too late here to replant winter squashes because of our short growing season, but there are a good number of New England pie pumpkins that are coming up, and hopefully I can keep the varmints off of them to harvest some of those.
We've been getting a lot of rain and the plants don't care for it. I tell you, it's either drought or deluge. With the last big rain I heard on the NOAA radio that one of the dams near Phillips was at capacity and people below the dam needed to be ready to move to high ground. Our creek is high and so is Deer Creek. It wouldn't take much more to flood over the road. I haven't driven down FF toward Mercer to see what the water levels that way are like, but I'd bet the water is pretty high around the low points on the road and at Lake of the Falls. Even with all this rain, it will take a lot more of it to recharge the water table from the past years of drought.
Well, that's enough prattling for today. Take care!
Growling and Snarling
I just had to pass this heartbreaking video on. Words to describe the Gulf of Mexico disaster are simply inadequate to properly relate either the magnitude of the environmental catastrophe or the suffering of the people of the region. And this is just the beginning. I was born in Louisiana and have family down there. This disaster hits me in the gut. All I can say is a quote from The Bible: "The meek will inherit the Earth."
And I absolutely believe that there will be a Reckoning.
My other bone to pick is with the thief/thieves who hacked the Jeff Rense program during his interview with Cliff High of Half Past Human. I am a purchaser of Cliff's SOTTC (Shape Of Things To Come) reports. I find them very helpful to me in a number of ways, and the science underlying Cliff's work altogether fascinates me. (Lots of people think I'm an airhead anyway LOL.) Purchasing his reports are one of the few "luxuries" I allow myself. I guess what I'd like to say is that I believe that theft of Cliff's or any person's hard work is morally and ethically unacceptable behavior, and such a deed puts the bottom feeding perpetrators of the crime down in the poison sludge along with BP and their collaborators. I'd say bad cess to the lot of you, but you are making your own karma bad enough as it is all by yourself/ves; I actually feel kind of sorry for you. You will get what you deserve.
And I absolutely believe that there will be a Reckoning.
My other bone to pick is with the thief/thieves who hacked the Jeff Rense program during his interview with Cliff High of Half Past Human. I am a purchaser of Cliff's SOTTC (Shape Of Things To Come) reports. I find them very helpful to me in a number of ways, and the science underlying Cliff's work altogether fascinates me. (Lots of people think I'm an airhead anyway LOL.) Purchasing his reports are one of the few "luxuries" I allow myself. I guess what I'd like to say is that I believe that theft of Cliff's or any person's hard work is morally and ethically unacceptable behavior, and such a deed puts the bottom feeding perpetrators of the crime down in the poison sludge along with BP and their collaborators. I'd say bad cess to the lot of you, but you are making your own karma bad enough as it is all by yourself/ves; I actually feel kind of sorry for you. You will get what you deserve.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Saturday
There's so much work to do I hardly no where to start some days.
I managed to get four roosters butchered and in the freezer this week. Yesterday I shoveled out the chicken coop and started a new compost pile with, at the bottom of the pile, the chicken offal from last year's butchering that I had composting in a garbage can. No varmints have come to dig at the new pile and there is no smell, so that's good. On the days we've had rain I've been cleaning the house and working on hemming the handkerchiefs I'm making. Then, today we had clouds but no rain, so I spent most of the day out in the field hoeing. There are deer tracks all over the garden sections but I don't know yet if the deer have eaten anything. Most of the plantings are just starting to sprout. The transplants look kind of "pukely" but at least they are alive; I think they would like some warmer temperatures than what we've been having. Tom cut the grass around the section edges, and Ed and I raked it up to use as mulch on the rows. I got most of Section 2 mulched and hopefully I'll finish it up tomorrow.
The hoeing is half-finished in the hops section. I noticed that the calendula is sprouting very well and so are the pie pumpkins. I don't see many sunflowers though. I need to hoe in between the hops poles and mulch the pumpkin plants there.
In section 3 where the corn and potatoes and winter squash are, the grass is taking over. I will need to use the tiller to help with the cultivation. We have gotten probably over 4" of rain so far this spring and I'm not complaining. We could use a lot more rainfall before the water table in our area is recharged. I'm also thankful for the cloudy days; they make working in the field much more comfortable. There seems to be more wind when it's cloudy and that keeps the bugs from eating you alive.
Well, I'm beat so this is a short post. Take care, Everybody!
