Hello dear family and well wishers, I am jumping ahead to day 94 as it has been a full seven days since I last posted, so I will try to catch you up on whats going on.
Finals week was a mess and so was I. I feel I was lucky to get out alive...lol I scored very well with a 3.88 GPA this term and a over all GPA of 3.65. I hope to be able to join their honor society this next term, as I have never had the time and desire to do this before now. Other than returning...my school books which I will try very hard to do on Tuesday of this week. I miss most my Dear J, who had lunch with me once a week, and was truly enjoyable and enlightening. I go back to school in about 3 months and hope to have much accomplished on the farm by than.
We survived the storms, the house of course did not fair quite as well, as we still have not had enough dry days and money to make the repairs that need done, but we are working on it and hope to have it fixed soon. Truthfully I can not wait to put the shingles up and would do all the shingles if I could, there is something so peaceful about hammering the 4 nails in each one, the way they all line up in such perfect order, it is like a form of meditation for me and a joyful task. As I have said in a previous post, we now have the bulk of the shingles, but are still saving for the plywood and other stuff, I hope to start on it before the end of the month, G-d willing.
We have had tons of rain, our wild green crops as well as our garden is doing very well and we have our first tomatoes on the vine already. To date, we have harvested, shell peas, snow peas, strawberries, radishes, beats,spinach, onions, asparagus, Brussels spouts and dandelion greens, oh and lettuce. While this is not a huge amount of food, it is very helpful and along with our wild greens can sustain us quite well. Currently we have eaten milkweed flower tops (sort of like broccoli), curly dock(very yummy), dandelion of course, plantago, both long and short, lambs quarters and wild garlic. Soon I hope to cook burdock and polk greens, Kudzu and who knows what other wild treasures we will find, cattails,Day Lily bulbs? Maybe some nice mushrooms, it is time to start looking with all the rain they should be choice this year.
We are still planting in the garden, zucchini,dill (mostly for our butterfly's),more cucumbers ( we make and eat a lot of pickles nearly 70 jars a year), plus lettuce. Got the sweet potatoes planted in the baskets yesterday, they are gonna make some great salad greens in a few weeks, the leaves are very tasty and great for you . Found a new forage patch of lambs quarter, they are so yummy and a member of the spinach family that truly is a weed , grows like a weed, totally food, from leaf to root.
Our neighbors below us the R's were very kind to offer us some interesting fig trees, which are now in the ground and our other kind and lovely friends, just today brought us some red raspberry plants. We had planted red raspberries last year, but my guess is we failed by planting them to late in the year before the roots could take hold in the soil, so they died. I will get the new ones which are sitting in a bucket of water, in the ground tomorrow. I hope they make it, I plan to talk very nicely to them. We have many black berries which are some wild, wayward cousin to the humble raspberry, so a change of color and flavor would be nice. Earlier this year I did order golden raspberries from a friend of our who owns a small berry farm but he never got back with me, so I have no idea what happened with that. Sad really, we were so looking forward to having all three colors, they are all so very pretty and the bees just love them.
An update on the bees they are doing great. The girls have not stung anyone yet, and are just making oodles of honey, three combs out of the ten are full all ready and they have not even been here a full month yet. I plan to pull and drain those combs and give the first of our honey to our neighbors the R's who live not far from us, his breathing is a little off and I hope it will help him. He,his wife and daughter are very good people and have made livening the middle of no where a whole lot nicer.
Speaking of such things I went and saw our meat cow today, all I can say is wow! What a tight short pack of meat, I want to rub him down and feed him beer for a week and have him butchered, he looks very yummy, but not very large, around 500 pounds or so, but all muscle. The people who raised him have a wonderful healthy, beyond organic farm and raise just a few head of cows, all lovely, and that is what I like. When you have a manageable number you can give them more care and greater love, there by producing a better, higher quality of meat. Now if only other people would see that , maybe they would quite mass producing the cows, chickens, turkeys and other animals that they raise and go back to small family farms.
In my life and in the lives of my children we have stopped drinking diet anything as feeding ourselves dangerous nerothougtht and get back to me...I will be awaiting your reply.
As to work it is slow because of all the storms, I 40 in Arkansas is closed and sadly it is one of the ways one would get to Calf. This will for sure drive food prices up in the states...
