no war on frogs

"the frogs" is a funny play by an ancient - it's also what josh and i have all throughout our field!

anyone wanting to visit the farm will notice immediately that our field doesn't look like most other farm fields - that's because the field is ours!

really it's because when we started open heart farm, we were and are still interested in the farm itself being a dynamic place where we can try new things out, shift crops regularly (we seed new beds every week and often with more regularity), and make the place itself interesting and of course diverse

it has been the diversity of our farm that allowed us to keep producing food for ourselves, our farm members, and others even after 2 significant and 1 lesser flood

our field is like a patchwork! - not just five or six straight lines

this has also resulted in us having many many frogs!

they live under the shade of big plaintain leaves and among accidental mushrooms and mulches - they flee from our footsteps as we walk up a path!

we woke this morning to a BBC report that Israel has interpreted the outcome of the international meeting about lebanon/hezbollah as a green light for them to wipe out hezbollah - we are trying to keep from mixing politics overly here, but war is war, and if you can't come out and say you don't want it, you're asking for it - we've both been rather sickened by everything American representatives say and do (with some more groovy exceptions, especially here in vermont) over the past oh i don't know 7 years

congress spent time this week trying to formally ask one of its members to take back what he said when he said he thought israel was a bully! just like schoolchildren!

"take back what you said about my science project!"

we don't take shelter in the farm - we don't go there to hide from the boobs - but anyone who wants to visit is welcome! (and pick some blueberries next door at Adam's)

stuff used and otherwise

we just returned from the field, on what's been the hottest day thus far. We finished weeding the onions, most of which look pretty big, tho the compaction of earth via flood certainly didnt help. Continued weeding, this time the broccoli, which it looks like we will have enough of to give members this week. the decision to weed this crop was a close one. Rachel and I haven't done this variety before: piercabia, it is an open head calabrese variety and the question is "Will it continue to produce shoots?" - if it does, even in the aforementioned heat of the summer, then it will have been worth it, the other end eing the patch starts to be always already flowering before we get to it (twice a week). Other things that seem to be coming on are the eggplant (asian first) and the cherries (tom).

that is hardly the end of the weeding projects: haricot vert (which is a tender green bean) and around the melons where the mower couldn't get too close to the plastic (which our member Moshe informs me it still is, despie its being made of corn (I guess what makes plastic plastic is the products properties rather than whether it is made from petroleum or not)). The plastic is on the melons peppers and eggplant (which rachel weeded before i got there), and, while I haven't totally thought it out, I am ok using to a limited extent, that limit set both by percieved levels of artificialnes and need. ie, if you don't know, the corn plastic is to increase the heat of the dirt, tho if our summers trend the way they are, it may not be necessary even for those warmth loving nightshades.

well, don't get me started, cause all roads seem to lead to the middle-east these dayz and I'll just present you with this midsumer picture: the mall must be someone's idea of a field, it was our first time to the U mall, looking for a foodprocessor (haven't made hoummus in months), after looking for weeks in jambas junktiques the salvation army and recycle north we gave in, and this led to my realization that none, absolutely none of the stores in the mall sell anything used at all. It's as much that I don't like everything to be new or thrown away as the price that keeps me away from these places. Best to limit rachel and I to used books just because we need some limit, and another field: its got our teepee, used form and our second hand hoop house and all that green you see, well, we will be weeding it tomorrow.

SKIPPY FOUND!

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