Hulk Hands.

Today we repaired the eletrical and barbed wire fence around the property to continue to prepare for the livestock. As we worked Larry was giving me French lessons. More like, I asked him how to say some regions in Southern France or some type of absurd food and he would say it for me. So we will have daily French conversations until I begin to pronounce some basic things correctly. As I talked everyone's ears off I noticed by the end of the day I hadn't really done any work. I pretty much talked the whole time about pate and duck confit while uttering their pronunciacions repeatedly  under my breath until I felt I mastered them.

To go with these French foods, I had just read a book called The Scavenger's Hunt to Haute Cuisine. This book was about a guy that took a year to be a hunter-gatherer and collect as many animals from Auguste Escoffier's cookbook about French haute cuisine. After this year his goal was to produce a forty course meal with his gatherings to cook for his friends. The story was about his different travels of collecting animals like snapping turtles, stingrays and the saliva from sparrow's nests. I instantly thought of Evan and figured he would take on a hunter-gatherer type challenge if he was challenged to do so. I'm not sure how successful he would be since his one use of a gun and it endiended with a bullet in his hand. By any ,I have to admit I don't really fnish books. It's a little secret that I like to keep. I easily plow through the first two thirds of a book and then have no interest in reading the rest. I never really finished the book so I don't know if his challenge was a success. I also just enjoyed reading about  Chez Panisse a restaurant owned by Alice Waters. I never got to the chapters of the current standings of it so I just know its long history. Maybe this means I have to go visit Chez.... Brandon what do you think? I trip back to California?

Back to my original comment on hulk hands. I spent a little time cutting metal today with various ancient tools. I have been doing this the past few work days and whenever I do it I feel powerful!
These aching finger joints take apart metal with one snap when I'm using these special tongs and scissors. So before I cut I always tell Larry I'm getting my hulk on. He always chuckles as he does with pretty much everything odd I do. Today these hulk hands cut tin roof and barbed wire. Bam!

Farm Update.

There's a lot to say, it has been way too long!

First and foremost, my laptop is dunzo! I went to get a diagnosis on it the other day and it now won't start. So from now on I will only be blogging once or twice a week from the local library computer. Local, meaning not that local. So continue to check back for I will continue to blog! So if you ever need to reach me send me a text and I will recieve it probably a day after you sent it and then sometime in the week drive into town and call you!

For the farm. The high tunnel is infested with white flies. I took some fish emulsion to it the other day and hopes that will help to decrease them. After some research their eggs hatch every three to four days so they just keep coming. They have overcome all of the new growth and have started to kill many of the beans plants. Ultimately, I have decided not to plant anything new in the high tunnel and am going to put in a cover crop. It will probably be beans since I have some leftover seed. In that case I won't really have to start seeding and maintaining the outside garden until the end of August. Come to think of it, that's not too far away. I tore out the six cages of tomatoes. It was a hassle to do but made many capterpillar friends in the process and only spotted one black widow. Outside we have been ontop of maintaining weed growth with the beds, but oh that nutsedge.

This past week was spent clearing trees and over hanging branches on the electric fence for the upcoming livestock. It seems to be a trend as we have been doing that a lot lately. We walked the back fields that are behind the elcetric fence where I had never been and Larry has only been several times since he has lived there. I was terrified for my life for I was sure that we would see a snake. We saw plenty of gorgeous banana spiders but no snakes. I did see my first live armadillo that everyone continues to say carries leoporsy but I'm still thinking it's a wives-tale.

Lincoln and Jackson are well but desperate for a new house. I keep mentioning that I want to build on since theirs collapsed. I am sure that we will eventually get to it. We have been discussing what it will be like when the new livestock come and what their reactions will be. It brings us many laughs thinking about them interacting with other animals. My cans of fig products I made a while back were finally opened and they were to my disatisfaction. So we thought we'd play a little game with Jackson. Dog fennel grows in abundance but the donkey and horse don't seem to like it so we poured some fig jam all over dog fennel to try to get them to eat it and it worked with the donk! We were laughing so hard. So we are going to do this daily in hopes that he starts to eat the fennel. I doubt it, he is to smart and knows we are on to something.

In all, things are well. I'm finally starting to get into the groove of things down here. Life is slow and I'm struggling to slow down, it's a process but I will get at it. All my love!

Stained hands.

Hopefully we will have the internet next week as Larry has been trying to figure out a solution to our problem. The effects of the storm or still lingering for me as I have now figured out my camera on my computer doesn't work for Skype and my three USB ports won't recognize anything plugged in. So sorry to say there will be no pictures anymore. I'm crossing my fingers that my computer can do basic functioning through my time being here. I am positive as long as I keep sweet talking it that it will work.

Today I cleaned out all of the dead matter from the high tunnel and it's looking gorgeous. I just have four cages of cherry tomatoes that Larry is having difficulty letting go that I'm itching to remove. The tomatoes are bringing a lot of unwanted pests since they haven't been well maintained and are half dead. I spent the rest of the time weeding the pomegranite bushes. Once I got back I kept trying to wash my hands and the dirt won't come off. My hands after today's work are officially stained or semi-perminately a dirt tint.