I managed to get four roosters butchered and in the freezer this week. Yesterday I shoveled out the chicken coop and started a new compost pile with, at the bottom of the pile, the chicken offal from last year's butchering that I had composting in a garbage can. No varmints have come to dig at the new pile and there is no smell, so that's good. On the days we've had rain I've been cleaning the house and working on hemming the handkerchiefs I'm making. Then, today we had clouds but no rain, so I spent most of the day out in the field hoeing. There are deer tracks all over the garden sections but I don't know yet if the deer have eaten anything. Most of the plantings are just starting to sprout. The transplants look kind of "pukely" but at least they are alive; I think they would like some warmer temperatures than what we've been having. Tom cut the grass around the section edges, and Ed and I raked it up to use as mulch on the rows. I got most of Section 2 mulched and hopefully I'll finish it up tomorrow.
The hoeing is half-finished in the hops section. I noticed that the calendula is sprouting very well and so are the pie pumpkins. I don't see many sunflowers though. I need to hoe in between the hops poles and mulch the pumpkin plants there.
In section 3 where the corn and potatoes and winter squash are, the grass is taking over. I will need to use the tiller to help with the cultivation. We have gotten probably over 4" of rain so far this spring and I'm not complaining. We could use a lot more rainfall before the water table in our area is recharged. I'm also thankful for the cloudy days; they make working in the field much more comfortable. There seems to be more wind when it's cloudy and that keeps the bugs from eating you alive.
Well, I'm beat so this is a short post. Take care, Everybody!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Planting, Planting, Planting
Wow -- I didn't realize that it has been a month since my last post! I sincerely hope that all of you are safe and well!
I have been really busy -- I've already lost 15 pounds -- and finally finished all of the planting yesterday. We have been blessed in the last three weeks with more rain than I've seen altogether since we moved to northern Wisconsin, and hopefully the seeds are off to a good start. Now that the planting is done I want to cut the grass around the field sections and use it for mulch over the seedlings. The potatos already need to be hilled, and the corn is crying about the weeds. When I planted I made sure to keep the distance between rows wide enough for the tiller to pass through so weeding should be alot easier to do. If the rain keeps coming regularly, I will be able to spend more time on repairing and building the field fences than hauling water to the plants. That will be another blessing. Last night I dreamed that fist-sized hail stones pummeled my garden to pieces, and when I woke up (quite distressed), I fetched my dream book and looked up hail, but the dream actually meant that abundance was coming my way, so maybe it is an omen for a good harvest. I sure hope so.
Here are some pics of what the garden areas look like:
Section One (Hops Section):
I decided to plant pumpkins in between the hops that have poles. I need to install poles for the new hops and since they are 1st year plantings, I will just hoe around them to keep the area clean.
Section Two:
(You should see my stack of empty seed packages!)
Section Three:
I'm really looking forward to harvesting all the winter squashes, corn, and potatos in this section!
Back Yard (in back of the house where the garden boxes are):
Berry Knoll (Forest Garden in the woods beyond the grass in the front yard):
I have cleaned up the berry knoll in the forest garden out in the front yard and added more fence posts around it. I need to staple wire on the posts to finish the fence and add some compost to all of the shrubs. The bushes look great! I dug up the elderberry bushes from the side of the driveway because Tom kept running them over and breaking them, and I transplanted them into the berry knoll. They seem happy there. It looks like this will be a great year for berries. I plan to take Eddy out with me into the woods this summer to pick all that we can.
I planted the new pear and Honeycrisp apple trees on the West side of the house. I thought that the deer would be less likely to find them so close to the house, but I was wrong! The other night I saw a young buck come up out of the marsh and go straight to one of the pear trees and start nibbling on it. I jumped up and ran outside (in my night gown!) and shook my finger at him. "You leave that pear tree alone!" I said. He looked at me just like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and then he bounded back down into the marsh. (He was probably freaked out by the sight of a fat old woman in a night gown LOL.) When I next go to town I'll have to buy another roll of chicken wire and put fences around all of the new trees.
