In like a lion...may as well post a blog!

We've been very busy over the past few weeks and have a down moment tonight as some things opened up for me tomorrow as I don't have to go to Augusta to talk to the legislature. So I thought I'd post a blog. Here Lizzie and I are posing as Em takes our photo at the CSA fair I helped organize in Bangor Last weekend. We had a great turn-out and made all the local news outlets. You can barely make out our new tee-shirts. I had them partially designed (I designed the logo but they had to tweak it for screen-printing) at Liberty Graphics in Liberty, ME. This is the same company that produces the shirts for the Common Ground Fair every year. I wanted a local company to get me shirts that are organic cotton, made in the U.S. and printed with soy based inks. Liberty Graphics did great work.

Here is a shot of what we've been working on recently. Onions, onions, onions...and a few other things, have been started in blocks and put out in our new seedling house on our new heat mats. As you can see, I have already run out of room but I'm trying to cycle some things out. For instance, tomorrow I plan to put some of these flats into the ground at the farm under row covers or in the greenhouse. I actually have two tunnels within the greenhouse for added protection. I move things off the heat mats once the seeds have germinated. Below is a photo of the tunnel with the mats. It's very warm in this tunnel and I only open it to water things each morning. The other tunnel has no additional heat other than that generated by solar radiation.

Thought I'd give it a try. Why not when the end of February was like April this year. If I can keep it going it will be awesome to have early basil. We'll see.
Finally, since constructing the new tunnels in the seed house, the chickens have less space. However, that's ok because the weather is warming up so I let them out for longer periods of time each day. Here they are scratching around in a gully behind the house. Actually, the other day I let them out, went inside for a while, came out and couldn't find them anywhere after looking for an hour. Finally, Em got in the car and drove around the neighborhood. They had wandered over to the neighbors lawn. I took her a dozen eggs, apologized and walked them home. No harm, no foul but it was scary to be missing 4 chickens (one had stayed put to lay an egg!).

Here is Lizzie looking back at me innocently as I called to ask what she was doing. She wants desperately to touch a chicken. I can't seem to convince her that they are quick as lightening and the chances of that happening are very small. It's fun to watch anyway.