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Well, those younger-tougher-than-me folks that came to build chicken coops on Saturday, during our first extreme heat wave, did very well. I, on the other hand, was wrung out from the heat. Here's a photo of, not just a chicken coup, but a "Poulet Chalet" (in progress):

It has a ramp to a lower level that will be enclosed with hardward cloth; A main floor with a continuous nest box (and outside doors for gathering eggs); And it will have a roost running the length, 2' under the peak. It will have a metal roof that lifts open for easy cleaning. Each of us are doing different end-wall siding. I'm using leftover scrap yellow pine tongue and groove flooring. We didn't finish, of course...but we at least got them framed up.

Well our organic community garden is underway.   Here is a photo of the first two gardeners breaking ground planting dwarf pea seeds on a beautiful day.
 
Each space is from 80-100+ square feet.  I have been busy seed starting and tranplanting in our glass greenhouse.  Although peas (and maybe garlic) can be planted now, soon we will be able to pop in potatos and other cold weather plants.  The exciting seedlings I've started and transplanted already (into six-packs in the greenhouse), so far, for our gardeners include: pink chard, 4-seasons lettuce, arugala, Nero de Toscana (ancient kale), winter density lettuce, Psai Tai, mizuna, mustard spinach, Radichetta lettuce, deer tongue lettuce, and bronze and Freckles lettuces.  We literally have thousands of these yummy plants to look forward to eating soon.
 
I have room for another gardener still.   I really would love a young person (college?) if possible.   There is no fee still, ..just a willingness to learn, ability to follow through, and simple courtesy and respect of our property.  Contact me for the questionnaire and guidelines, if you're interested. 
 
On the lamb front, we have the twins, Purl's single ram lamb, and triplets from Suzie.   The adult flock will be shorn on the 31st.   I usually permit a maximum of three helpers (you cannot just be there for decoration; You will be assigned a task.)  More than three good people and it gets in the way of the job.   I work all year for their wool for spinning.    This is a big day for all of us.
 
Another spring news note: the Jersey Buff turkeys are starting to lay eggs.  I won't let them hatch out until the weather gets warm enough.  So in the meantime, I will be selling them (like my chicken eggs), self-serve, by the back door, in a cooler.   Turkey eggs taste like chicken eggs (but a harder shell and it has pretty speckles on it) and it is larger.

Well, the lambs are finally arriving here.  Chenille had twin boys a few days ago.   One is a precocious black one (cutest personality!!), and the other is a larger gentle white one.  Purl had a very large boy yesterday at 4 am!!!   It was the cold ice and snowy night and she had trouble getting this big boy out.   But all are doing well and the sun is shining today.   Everyone is out in the field getting to know the new world.
 
This would be the weekend for lamb visits, for those of you who want to see them.   Come when we run them into the barn around 4:30- 5 pm, at feeding time.  Come either tonight, Friday, or Sunday night.  Suzy is also ready to pop (you wouldn't believe how big she is!!) any second.  So you may get to see a delivery.  She has at least twins.
 
Chenille's twin boys at one day old:

 
Also, I signed up for Mary Zanoni's "Farm for Life" newsletter.   She is a lawyer that is carefully monitoring the invasive NAIS (National Animal Idenification System) that the USDA is trying to ram down the throats of any livestock owner, including poultry, horses, rabbits, etc.  You can go directly to her website to check out the information yourself if you care about having any small farms left, with livestock, in our country for your children or grandchildren to see.  If the government makes it too cumbersome, all small farms will either have to comply with the excessive red tape, or give up to the agribusiness corporations that wrote the regulations.  The rare breeds, like my turkeys, are endangered enough without the USDA's help.

A final follow up on the uproar caused by the email that mentioned Monsanto and the source of your gardening seeds.  I contacted Barbara Kingsolver (of the wonderful top-ten list of my all time favorite books I've read in my life:  "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle").  The answer is as I (and many of you) eventually deduced.  So, ask your seed companies, that don't already outright state, where they buy their seed from.   It's good to let them know that you care.  It's also "interesting" to go the the agribusinesses websites directly and see how and what they are marketing.   I checked out Monsanto's website and Seminis'.
 
Barbara Kingsolver put a new page directly on her website to address our issue.   Here's the link:  http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/News.html
 
Thanks for all your input.   ...Thoughts to contemplate as you poke around in your garden.
 
