Seed panic!

Yikes! It is already the end of March! I have lots more seeds to start namely herbs! I haven't even begun to think about them yet. Tonight is the night. I did prep some seed starter on Sunday - I'm trying a new recipe for this batch. Worm castings, perlite and a little bit of peat. This is the first time that I've worked with perlite - so far I'm on the fence. We'll see what its like tonight after its been hydrating with my castings for a few days. It seemed pretty sharp so I don't know how well that will work in my soil block maker.

The potential farm truck that we looked at in Wisc on Saturday turned out to be a dud. It was all fine and well until Bill took it for a drive. Upon return, pretty near a gallon of antifreeze came pouring out of the bottom and there was oil on the engine that was smoking. We don't expect it to work perfectly of course, but a potential cracked transmission was more than we were willing to take on. We're rethinking truck options. We want something reliable but I'd like to not take a car note. We'll keep looking.

We buried Miss B on Saturday. We like the grave digging and we each talk and laugh about memories. We've done this with each of our other two pets buried at the farm so we repeated the process. We were able to cry and then fill the soil back in the grave with our hands. Its a very spiritual experience for both of us. Bill then found a good stone and chiseled a 'B' on it. He did this for our dog and our other cat too. This was our 3rd pet euthansia in 2.5 years - it sure is hard to watch them age.

Work planning

We're in Wisc. We took Friday off and came up last night. Tomorrow we go for a full day of work at the farm. The folks that are taking the bathroom are coming tomorrow. Bill hopes to do additional barn prep for the massive barn renovation that will encompass our Summer 2009. I am going to do misc things: take down some reusable beadboard from the house, start demolition on a small building that is near falling down but salvage all of the materials for reuse. This will also make room for the garage/summer kitchen/art studio that we plan to build.

Tonight is planning. We have our calendars and our laptop. We are planning our summer weekends of work and what we hope to accomplish this summer.

Sunday we are going to look at a promising farm truck. A 1989 (yikes - 20 years old!) Chevy - the seller describes it as a 'runner' - a good beat around farm utility truck. It has a new engine and the price is right (if he is willing to negotiate). We'll see - we're not in any great hurry, although it would be nice to have a work truck to haul materials to/from the farm as the materials/tools are taking their toll on our Subaru.