My neighbors have blessed me this year with a trailer of earthworm castings from Lynn and Ira Follen at Earthworm Organics (thank you Lynn and Ira for bringing over the castings and for the loan of your trailer), and all the mink manure I could ever want from Dale and Cathy over at Camp One. It has been hard work hauling the manure by the trailerful and then forking it onto the field, but when I think of how much the soil is improved by the manure, I don't mind the work at all. Thank you, Neighbors! Hopefully, we will have a trailer of our own soon to be able to haul more manure and stack it in a pile somewhere in the field to compost more fully. It would be wonderful to put a couple of tons down on the field this Fall. I put the earthworm castings on the poorest soil and already the worm count there is much improved. I'm so excited! I still have about three days worth of shoveling my own compost and taking it out to the field to do, and that compost is going to go in the orchard and perennial sections around the fruit trees and plants in that area of the field. The pile of chicken manure (from when I last shoveled out the chicken coop) will go to the new compost pile location. There, I'll bury the old chicken waste that's been composting in a garbage can since last year and the new waste from when I cull the flock in a couple of weeks under the newest batch of chicken manure from inside the coop, and that will start my new compost pile.
Well, that's enough gabbing for now. Be well!
I have been really busy -- I've already lost 15 pounds -- and finally finished all of the planting yesterday. We have been blessed in the last three weeks with more rain than I've seen altogether since we moved to northern Wisconsin, and hopefully the seeds are off to a good start. Now that the planting is done I want to cut the grass around the field sections and use it for mulch over the seedlings. The potatos already need to be hilled, and the corn is crying about the weeds. When I planted I made sure to keep the distance between rows wide enough for the tiller to pass through so weeding should be alot easier to do. If the rain keeps coming regularly, I will be able to spend more time on repairing and building the field fences than hauling water to the plants. That will be another blessing. Last night I dreamed that fist-sized hail stones pummeled my garden to pieces, and when I woke up (quite distressed), I fetched my dream book and looked up hail, but the dream actually meant that abundance was coming my way, so maybe it is an omen for a good harvest. I sure hope so.
Here are some pics of what the garden areas look like:
Section One (Hops Section):
I decided to plant pumpkins in between the hops that have poles. I need to install poles for the new hops and since they are 1st year plantings, I will just hoe around them to keep the area clean.
Section Two:
(You should see my stack of empty seed packages!)
Section Three:
Back Yard (in back of the house where the garden boxes are):
Berry Knoll (Forest Garden in the woods beyond the grass in the front yard):
I have cleaned up the berry knoll in the forest garden out in the front yard and added more fence posts around it. I need to staple wire on the posts to finish the fence and add some compost to all of the shrubs. The bushes look great! I dug up the elderberry bushes from the side of the driveway because Tom kept running them over and breaking them, and I transplanted them into the berry knoll. They seem happy there. It looks like this will be a great year for berries. I plan to take Eddy out with me into the woods this summer to pick all that we can.
I planted the new pear and Honeycrisp apple trees on the West side of the house. I thought that the deer would be less likely to find them so close to the house, but I was wrong! The other night I saw a young buck come up out of the marsh and go straight to one of the pear trees and start nibbling on it. I jumped up and ran outside (in my night gown!) and shook my finger at him. "You leave that pear tree alone!" I said. He looked at me just like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and then he bounded back down into the marsh. (He was probably freaked out by the sight of a fat old woman in a night gown LOL.) When I next go to town I'll have to buy another roll of chicken wire and put fences around all of the new trees.
My neighbors have blessed me this year with a trailer of earthworm castings from Lynn and Ira Follen at Earthworm Organics (thank you Lynn and Ira for bringing over the castings and for the loan of your trailer), and all the mink manure I could ever want from Dale and Cathy over at Camp One. It has been hard work hauling the manure by the trailerful and then forking it onto the field, but when I think of how much the soil is improved by the manure, I don't mind the work at all. Thank you, Neighbors! Hopefully, we will have a trailer of our own soon to be able to haul more manure and stack it in a pile somewhere in the field to compost more fully. It would be wonderful to put a couple of tons down on the field this Fall. I put the earthworm castings on the poorest soil and already the worm count there is much improved. I'm so excited! I still have about three days worth of shoveling my own compost and taking it out to the field to do, and that compost is going to go in the orchard and perennial sections around the fruit trees and plants in that area of the field. The pile of chicken manure (from when I last shoveled out the chicken coop) will go to the new compost pile location. There, I'll bury the old chicken waste that's been composting in a garbage can since last year and the new waste from when I cull the flock in a couple of weeks under the newest batch of chicken manure from inside the coop, and that will start my new compost pile.
Well, that's enough gabbing for now. Be well!
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