Wellness Wednesday

Source

Poem: Let Evening Come

Let Evening Come
by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles 
and her yarn.  Let evening come.  

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Quote for the Day

"I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news." 

~John Muir

Social Justice Saturday: Climate Change

In this video, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse spells out the reality of climate change for those who are in denial:


My two cents worth:  We need to stop this deep party divide in the United States.  Rather than being about principles, it has become a game where we choose sides and dig in our heels, often despite evidence and truth.  We should not be afraid to counter the claims of party leaders when they are wrong.  And this applies to both sides.

Farm Friday

Seems like we can't catch our breath around here lately.  We started our summer/fall CSA season on Monday so we've more than doubled the number of customers.  We met some new people who are customers through word-of-mouth and they seemed happy with what we delivered.  Last Saturday was the second week of the farmers' market and we had a better turnout than the previous week.  Slowly but surely we're developing a very loyal customer base.

Despite the poor weather conditions (rain, cold, more rain), our gardens are producing and this one is the best we've ever had:

Our collard greens looked like they were on steroids and I made several delicious raw wraps with them.  All I had to do was remove a good portion of the thick stem and then shave down the rest.  Delicious!  We also opened the farm store again on Thursday.  Unfortunately, we had a severe storm come through that prevented one of our customers from picking up her order.  Instead, I met her in town today so she didn't miss out on the yummy vegetables.

We're hoping to get our hay in sometime this week.  Bill is out mowing the fields as I write this.  This is a several day process and all should go well as long as it doesn't rain.  Rain will ruin it because we make square bales that we put up in our barn loft.  We can't use the hay if it gets wet and we'll have to wait for the fall cutting to get hay for the winter.  

On a sad note, we lost several of the new chickens to a hawk.  These girls are so sweet and tame it's so hard to have them picked off one by one.  We haven't had a problem over the last few days so maybe said hawk has moved on.

It was just one of those weeks.  My clothes dryer broke, as well.  The worst part was it's a front-loading machine and it stopped working with wet clothes inside and the door was locked!  Thanks to Google I was able to find out how to remove one of the panels to pull the release for the door.  I also researched the cost of the parts that I knew we needed - the entire control panel and user interface - and calculated that by the time we had our repairman out, it wouldn't be worth fixing.  However, I decided it was worth looking into doing the repairs myself - what did I have to lose?  I found a YouTube video that showed how to make the repairs on a similar model.  Here's what I took off the machine:

Looks pretty complicated, right?  On closer inspection, though, it's really not:

Other than removing several screws and releasing the user interface from some brackets in the control panel, all that is required is to connect the plug at the end of the blue wires to another panel.  Not rocket science!  (Or electrical engineering!)  So I ordered the parts from a site that allows returns in case these parts are not the problem.  Keeping my fingers crossed!

We're enjoying these long days - the sky still had light in it as late as 9:30 last night.  Here's a peek last night's sunset:

 Have a great weekend!

Poem: God Says Yes to Me

God Says Yes to Me
by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Wellness Wednesday

Since Monsanto has been in the news a lot lately (hello GMOs), I'm using this opportunity to point out the kind of company we seem to have entrusted our food supply to.  The following list of Monsanto products is from the June/July issue of Mary Jane's Farm:

1. Saccharin (the company was founded to produce this artificial sweetener for soft drinks)
2. PCBs
3. Polystyrene
4. Atom Bombs/Nuclear Weapons
5. DDT
6. Dioxin
7. Agent Orange
8. Petroleum-based Fertilizer
9. RoundUp
10. Aspartame
11. Bovine Growth Hormone
12. GMO Crops
13. Terminator Seeds

Kind of makes you lose your appetite, doesn't it?  I'm thinking if I want to stay healthy, I better avoid consuming anything this company produces.