about this week

highlights from this past week:

1. made our first delivery to the food co-op (potatoes and broccoli raab).
2. had our two best markets so far (as far as diversity and amount of stuff sold)
3. had to finally give up on the tomatoes. they all have the blight and we won't be abe to sell any, so we lost the entire crop....
4. but, we were able to save the potatoes, who were also starting to get it, but we pulled them out just in time, and they're all fine. we worked really hard on this one on sunday and monday....

so all in all, i'm feeling really good with things, despite the tomato loss. oh, we also lost some of our squash pants, about half of them. they were infested with the squash bug, and i wasn't able to get them in time to save the plants. the eggplant was having issues with the colorado potato beetle, but i've been squashing those pretty regularly, and i was able to get them in check so our plants are now doing well. we brought some beautiful eggplants to the market and i was very proud of them. they're selling really well too. i'm trying to be really good about checking the remaining squash plants for bugs every morning and night, so i can get them before they lay eggs and multiply out of control.

i've been learning a lot about bugs recently. i got a big book and every time i see something on a plant i try to identify it in the book - that way i can figure out if it's a pest, or a beneficial insect. obviously, i don't want to squish the beneficials, bc they're really helpful in controlling the pests. by next season, i hope to be a lot more knowledgeable on all of this - i hope to be able to plant flowers which will attract beneficial insects, which in turn will help me control the pests. gardening is such a beautiful science, and there's so much to learn all the time. i love how everything works together, and hopefully the more experienced i become, the more i can orchestrate things to have a healthy, self-sustaining garden.

a lady passed by my table yesterday and commented that our prices are high. she didn't stay long enough for me to be able to respond, but if she had, i would've told her about, for example, the countless hours i spend tending to each plant, squashing the bugs on each leaf individually. it would certainly be a lot easier to go out there and spray pesticide on everything and not have to worry about it again, and then maybe our prices would be cheaper too. it's too bad that some people can't see beyond the price, but i have to say that in my experience, the great majority of people do understand what's involved in growing real food, and comments like this lady's are very rare.

ed and i were laughing the other day, because we figured that when we achieve our goal of making enough money to be sustainable, we'll be making about $3 an hour, with all the work we're putting in. we were laughing, but it was also a bit sobering, and it made us question again, if we really want to be doing this. at this point, we both feel very strongly yes. i feel that the rewards of our lifestyle are so great that at this point i'll gladly take the $3/hour.

after being infested by bugs and hit by the blight, i realized that i really need to check all our plants reguarly. so i started a new routine, where i inspect the whole field every morning and night. this has been working really well, and it's also been very rewarding. i love the feeling of being out there by myself early every morning, saying hi to all the plants. i feel connected to them - they bring me peace, and soothe me when i am stressed or anxious. this is one of the unexpected rewards of farming. and there are many others.

ed's been working on the house mostly this past week. he's already gutted 1.5 rooms, and i can almost start to see the way it's going to look when he's done. i'm excited about it.

other than that:
the kids are doing well, enjoying spending time at the beach with grandma every thursday while i'm at the market. they're somewhat helpful with the farming activities, it just depends on the mood they're in. i don't want to make them do anything they don't want to, but is's hard not to ask, especialy sena, because i know that she can do so much. she's been helping me find the squash bugs and beetles, and squish them. she's really good at it, and i tried to make that her responsibility, but she only wants to do it when she feels like it... and she likes me to be there with her, so i guess i can't put it all on her just yet....

sena took a sewing class in a montessori school near us last week. she loved it, and sewed her own skirt, which she's been wearing a lot since, plus two pillows and a bunch of other small things. she did hand sewing and machine too, so now she's a ot more skilled than i am. i coudn't believe when she showed me the skirt she made, it came out really nice.

next week she'll be taking landscape painting or drama, she still has to decide. we've been able to pay for her sewing class with vegetables, so that was nice too.

we're still homeschooling, and that's going really well. both sena and aiyana are realy motivated - they love math as well as reading and writing workbooks, so we do those pretty regularly, and then we just do a lot of informal reading on whatever subject they feel drawn to. farming's been a great homeschooling opportunity as well - sena knows more about bugs and plants than most adults we speak to.

sena and aiyana made up a song yesterday in the car. they sang it over and over:
"everything is perfect al the time, everything is perfect all the time"
it felt so reassuring to hear that...

that's about it for now,
peace