Wow

I strongly recommend that everyone who reads my blog go to this site:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

and watch his free crash course on the economy. It is stunning what is happening right now. I think we are facing the total collapse of the dollar. This means that a paper dollar will become worthless. When, who knows? Possibly very soon, possibly not for a decade. Either way, I feel that it is a very good idea to get out of debt ASAP and start turning paper dollars into food, shelter, and water, or things that can help you grow food, heat your home and procure water, or things of value that you can trade for food, shelter, or water. Seriously, I think that at some point you'd be better off with a warehouse full of cigarettes than a bank account full of cash.

Sounds extreme, I know. I'm just sayin'..........

The farm, early September

Here are a few shots of the farm that were taken earlier this month.

We fenced in the former sweet corn patch and put the piggies in there so they could eat the corn stalks and start tilling the ground for a cover crop. Sunflowers grow here like weeds and we like to leave them where we can for the wild birds. In the foreground you can see the early girl tomato that I planted in April in my little cold frame. It really likes that spot!



You can also see one of my strawberry patches in this shot of the piggies:



This is our amazing patch of grinding corn. It's a variety that is popular in the South called Hickory King, which makes large white kernels that are mostly used for hominy and grits (the equivalent of posole and masa here in the Southwest) but we will probably grind most of it into cornmeal. This is an open pollinated variety so we will also be saving a lot of it for seed. It is a tall variety as well, and can be expected to reach ten feet under good conditions. We gave it three trailer loads of horse manure from a neighbor's farm, which it apparently loved because it is easily 14 feet or better!



We think we can even do a corn maze this year for our fall harvest festival. It's quite an impressive stand of corn, I must say.



Oh, and Scotty is learning to drive! He can drive the tractors, the little Geo, and the old F250. He has trouble reaching the gas pedal, so he does best with the vehicles that will just cruise along in low gear while he operates the brake and steering wheel. It's amazing to watch him go!

This lasted for 5 minutes

For a blissful few minutes last week our kitchen and living room and part of the bedroom were picture perfect (barely) for a photo shoot. During the shoot Eliza came running into the living room a couple of times with water balloons needing to be tied and she dropped potato chips on the freshly mopped floor. Scotty moved one of his model tractors into the living room and moved a couple of chairs around. I was really amazed at how it's almost impossible to keep things looking perfect. But it did look good!

Here is the photographer at work:


Jesse's beautiful table and Chris' ceiling and cabinets. Just ignore the pile of clutter down the hallway. We had to move a lot of stuff out to simplify and clean the areas that were to be photographed:


Here is the kitchen floor that I made out of dumpster tile. The other floor is an earthen floor sealed with linseed oil.

We finally painted the kitchen for this shoot. It was great to have some motivation to get it done!

Only half of the bedroom was picture perfect. Behind the camera was a huge pile of stuff that had been moved out of the way! But I just love Chris' ceiling here, which is made from recycled pallets. Chris and Jesse made the bed (the actual bed--I "made" the bed that morning) and I made the wall sconces. The prints are from Chris' Aunt Pam and Uncle George.


The night after the shoot I climbed into my perfectly made, clean bed with the kids and sighed myself to sleep, only to wake up at 3AM to the sound of Eliza vomiting in the perfect bed. Back to reality! Hey, it was fun while it lasted......