Creating a Community

Phil was inspired tonight as he read his Mother Earth News magazine before bed. He left me with this quote by Deborah Niemann, homesteader: "A self-reliant community builds resilience through networks of shared skills and goods with the goal of sustainable living." This touched me and inspired me to get out there and start reaching out to and nourishing that community that has just started to come out of the woodwork.... Above is a photo of our brooder, being used for the first time by Julie Simko and her new Americana chicks.

Charlotte playing with pumpkins!

Annual Canning Day

Well, today was supposed to be our big roma tomato picking, spaghetti sauce making day. We set out nice and early to Underwood Family Farms, outfitted to pick. Everyone had on picking clothes, picking hats, and picking smiles. The smiles, however, turned a little south when we arrived at the farm only to learn that the romas had been taken out 4 days ago for Oktoberfest. The farm stand cheered us up, though, and we played around with pumpkins. :) We decided that if we couldn't can the 20 cents/pound romas that we would do the next best thing: buy the tomatoes at the stand ($1.50/lb) and turn those into sauce. It wasn't as fun (or cheap) as picking our romas, but at least we'd have fresh, local, organic sauce. We took 40 pounds of tomatoes home and had a grand time blanching, skinning, squeezing, and blending the afternoon away!