I know many of you are wondering how I feel about the US "#1 terrorist " being killed. So here it is uncensored: I hope that it is not true, not because I side with the man they allegedly killed, but because it was done in a underhanded and crude, unsophisticated way. You do not march on to another country's soil and do that sort of thing. We are lucky India did not declare war on the US that day, who would blame them. Imagine I saw your dog out in my pasture,I saw a dead lamb at it's feet. I knew it was your dog, so I went into your yard and killed your dog, took it's body away and told you how it was your fault for not playing by the rules I had just invented in my head five minutes prior to all this. Where is the UN and why in the hell are they not kicking some one's hind quarters and taking names. The fact the US went to another country and set soldiers on the ground and the UN looks the other way, yeah, very impressive civilian protection there. Lets get real it's about the oil, nothing more, nothing less. We do not need to lie about it, lets just say, to the ruler of this place, give us your oil and we will leave you alone, oh wait I remember why. He was the guy who organized all the other Arabs selling oil and set new rules and pricing outside of the control of the British and the Americans. Now he wanted to change things and both world Powers through a fit. Grow up boys you are not world leaders anymore, you are like France. America is broke and we need to tend to our own and butt out of the lives of other people, especially the Arabs. As a Hebrew I can tell you all, that we and the Arabs have been fighting for century's and we all we end up with a stale mate as we are both fierce and have no word for surendered that we can understand. Once you make any Arabs angry they will never stop coming, it is just not worth it. There are no winners in war and peace can only come by understanding. No one fits in a one size fits all t-shirt, nor will they fit into a one size fits all government. I feel as Americans we are doing the world a huge injustice by not being kind, once again, we can not buy our friends and we can not win unwindable wars, with non-existent causes. There is still time for all of us to change and learn to work together with out stepping on each others toes. To do this we must all set aside our notions of each other, our religions, our hatred and allow each nation to rule as it sees fit, no one group should have the power over all groups, it can never work. Absolute power corrupts absolutely...
I want to say I am very proud to be an American, I love this country, but I am really pissed at my Government. Right now while you are all reading this, America is coming up with a way to take benefits away that have been payed for once already, medicare will be switching to a voucher type program. Why you might be wondering, well our government borrowed from that fund because it had so much money in it, and now all the fund contains is a worthless I.O.U. , so these other people will now suffer. Programs that take care of our women and children were cut in favor of sending more money to foreign countries and governments, all at the cost of some of the most vulnerable members our young and old. A culture is not based upon the wars it wins but on the care of itls people and compassion. Education was also hit hard in these new budget cuts, but good new women of Afghanistan, American will still give you a free education, free medical care and many other perks as they try to draw you into the demoralizing lifestyle of the American women. American women for the most part let others raise their children, sending them to daycare centers,then to publicly funded schools, so they can work, keep house,care for their husbands, ect....yes you too can enjoy the benefits of working your self to death and never seeing your children and when you do, being to tired to enjoy it, and what mother would not want her child to grow up and be Brittany Spears...all this can be yours and more. Consider the working class medical plan you maybe offered, in just five years you will be forced to except government health care, no matter the cost or face fines, maybe even jail, but that is more good news, in American jails, more often than not, you will get medical care, a free education, free food and shelter, clothing and other perks as well. If all this is not enough, you will live in constant fear of all the people your country has pissed off doing all of this, and you will never feel safe in your own home. Think American women are safe from abuse, just Google it and see how many are abused ever day and how many men get away with it.
Just to let you know the Native Americans as they are now called, were given these same perks as listed above, some even still get most of them. Most started with nothing and they still have most of it. Today they are still by rights prisoners of war in their own country. Most live at second world conditions, with doctors far from their homes and lack of quality, water, food and education many fall pray to drugs and alcohol In some reservations they still do not have running water.
When I see our vets homeless, with out medical care, food, shelter and other things, I can only be angry. I become more angry when people from another country are also given these things before our vets...
It is with in our reach to change tomorrow, to make the world a better place, it starts with one person, one act of kindness compassion and understanding, we may not all be alike, but we can all try to understand each other. In the end it is not about some one being killed, it is about us living...and doing it well with out destroying others to gain.
Be blessed dear ones, know that you are loved! Know that G-d loves every one, we should at the very least try to meet him half way! Know that one candle can light a room, one light can illuminate the world...be the light!
Shekhinah
