Snow!

One feature of the Oregon winter is its unpredictable nature. Sometimes it may snow once and melt right away. Other times it's like this one: intense!
For going on three weeks we have had snow and rain. We are warm and cozy, but are getting cabin fever.

Recall we are living entirely off our solar panels, and are nursing our batteries through this. Sometimes, like now, we escape to town and get on the wi-fi at a coffee shop.

Of course, all this snow is a winter paradise for the child within us (I'm pretty good with a snowball, and my young friend Julian is a good aim too). Here a snow ball fight is on-going.

Gardening in winter
One afternoon it was pleasant enough to mulch a bed in the garden. The garden has a lot of slope and we want water to flow evenly across the plants so we built the bed on contour, which we find using an A-frame. (It's surprising how deceptive the eyeball can be in these matters).

Once the contour line is found on the hillside, we carve a level bed, dump on a couple of inches of compost, and cover it with cardboard and then straw. From here we let mother nature do her thing with earth worms and microbes. We will plant directly through this mixture, and could even plant seeds in little soil pockets in the straw. Ideally, this would have been done last fall, but it's not too late to do it here in January.
We debated whether we should test the soil and add amendments, and in foregoing the expense of this step we join company with every other organic farmer we've met!



Circus Class
Connor and Alexis are taking "circus classes" where they learn silks, juggling, unicycle riding, and so on. Here Connor gets instruction on the trapeze.


Stay well everyone!