The Lost Month

In the past month I have spent 11days in Guatemala,  followed by a week out of commission with a nasty respiratory infection, and the  past two weeks frantically trying to catch up on everything.  Plus, my camera  had to be sent in for repairs when I got home and I have been struggling through computer issues.  Thus, this poor blog has been sadly neglected.

I will try to get back on track with regular posting but to catch you up a bit, here are a few happenings from the past month:

a) We had the Willys truck towed in to have the brakes repaired by professionals.  Rog drove it home and I drove it around the neighborhood, but it is not ready for hauling stuff to the Farmers Market yet...

While I was in Guatemala, the maple sap ran.  Rog and Sara  collected sap form our two big silver maples and boiled it down but we only got enough sap (about 30 gallons) to make one gallon of syrup before the nights warmed up above 40 degrees and the sap stopped running.  Last year we made 3 gallons of syrup and that was barely enough --this is going to be one precious gallon of syrup!

The oyster mushrooms have been growing like crazy  Grain, infused with mushroom spawn, had been put into the center tubes of unbleached toilet paper rolls which had been immersed soaked  in boiling water.  They were kept in a cool dark room for 5 weeks. The the rolls were refrigerated for  a week, and finally placed in the light --where they began fruiting.   We have been enjoying the tasty mushrooms ever since on pizza, in salads, stir-fried, grilled in sauces...

The first mushroom harvest is now finished, but we expect to get a couple more "crops" before the toilet paper rolls are depleted. We will also try growing oyster and shitake mushrooms on  oak logs.

We have lost one daughter (Sara left for a film-making internship in North Carolina) and gained one daughter --Cadence returned from her adventure in Mexico a few weeks early.  Cadence travels light--she came home with just the clothes on her back and a lovely lute-like instrument called a "vihuela."  Her vihuela is larger than a mandolin but smaller than a guitar,  has a curved back and 5 strings. She has  learned to get some very sweet Latin sounds out of it.

When I left for Guatemala on March 11th, we had a foot and a half of snow on the ground. When I got home 11 days later, it was spring-- bare ground, greening up and balmy!   Now spring is in full force and we are frantically trying to keep pace. We have 8 flats of assorted peppers, tomatoes, onions, and other miscellaneous  veggies started, but we still have a lot of seeds to start.  With temps in the 70's it feels so late. We have to keep reassuring ourselves that we are not so far behind--it's only mid-April --it could still snow.

We have hauled a couple loads of compost from the  County compost site to the garden, We planted 50 bare-root June-bearing strawberries (wondering whether that will mean an abundance or not nearly enough berries.).  We mulched the  raspberries, which are leafing out nicely. Today Cadence planted peas and built a trellis for them. The garlic is about 6 inches tall and we will be able to harvest our first rhubarb this week!  You can see obvious growth from one day to the next --this is such an exciting time of year!