Secondly, the St. Mary's Commission on the Enviroment is sponsoring a Green Building Forum on Sat., Feb. 23rd, 2008, 10-3 p.m. at the Walter F. Drake Airport in Hollywood, MD.   For more information visit the commission's page on www.greensomd.com .  I will be having a table there and discussing Sustainable Homesteading while I spin cotton, recycled from pill bottles, into yarn.  I'll have handouts of some of our more popular items (like the homemade laundry detergent recipe).  If anyone would like to come and help talk to visitors, I would like that.   I can only talk for a limited time before I get system overload.

If you get Netflix, you might want to rent a powerful film called "Manufactured Landscape".   An artist/photographer gets access to some industrial sites to do some incredible filming.  Compositionally, as artwork, they are superb.   But the subject matter sears into your conciousness so you won't be able to think of human material goods in the same finite way we usually comprehend.
 
I understand the online very short film www.TheStoryofStuff.com (for those of you that have high speed internet) is good too.   I haven't seen it yet, but Frank has and says it's good.
 
On the home front...The ewes can go into labor any day now.   I have three looking ready right now.   So we are on lamb watch (just when the weather is supposed to get cold here too!)  And because of the warmer than normal winter weather so far, the turkeys are already breeding and the chickens are laying eggs like crazy (due to daylight length for them).   I guess spring can't be far behind.   We moved the turkey's hoop house (which they never used) and set it up in the garden for direct planting of early lettuces, mizuna, arugala, spinach, etc.  I'm getting a little tired of eating brassicas, beets, and sweet pototoes.   I need some fresh locally grown salad!

Dudley L. passed on the information about a website that lets you choose which catalogs you don't want to receive in the mail anymore (and save paper and trees!).  It's called CatalogChoice.org.   It's a free service.   All you do is register your name and then go through and check off all/just the catalogs you don't want cluttering up your mailbox.  It's quite user friendly.  The companies like it too because they don't want to waste money sending catalogs to people who don't want them.   And I figure, if there occasionally is a product I want from one of those companies I deleted, I can always find the information online.   Some catalogs (like seed catalogs) we still want and can still get with this selective service.  They contact the companies after you list them.  And you can change or update it at any time.
 
And for all the other paper clutter that seems to accumulate, I'm making papercrete turkey nest houses.  They sort of look like adobe and are from biodegradable materials.  They will be cute round houses...like little mushrooms.  We also just finished a wattle bamboo fence to sheild the turkeys from the winter winds.   Frank harvests the bamboo, throws it to the sheep who eat the leaves off it (great winter forage for livestock!), and then I weave the straight stalks into fencing and just fasten the top rung with split cane (wire would do too if needed).  I'll be submitting my attractive poultry designs (including my solar heaters for birds) to some poultry magazines when I get some pictures of them and write it up.   I'll send some photos to you all too.  Chickens and turkeys are an intergral part of organic gardening for us with their natural pest control.  But there's no reason why their housing can't be a part of the attractive garden design too.

I often get asked the question: "What seeds can I plant in January?"  Well, it's a little early to plant most things, but there are a few seeds that can go in now (or at least when the next thaw hits) - notably peas and sweet peas.
 
We learned the trick for guaranteed pea yields when we lived in New England. We had heard that peas can be planted in the winter in the South. So we thought we would try it where we lived. During the January thaw we soaked a bag of pea seeds overnight to swell them up. The next day I went out to the garden with a mattock and clods of frozen soil at the thaw line - about 4 to six inches down. After an hour or so I had a fairly large area cleared with the blocks of soil lying next to the prepared bed. I simply scattered the seeds in the prepared area and rolled the clots of dirt back into place. Sometime in late March the peas poked above the ground and we had a fantastic harvest. Notably, no one else in the neighborhood had success with peas that year because a cold wet spring delayed their planting too much to permit high flower set before hot weather (hot weather is a relative term in New England). Every year after that we planted peas in January. Note that planting in January is much easier here in Southern Maryland where the soil is often quite workable in January.  Sweet pea seeds can go in now - actually could have been planted in the late fall. Many hardy annual flowers can also be planted in late fall - our Batchelor Buttons are almost ready to bloom and the Larkspur seedlings are about an inch high.

There were follow up comments on the seed companies mentioned in the last email from friends in Canada and PA.   (One forwarded email is at the bottom here.)  From the emails, it appears that (many, most?) of the home seed catalog companies are still owned by families or small companies.  I'll quote from p. 52 of Barbara Kingsolver's book, and you can see how it would be easy to infer that they were bought up by larger corporations.   And that would not be too hard to believe with the mergers, acquisitions, and company buyouts so prolific in recent years.  From "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle": (emphasis mine)
 

"Agribusiness can patent plant varieties for the purpose of removing them from production.  (Seminis dropped 25 percent of its total product line in one recent year, as a "cost-cutting measure"), leaving farmers with fewer options each year.  The same is true for home gardeners, who rarely suspect when placing orders from Johnny's, Territorial, Nichols, Stokes, and dozens of other catologs that they're likely buying from Monsanto.  In its 2005 annual report, Monsanto describes its creation of American Seeds Inc. as a licensing channel that "allows us to marry our technology with the high-touch, local face of regional seed companies."  The marriage got a whopping dowry that year when Monsanto acquired Seminis, a company that already controlled about 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market.  Garden see inventories show that while about 5,000 honhybrid vegetable varieties were available from catalogs in 1981, the number in 1988 was down to 600."

