Manure

Well, it's officially winter now, and it's cold! My sister reminded me the other day, though, that we really only have two more months of winter before it begins to warm up in March - woohoo!

The beautiful Seed Savers Exchange catalog that came the other day provided some inspiration to get through the next few months, AND reminded me that I need to get busy planning some vegetables. At least the winter months do allow time for planning.......and dreaming....

In the spirit of garden planning, I've been oogling the horses across the street from our house. Well, more specifically, I've been admiring their manure (which is accumulating quickly on their tiny little pasture). For the non-gardeners, that might sound a little strange, but if you've ever had the luck to add composted horse manure to your gardens you would totally understand.

On Monday afternoon I noticed the owner outside and I shuffled across the busy road to introduce myself and present my proposition for some manure. The guy was super nice and didn't even blink an eye when I asked if I could scoop some of his poop for my compost. We talked a bit about his horses and then he told me that he's lived there for 40 years! The busy road that now divides his property from ours was just a dirt road when he first moved there and his family used to run cows on what is now our neighborhood (our house was built in the mid-80's). It was really interesting to hear him talk about what the area used to look like, albeit a little sad. But the more important thing is that he whole heartily agreed that I could indeed have as much manure as I wanted as long as I picked it up myself.

So, this afternoon I spent about an hour walking through his field with a pitchfork and bucket shuttling manure from field to tub in the back of my truck and over to my compost bin. I'm sure it was quite a sight - me pulling a bucket and too small pitchfork (definitely time to invest in a new one!) around the field with two curious horses following me from field to truck at least a dozen times. Crazy looks and car honks aside, I'm mighty pleased with the new arrangement and will anxiously await adding glorious compost to my vegetable beds this spring.

Now......because I promised more photographs with my posts, and I surely didn't think anyone would be interested in photos of horse poop, a few from my fall "garden" this year and my compost bin built from old deck boards this fall...... I think I have some better pictures of the lettuce on my camera, but the battery is currently dead.....maybe I'll share those later.

It's been a while....

So, I realized tonight it's been a while since I posted on here. I'm not really sure why I stopped, but I did, and now I'm back, so that's that.

I think the 2 people who actually read this already know what's been happening in my life, so I'll just do a quick update (in case I come back and read this in 10 years!).

I'm working for Fayetteville School District as an Energy Corps member. It's an interesting job - I still haven't figured out a short way to explain what I actually do, but suffice it to say I stay busy and work on a bunch of different projects. I've spent the first month and a half mostly meeting with people and making plans. It will be cool if half the stuff I've talked about comes to fruition. Maybe I'll blog about it......

Over the past two months I've also finished 40 hours of ropes course training (two weekends in Tulsa) and am officially an ACCT certified level 1 facilitator - yah! Most of the training was a review, but it was fun to meet some new people, climb some telephone poles, freeze my rear off, and practice rescuing someone from 30 feet in the air (a process that involves cutting a rope while suspended in air - hoorah!) Now I'm looking forward to a canopy tour training at the end of January in Ponca on the Buffalo River and hopefully a position working weekends there when it isn't 20 degrees outside.

Also still working for Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group on conference logistics. The conference is in mid-January. Looking forward to meeting all the cool farmers I've talked to through email and on the phone. Oh, and not having to force myself to be so organized.

So that's an update on life - sorry no pictures - I'll try to get back in to that habit.

Now for a recent funny short story.....

I signed up for a "cookie exchange" at work last week. I didn't really know what it was, but I like cookies and I enjoy baking (sometimes) so I thought it sounded good. I don't know why I don't ask more questions before committing to something.....

So, anyway, I learned that each person who signed up was supposed to bake a dozen cookies for each other person. Not so bad. Except 6 other people signed up. That's 6 dozen cookies. I don't like to bake that much.

I also realized I had a meeting the same time as the cookie exchange and couldn't actually be there, but since I was committed I sucked it up and baked for a few hours last night.

I dropped my cookies off early this morning and headed off to my meeting. My little chocolate chip, white chocolate chip, walnut cookies were packaged in individual ziploc bags with the recipe copied off the bag messily scribbled on an index card thrown in (the directions were to include the recipe).

Boy was I embarrassed when I came back after the exchange and saw everyone else's elaborate cookies (7 layer bars, Chocolate Nutella cookies, and Christmas Pizzelles among others) neatly wrapped in festive packages with printed recipes (some of the recipes were even festively decorated!). I didn't realize I was exchanging with such a creative group - FAIL. Now I'm glad I wasn't actually at the exchange to present my little homely looking treats.

I mentioned how I felt a little guilty to one of my coworkers - her response - "Oh, yours were great too! I think I tasted just a hint of salt."

A hint of salt?! I don't really know what that means in cookie terms, but it doesn't sound good to me. Epic fail.

At least I still got to bring home 6 dozen cookies :)