Memphis Democrat September 6, 2000

Dan and Alexis, who has been visiting us for most of the summer left us this week. Dan returned to his computer job in San Jose, CA and Alexis started a new job in the San Bernadino Mountains doing outdoor educations for middle school children. We miss them both. Tamar, our only intern right now, has been keeping busy doing construction around the farm, including improving our solar showers.

Jacob, Timothy and others poured the earthern floor in the unfinished room of the Allium (We call it that, because we sculpted garlic and lilies into the walls, both members of the allium family). They expected the floor to take a week or two to dry, like it did in the other room of the cabin, last winter. But in the heat wave we are experiencing, it dried in one day. When the floor is oiled and the ceiling painted, it will make Allium a finished building, our first one.

Due to a hailstorm damaging lots of their apples, Dan and Nancy of Canton invited us back out to their orchard to pick as many apples as we could. The apples were covered with small bruises. We send our condolences to them for the losses in their crop.

The garden seems to be reaching its summer peak, producing all the okra and watermelon we can eat. We'll be glad when we ease into fall, with cooler weather and less canning to do.

The past two years we have been doing reforestation work on 20 acres of our property as part of the CRP program. We hired the good folks from L&G Forestry in Iowa to plant 8,000 native trees. Because of our commitment to not using petrochemical herbicides, we are mulching the trees to protect them. Jacob, who is overseeing this project, is currently looking for reliable labor to hire for this mulching project, which should hopefully take about 3-7 days of labor.

Tony and I enjoyed our visit to the Memphis Antique Fair. We had fun watching the parade, entering the raffles, meeting folks, etc. It put ideas into our head about a biodiesel powered float for the parade. Maybe next year?

The most exciting thing that happened at Dancing Rabbit this week was Oren Erickson and Curvin Weiler, with the help of Luke Zimmerman on a huge piece of machinery, moving a grain bin from our property to Oren's. It was quite a sight!