Lettuce bowls

Everybody loves lettuce bowls.  They contain a nice variety of cut-and-come-again lettuces, between 12 and 15 live plants.  Snip a salad from a third to a half of the bowl about once a week - couldn't be fresher - and then let it regrow for future salads.  When the weather warms in the spring, set the live plants outside in your garden and enjoy for another four or five months! 

Choosing the lettuce

Planting in the bowl

Finished product

Yum!

Visitors today

Kirsten and her son Caelen are coming out for a visit this afternoon.  Caelen is a little tyke, I think about two years old, and he loves it out here on the farm.  So does his mom.  She says she wishes she could buy the farm.  I can see it in her eyes, in her attitude when she is out here.  She asks good questions.  She would love it here. 

Caelen wants to meet the pigs.  They were holed up in their house this morning, under the heat lamp.  If they are still too wussy to come outside, then we will just have to go inside to meet them. I am looking forward to seeing Caelen's reactions to the pigs.  They are getting big, but are still pretty cute.

Steve and I have many orders for our cut-and-come-again lettuce bowls, so after the pig meeting, we will go to the greenhouse and work on the lettuce bowls. 

I'll update this with some pictures later today.

Have you moved in yet?

This is the question I hear repeatedly from my friends.  Have I moved in yet?  Does this picture answer your question?

First destruction, then construction!  This is my future kitchen, if you can believe.

Is anybody out there?

Well, I'm keeping my promise to myself to blog every day (missed a few, but not many).  Of course, that means I am boring, right?  Haven't heard much from my followers lately.

I will try to be either very brief or very witty - perhaps even both on some days.

My power was out for three and half hours this morning.  That's about all I have to report.  Not witty, but brief.

Potpourri

Another cold day, but nothing like Tuesday and Wednesday.  It's nearly 10º.  Wow, a heat wave.

I'm baking a ham.  One of the shareholders wanted some meat, so I went rooting through my freezer for meat for her and found a lovely, huge ham.  It will make many meals for me, including sliced ham with my breakfast eggs.  And speaking of eggs, the chickens are pretty much on strike.  I couldn't make all of my egg deliveries to Purple Porch last night.  They are not laying in this cold weather.  I usually get between 18 and 24 eggs a day.  Got nine on Tuesday and four yesterday.  Slackers!  They had better get back to work.  I cleaned out the fridge and gave them a nice big bowl of stuff, including some cottage cheese that was over the hill.  I am expecting more eggs today and tomorrow.

The cat and the bird - Holly Berry is a little bit obsessed with Bob.  Here is a cute pic of her sitting there longing for some poultry.  Not gonna happen!  Bob doesn't seem the least bit frazzled by her continuous attention.

You are both so cute!

Bob loves his friend in the mirror.

I looked out my window to the grove of trees by the garage and thought, how pretty, with the morning sun shining on the snow.  Thought I would share this with you.

Morning sun on snow

I see it is time to fill the bird feeders again.  The birds all get hungry when the snow comes.  I'm off to fill them now, then market. Just another typical day on the farm.

Stay warm.

Dogs are cold, too!

What a day!  The chickens are on strike, only got six eggs today, so someone isn't going to get their dozen eggs at Purple Porch tomorrow night.

The dogs go outside just long enough to do their duty, and they are begging to get back in. 

I watched Food Network for awhile this afternoon, under the lovely blanket that Marie gave me for Yule.  Ayn Chee hopped up on to snuggle with me.  When I got up from my little rest, she stayed under the blanket.

Hey, Marie, Ayn Chee loves your blanket too!

 When I went to the bedroom to check the stove - I have been throwing a lot of logs on the fires today - there was Tashi, on her back, stretched out on the bed enjoying the fire.

You are not very ladylike, Tashi!

Taking a day off from market

It is cold here today, and windy.  It is impossible to keep the house at a decent temperature with just the wood stoves, and I need to keep it a little warmer than I usually do now that there is a bird living here.  Bob will not do well if it falls to 60º in here, a temperature that the other pets and I tolerate quite well.  Furnace is running, and both wood stoves are going full throttle.  I am not used to having to pay the power company for heat.  The next bill will not be pleasant!

It reached a low of about -2º at 8:00 this morning.  High is predicted to be in single digits.  But it will be a little warmer tomorrow, and if the long range forecast is anything close to correct, we should see 50º or higher by the end of the month.  We need some of this cold weather to kill bug eggs in the soil though.  Mild winters mean a plethora of tics the following summer.

I'm going to work some more on my income tax.  I keep finding things that need to be dealt with.  For some reason, Clay's first three months of the year didn't get put in the right file.  It's a good thing I'm a pack rat and kept all of his time cards!

Well, back to work.