Missing you all.

Fine Wine.

I came to Savannah for the night to get away and relax from the farm. Brandon put  me up in a nice hotel and I enjoyed scouring the town. With my mind running on all things French, I found a small french cafe where I got a shrimp and prosciutto salad. It's the best meal I have had since I've been down here! I sat at the communal table in the tiny cafe and enjoyed conversation with a couple from Portland. I then wlaked myself down the street to a little Perisian store called Paris Market. Those two stops were worth the whole trip right there! I meandered aroudn town adn stumbled upon a free country concert and partook for a bit as my taste doesn't collide with this town when music is concerned.

I went out to a new restaurant called Local 11/10 for dinner. I was so excited to eat here for it reminded me of Pumpkin with a fresh season menu. I was impmressed by the wine they had to offer and jumped all over a glass of cotes du rhone. How I miss good wine! That glass of wine could have been enough for my meal but I proceeded with a charcuterie plate. What I recieved was an intersting assortment of two pates, two sausages, two green beans and two olives. To say the least I was underwhelmed with the presentation and flavor. I gave them a second chance with the cremee brulee that remained a poor idea. So in all I was overwhelmed by the wine but underwhelmed by the food.

Today I am off to explore more and will visit the Paula Deen store!

This different life.

Well the internet is out again at the house. I drove into town and am using internet at the local dq where they genreously turned off their irrodescent sign so I could plug in my computer. I fear that in all of this storming and the lightening storm the other night hot my computer. It is starting to play games with me and my keyboard doesn't correctly work anymore. The high tunnel got struck and the transformer blew up adn flew out of the high tunnel 20 feet away. We have been finding little pieces of the control box all day.

Today we finished the irrigation on the double dig. So we are all set to grow! The pumpkins have sprouted this week out there! Everything else is grow like crazy with all of this rain we have been getting every evening. I went to Jerry Larson, the organic guru from all of the pruning workshops, demonstration garden. He gave us some cuttings along with some comical inforation of how he wants to take a sling shot to chickens that have taken many figs from his garden. We picked some prescious raspberries and muscidines while we were there. These muscadines were the most beautiful I have seen yet and took many pictures but my computer isn't letting me load them.

Bare with me as I'm figuring out the internet and my computer in these next few days. I will post as much as a can!

By the way, I saw my first two wild dogs! I honked my horn at them in passing and then laughed a little too hard as they sheepishly looked at me.

outage.

A huge storm blew out the internet for the past day or so. I have felt even more disconnected from reality and I'm already pretty disconnected.

Today I have for you a book. A Homemade Life by: Molly Wizenberg the author of the blog orangette.

I give this book my highest praise. It has so many uncanny parallels to my life I often felt as if she has followed me around and scribed my life. She has an obsession with good food, as does her family, she loves to sit and read cookbooks on end, her boyfriend’s name is Brandon, she has this urge to always travel to France, she isn’t a veg but rarely eats meat, she cherishes the conversations that come with food, sounds like me and there’s many more! Sounds just like me doesn't it.

Today I put irrigation in at the double dig. It will be set on a timer so I will not have to be going out there and watering it. There's not much to report just that's it's been a scorcher everyday and has stormed every afternoon.

Missing everyone!

Hodge-podge.

Today's really just a few short things thrown together.

Larry had to run in to town to fix the chainsaw so we could work on the cattle pasture. While he was gone I picked the elderberries. They are the most beautiful drapping berries I have ever seen. They really captivated my attention for a long time.

 I then had to fertilize about 50 pomegranite bushes with kelp spread. Goodness I felt like I was walking in the ocean. This stuff had such a pungent smell. I then went over to the orchard to proceed to weed around the 50 or so pom bushes we have over there. I had forgotten about the deathly sting of a fire ant and they took it to me a few times as I was weeding. By that time Larry had gotten back I was done and he had the fixed chainsaw plus two new ones! I knew that the boys were going to have a hayday now.

So this is typically how things go when we work. The boys like to ride the ATV's, drive the trucks and tractors and use all of the gas powered tools that are around. I am the one that always prefers to avoid power tools. Today when we went to work I used tree clippers and walked to our location. I guess it is the city girl stuck in me wanting to walk the 500 meters to the pasture instead of driving. Larry was in heaven with this new saw and just chopped or I guess sawed everything in sight... tall grass, baby trees, dead branches etc. and my job was to clear  everything he sawed.

While we were working Lincoln and Jackson were so curious as to what we were doing. When I took a break to get some water I creeped up on Lincoln and watched as he used his teeth to release the chain from the cattle confinement and go in to try to get to where we were working. He opened the cattle door all the way to let Jackson in to join. By then I was yelling at the both of them as they were going for the next gate to open where they would then be out of their fencing. They just looked at me and then kept walking for the gate. They are a piece of work sometimes.

I made my orange loaf and it's cooling right now!