R Popcorn

The first popcorn harvested on R Farm

saved from last fall for a special day

popped this week after a good day's work.

Field trip

Today Mama Phoenix took her chicks 

outside the greenhouse for the first time.

 One went surfing on mom's back.

 We're glad they're here.

In Memorium to Mama and five babies who died in a predator attack on Thursday morning. 
The five survivors are doing well.

Post hole digger

On a hot, muggy, super buggy day, 

Tim and Mark M prepare to dig a post hole

demonstrating the unwritten rule that the hardest jobs 

must be done in the worst conditions.

Down and up, down and up- 

a couple minutes to bore through loam and clay.

Another good, deep hole.

Got to love a man with power tools!

Thanks to the good folks of Adolfson and Peterson Construction for loaning Tim the auger 

and to Mark M for helping on such a lousy day.

Tim's Honeyberries

After a long, hard spring, Tim harvested 

R Farm's first honeyberries.

So yummy and hardy to Zone 2.  

Way to go Tim!

Lawn and field envy

Woman: You must be very happy.
Nelson Mandela: Any man would be happy dancing with a beautiful lady like you.
Woman: Mr. President, you’re exaggerating.
Nelson Mandela: Not at all. My father was Xhosa, so he was a polygamist. As you know, I am not. But when I look at you, I envy my father.

-Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, Invictus

Is there anything more beautiful than a well-mown lawn or a freshly plowed field?

So orderly.  

So rhythmical. 

So fresh and tidy and definitive.

I don't mow or till but when I walk or drive by my neighbors', I envy them. 

If I did permaculture and mowed and tilled, too- would that make me a polyagamist?

Work is love made visible

The title quote is the epigraph in Women of the West by Luchetti and Olwell and the quote faces this photo.

Her yard is a shambles and she's currently living in a hole in the ground.

While that's true it is also not true.

She's not living in a hole in the ground; she's living in a place she and her family have built for themselves with their own hands.

This woman has pride in her home and hope in her dream.

Until recently, all I could see was the squalor. 

Look at the folks on the top left, arrayed in the deep mud, surrounded by their animals and guns and children.

Look at the folks on the bottom right and notice their livestock grazing on top of their sod roof.  They are posed in their Sunday best- clean aprons and combed hair, fancy hats and rocking horses.
  
These are people showing off their work in progress.

Their work.
Their farm.
Their home.

Until recently, all I could see was the squalor.
But not anymore.

Now I can see the love.

Work: Dirty Jobs

Dirty Jobs cheers me up.  I watch it with mouth agape. "I'm so glad that isn't my job!"

It's good to know that there are messier, crazier jobs than whatever I've been trying to do lately.

Today Anjali and I watched Collection 7 episode 5: Sea Lamprey Exterminator.  Yeah, I'm not feeling so bad about anything around here after that.  Anything which requires a space suit to do and decontamination afterwards- well, it hasn't come to that here.

Yet.