Earth Day

Our Local Earth Day event is a big deal for the permaculture group. It's a fair held on the saturday closest to Earth Day. The permaculture group has a table and passes out brochures and we talk to lots of people about permaculture, and it's fun to see lots of people we know, there's an especially get to see a lot of people we know from other sustainability groups. Unfortunately, many years it's cold, windy and miserable outside and a exercise in endurance to spend the entire day there. This year was predicted to be worse than ever, colder and rainier; but as it turned out, the sun was out and wind wasn't too bad, although it was rather chilly. The predicted storm held off until just after the event; by 5:30 it was snowing fairly hard (for late April, even a little snow counts as extremely hard), and we woke up to a snowy view on Sunday.

The local seed saver's exchange idea is getting more and more concrete. Everyone I've talked to thinks it's a great idea... I got a domain (they were on sale for 8.95) so the draft is up at www.seedsave78.org. There are still a few people I'd like to talk to about it, and I need to do some legwork to collect information. Once spring is a little less intense, this should come together and we'll have a kickoff party.

On the real Earth Day (the 22nd, Tuesday), I traditionally plant a tree. There are at least a dozen trees in pots behind the greenhouse... I wonder if they will ever all get planted. It's like those odd items in the bottom of the laundry bin that never seem to get washed.

Spring is slowly, slowly arriving

The tomatos and peppers starts are in full swing. I had a horrible accident yesterday, dropping an entire tray of 50 starts; of many different varieities. The plants were fine, but all the labels are mixed! Horrors! There were 17 different types on that tray! The good news is that for the most part, these can come out of spares; only for one, Taxi, was every single start on that tray. And it's not entirely too late to start more, we have 6 weeks before target date.

The no-mow project moved onto phase 2 yesterday also; the new fence is halfway across the back yard, with lots of new lush grass. The sheep are thrilled, voracious things. Turns out sheep are quite interested in tree leaves and flowers, they nibbled the flowering plum flowers they could reach and starting on what I think are elderberry leaves as soon as they got into the phase 2 area. I called the butcher today. The last thing we need is more meat in the freezer (anyone wanna buy half a sheep?) but the wethers are getting to that size and age... we still have't quite given up on Macy and Little Bo having lambs, but it's not looking good.

Chickens are off the garden, paths raked and mulched. Peas are coming up, the garlic and winter wheat look great; seeded the spring wheat, some onions are in, and the first broccolis. The early seeds in the uppper beds are up too.

Earth day is fast approaching, so there are a set of tasks to get ready for that. Plus I have decided that we should have a local seed exchange, a la Seed Savers Exchange. This idea has been well received by everyone I've talked too, perhaps this is a meaningful sustainability project that will work for me.