It has been a really long time since I posting anything interesting here. I apologize to my handful of faithful followers for that. This is the busiest time of year for us and frankly, when I come in at night I am not full of interesting or meaningful things to type. Plus, usually by the time I get to sit down, I immediately fall asleep.
I watched exactly 4 minutes and 44 seconds of Valkyrie last night and it was the third time, so I am sending it back to Netflix today....I give up. I would say that I thought it was the movie, but I did the same thing with the last three movies I tried to watch.

We no longer have television, by the way. When the switch to HD came, we decided that we weren't buying into that whole thing and just didn't get the converter box. Frankly, we didn't watch that much anyway. Mostly used it to watch DVD's, etc. Our television is so old it doesn't even have stereo speakers, so most DVDs are not even that much fun to watch because the sound is always terrible. Dolby THX doesn't sound great in monaural mode.....

Anyway, my mom thought we would miss television, so she very kindly bought us the converter and lo! and behold! we still got no reception, even with the outside antenna. So, that settled it. The television has been unplugged since analog finally died back in June. I haven't missed it for a second. However, I must confess that we DO watch somethings on HULU, etc. I love being able to pick and choose when, what, etc. I watch.
AND the DVD player in my computer is waaaaaaay better than the one with the TV, the speakers rock (we listen to a lot of streaming music on the 'puter) and my monitor is almost as big as the television (I have this huge 26 inch flat panel and the television as 27 inches...). but enough about that. I was making a point anyway about how living simply doesn't have to be dictated by what everybody else is doing (HDTV was my example for this).

Things at the Farm have been really busy this year. The Farmer was out of commission for at least 3 1/2 months and he is still intermittently out (his cancer treatment takes it out of him sometimes) so we have had a wonderful bastion of voluteers who have helped us keep the Farm running this season. I am doing only three farmer's markets and a very small CSA this year because we knew what we could manage on a minimal scale and so far it has worked out pretty well. Have met some incredible people and made some great friends through the volunteer network! We could not have done it without any of them and we have only praise and thanks for them all. Of course, we could still use anybody that wants to put in a day's hard work in the dirt.
Email me at suzanne@organicnc.com if you are interested.

Right now, we have a whole bunch of wonderful things coming up. Since we were about a month late getting things in the ground this year (that was because of all the spring rain....), now we have things coming in at a later time of year and will have things much later than usual...things like okra, eggplant, peppers, cukes and melons, in particular. And we have a late crop of tomatoes that look like they are going to be very productive. We always have butternuts and sweet taters in the fall, along with greens, lettuces, etc. but this year, we should have some summer veggies lasting well into September and possibly even October if the weather stays as warm as late as it has in the last several years. We are setting broccoli, cabbage, etc. out in the next week, so overall it should be a very good fall season this year. There has been a whole lot of rain all around us this summer, so we have had to use the irrigation system more than we would have liked but that is just the nature of farming. I have stood on our front porch and literally watched it rain at the bottom of the hill but nary a drop at our house. Since I can't control the weather, I try not to think much about it, but sometimes you can't help but wonder why.

The chickens have given me nothing but a headache this summer. They are eating me out of house and home and I am basically getting about 2 dozen eggs per week....we have a predator getting in the henhouse, breaking and stealing eggs. Luckily, the hens are not being harmed, but some days every egg in the house is broken before I can get in to gather them. Very frustrating. I think I am going to have to sell off the barred rocks and the black sex-link hens and just keep the Delawares. But the upside is that I learned a WHOLE lot about chickens since last year and I am thankful for the experience.


I hope to be getting back to post here more regularly in the future. Check back and see how I am doing.