Note: the potatoes, onions, beets and kohlrabi are safe! The peppers and tomatoes would be too if we hadn't had a late May frost!
Not that you can see it in these pictures but it doesn't help that the drain intake over by the tracks sits up two feet higher than the garden and surrounding land - seriously whats the point of having an intake drain? So, all the land to the North drains into our beautiful garden and sits.
We had a lot of tomato plants too. We have since purchased new tomato plants but because of minor details like a baby being born (see here) and our house being in desperate need of a paint job they have not gotten back in the ground quite yet, hopefully soon. In other garden news our sweet potatoes are not looking so hot, they appear to have been frost bitten or something so we will see if they come back or if we will be replanting those as well. The rest of the garden however is looking good. The corn is peeking through the soil
The peas are up and looking good(and so are the weeds beside them)
and teeny, tiny sprouts are starting to spring up in our watermelon, cantelope, and pumpkin hills.
We are definately learning!
Sunday night Alan used the tiller to make hills to plant the watermelon, cantelope, pumpkins, and squash. 
We also planted lots of sweet corn! Last night we laid down weed barrier and got all the tomato plants and herbs in the ground. 
Gabe helped by taking the pots from the tomatoes and putting them on the concrete to be thrown away(this helping bit didn't last too long, mostly he and Clark played in the water and got themselves incredibly dirty:)
We also finished re-planting kohlrabi, mulched the fenced in area,
put in a few more peppers for salsa, a few more sweet potato plants, and finished putting in zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins and melons. Now if we could just keep this guy out of our garden and from stepping on things.
We finished off the night with some strawberry shortcake cake.
carrots, kohlrabi, and cucumbers. We also put in several rows of sweet potatoes(complete with newspaper mulch),
and several different varieties of peppers.
We have found it challenging planting, watching 3 ambitious boys and being pregnant(one of whom will give birth by next week!) Watching the boys is to our advantage as many times they like to dig in the garden or walk where there are plants. Weeding should prove to be interesting with the 3 of them(at least the new baby will be stationary for awhile!) it may need to occur at nap time. The boys love to be outside though and the bonus is the garden is right by the train tracks!
The gator also provides much needed entertainment while we are working.
The rest of the garden is scheduled to be tilled this weekend(depending on rain) and then we hope to get as much of the rest of it in as possible on Sunday(when we have some male help, who can bend quite easily as no baby is filling their abdomen) Still to come sweet corn, tomatoes, herbs, squash, melons, gourds, Indian corn, lettuce, and I'm pretty sure there are more that I have not named:)
Average processing fee on 180 pounds (~250 pound hog) = $230 – 250
--this doesn’t include if someone wanted a lot of brats or patties made up – would be extra (but boy are Stanhope’s brats good).
Initial cost of hog and feed to go from 20 lbs – 250 lbs = $100
--hopefully we can lower this price; we are going to ask that everyone pays a $50 deposit/hog to help with feed purchase than we could buy in bulk which would help the overall cost of feed. I didn’t want to give too low a price in case we have something weird happen with grain markets this summer. We will only charge for the actual cost of the feed divided among the hogs.
Those of you who know me know I prefer pork over almost anything else on the grill. I consider a well prepared pork burger on a level with steak.
Some interesting things I gathered from the USA Today article was the boom in the gardening sector when the economy is tanking. Anecdotally, we experienced something similar to this with Christmas tree sales going better this past season during economic troubling times.
"Sales of vegetable seeds and transplants are up 30% from 2008 at W. Atlee Burpee, the USA's largest seed company. The National Gardening Association says 7 million more households will grow food this year than in 2008 — a 19% rise. A book on building root cellars is the top seller at Johnny's Selected Seeds in Winslow, Maine, supervisor Joann Matuzas says."The article ends with a quote from Patrick Wojtowicz, who lives near Alma, Michigan that I thought was kind of cool.
"'The earn, spend, earn era has come to an end for us,' he says on truenorthfound.blogspot.com, their blog. 'The idea of living a fuller, more satisfying life seems simple to us now. ... Money, cash, credit, maybe they don't matter. Maybe, just maybe, it is those things that impede our ability to be truly happy.'
Whatever happens to the economy, the Wojtowicz family hopes to remain self-sufficient. Instead of spending their tax refund, as they usually did, they used it to pay down debt. They stopped using credit cards and they're trying to build up savings. 'I'm working harder than ever,' Patrick says, 'but it's more satisfying work and ... it's much easier to sleep at night.'"
There is something very true in that, whether you see it as "granola" or not. Patrick's words remind me of a couple things. First, of Paul's command to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:11 (NIV)-
"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands..."Too bad Obama did not choose to follow up how he is his brother's keeper with 1 Thes. 4:11 during his biblical verse dropping on the campaign trail. Second, it reminds me of Solomon's wisdom on the meaninglessness of riches he dispensed in Ecclesiastes 5:12 (NIV)-
"The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep."