 
After the input from comments, and re-reading this more carefully, I can only surmise that what Barbara Kingsolver must mean is that the small, family owned seed catalog companies are distributors, or sales reps, for Monsanto's seeds.   Fewer companies produce all their own seed now. 
 
This still begets the question, how can I, directly or indirectly, not support Monsanto if I choose to?   Is Monsanto growing any non-hybrids also?  Would it be safe to buy just open pollinated heirloom seeds from any company?   Of course we know that individuals produce and contribute the seeds for the organization Seed Savers Exchange.  And I feel confident buying from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (just read the catalog and you'll know why).  Sandhill Conservation is single-handedly saving lots of plants, and animals from extinction.   They have a comprehensive catalog.  One reader's comment suggested that Johnny's is trying to produce more of their own.
 
This still comes down to my standing principle that if you don't know the hand that made it, or the farmer that grew it, you should reconsider acquiring it.  Just as I need to now ask for foods,"Is it locally grown?"  Where is the garment (or whatever) made?  China?  I'm more than curious now who gets the money and where is my seed grown?
 
p.s.  I'll try to contact the author and find out where she got this particular information.

We had a cedar tree that was blocking the light for my new passive solar greenhouse heater for my studio and we needed cedar wood for finishing making working storm shutters for our old farm house.  Frank grew up on the New England coast and has seen first hand the damage hurricaines can do, so he is always thinking of storm-proofing our house for the overdue mid-Atlantic hurricaines.  These will all be working shutters.
 
 We know of two separate portable saw mill owners, locally.  Dan came to our house, cut the tree, and milled it on site into lumber exactly the size we needed.   The wood couldn't be much more locally harvested!  We gave him any extra firewood logs, we hired a local chipper to give us a huge pile of wood chips for mulching our gardens (already spread now), and the lumber is drying in the loft of our barn to made into our five board shutters in about 6 months, like the ones I already installed in the back upper level.

Secondly, we're getting our seed orders for year sent in.  Does anyone know for certain which small, formerly independent, seed companies have been bought out by Monsanto and the other food and agribusiness giants?   I want to make sure I don't give them any more of our money.   I know it's safe (and wonderful) to buy from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.   Barbara Kingsolver, in her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" notes that Johnny's, Territorial, Nichols, Stokes, and dozens of other regional seed companies are now owned by Monsanto.
 
The only seeds that I saved this year (I have to get better at it myself) that I can share with others are: Yel. perrenial sunflower, gallardias, single hollyhocks, an orange butterfly weed, mangel beets, dill, and a few 4 o'clocks.  Remember last year I mentioned that we could start a seed "library" for loaning out to others who will plant them and return, with interest (i.e. more seeds) next year.  This is my meager contribution this year.   A number of people said they were interested.   I can make up a master list if you send me the varieties you have available.  I plan to really work on seed saving this year.

So many people asked me where to find a good source for growing their own hardy persimmon trees, I figured I'd send the information to everyone.  They are very hardy, beautiful, disease-free trees.   They would look good even as decorative trees in the landscape.   They may be too tasty and tempting for the deer also, if you have that issue.  (Cattle panels, from a livestock feed store, can be fashioned into durable circles to protect your trees from large livestock.)
 
Edible Landscaping has some nice varieties of persimmons.  I believe our fantastic tree is the Ichi Ki Kei Jiro variety.  Ichi Ki Kei Jiro is hardy from zones 6-10...no problem here.  The Hana Fuyu is another (large) one that looks great to try.   These varieties are all the ones that are usually eaten while still firm, like an apple.   They still should be picked after a hard frost, or even better, a freeze.  A 1 gallon plant is $25-, plus shipping.  They grow nice plants.   We have much of what they offer in their catalog.
 
Edible Landscaping: www.ediblelandscaping.com , email: info@ediblelandscaping.com
1-800-524-4156
 
Fall is a great time to plant trees, as the roots have time to develop.   It may be too late now though.   Spring is OK too.  If you place your order now, you can tell them when you want it shipped.