Here we go again

National Weather ServiceWednesday, February 23, 2011 5:28 AM Local Time

WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM MST THURSDAY...


IMPACTS/TIMING: SNOWFALL AND GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS WILL BOTH INTENSIFY EARLY THIS EVENING. THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND WIND WILL PRODUCE WIDESPREAD BLOWING/DRIFTING OF SNOW AND LOCAL BLIZZARD CONDITIONS WITH RAPID REDUCTIONS TO VISIBILITY. THIS WILL CREATE EXTREMELY TREACHEROUS DRIVING CONDITIONS THROUGH THURSDAY. DRAMATICALLY FALLING TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH CONTINUED GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS WILL ALSO PRODUCE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: 5 TO 10 INCHES BY THURSDAY MORNING.

* VISIBILITY: LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE AT TIMES.

* WIND: NORTHEAST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH DURING THE DAY. IN THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...NORTHEAST WINDS INTENSIFYING 30 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 45 MPH THIS EVENING. IN THE MISSION VALLEY... NORTHEAST WINDS INTENSIFYING 20 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH THIS EVENING. STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE INTO THURSDAY.

* WIND CHILL: 10 TO 20 BELOW ZERO WEDNESDAY NIGHT INTO THURSDAY.

IN THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...30 BELOW ZERO THURSDAY MORNING.

* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...FLATHEAD LAKE...FLATHEAD VALLEY...
MISSION VALLEY...POLSON PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW...
BLOWING SNOW...OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING.

STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

See these big fat juicy tomatoes that-are-from-another-country-because-Montana-can't-grow-tomatoes-in-the-snow? Aren't they pretty?



My sweet daughter and I found these at the local super market in the organic section of the vegetables. They were on the half price table. They don't look like it but they are on the verge of complete collapse from old age~ all squishy and soft and incontinent. And I bought them. On purpose. These are heritage tomatoes grown organically (at least that's what the sign said). So I'm going to "practice" seed saving with these guys. I've done a little research on saving tomato seeds. But I think I still need practice before I try on the real thing.....not that these are fake but they will provide me with the time to practice before the time crush that is fall.






Pretty soon these red fruits will sacrificed for the greater good: the practice of saving seed.




Stay tuned!!!!

These area the beets that I planted two weeks ago. It looks like we will be enjoying baby beet greens in our salads in just a couple of weeks!

The Swiss chard I put in is coming along, too. Not quite as fast as the beets, however.

The hens are starting to pull their weight. I gathered 5 eggs today!

dirt

I was reading another farmer's blog yesterday, and she was telling of her obsession with dirt: dark, moist, rich, dirt. The kind of soil that plantlings seemed to jump out of and grow like mad to produce lovely food for herself and her family. She also cited some research where scientists discovered a type of bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae which resides in the soil. Apparently scientists believe that exposure to this stuff might work as an antidepressant! This little microscopic powerhouse might also decrease anxiety.

So dirt really does make us feel better! After all these years, I thought it was just me. Back a looooong time ago, when I was single and living in my own house, my wonderful elder, ex-farmer, neighbor caught me laying, fully clothed, in my newly tilled-up-but-not-planted-garden. I was just lying in the freshly turned dirt. It felt so good. I had gotten off shift as a flight nurse in a really busy hospital and it had been an especially hard night. I had decided to change into my garden clothes and plant a few cucumber seedlings before going to bed. It was early spring and the sun was warm and there was a light breeze blowing (I was in Texas.....can you tell?) and the soil had that aroma that newly worked ground emits. The soil was calling to me. So, I laid down in it. The neighbor didn't say a word. He just watched me heal in that little patch of dirt. Then went into his house and commented to his wife how I must have had a bad night. Having owned a farm out in East Texas for many years, he understood the need to lie in the dirt every now and then. Now I know that I'm not the only weirdo who needs to feel the dirt in my hands or feet.

Dirt is healing.

And now there's proof.

Because I've already chewed up my seed catalogues with constant browsing, I've been getting my farming fix by reading about other people's experiences. I'm reading The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball right now. It's a great read and I'm really enjoying it. One of the lines caught my attention yesterday and I just can't seem to let it go. The main characters were talking about the possible failure of their new farming venture.

"....I would ask Mark if he really thought we had a chance. Of course we had a chance, he'd say, and anyway, it didn't matter if this venture failed. In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don't measure things like that with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction you thought was right." (p. 77)

I think that this reasoning seems so right to me because sometimes I feel like we are spinning our wheels. I know some of our friends are clucking their tongues and shaking their heads at our decisions: not just making all our foods from scratch, but trying to produce the food from scratch as well; some think the way we are bringing up our kids is almost child abuse ("You make your kids get up for swim practice at 6 in the morning? In the summer?"); moving steadily and constantly toward being debt free instead of buying the next great thing on credit; keeping the house temperatures set at 60 in the winter instead of 75; washing dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher......these are just a couple of weird things we do that are "different". And they are sometimes hard. But we are moving in the direction we feel is right both for us as a couple and for our family. It's hard and it's right.

Something special for my sick boy

My oldest boy is sick. He is home from school.

He is my 16 year old, 6'4'', #190 baby boy (with a beard) and he has a cold in his nose and a cough in his chest. (It's a little disconcerting to see a wad of TP sticking out of his left nostril. He says it's to stem the flow of mucous. I didn't argue. I wanted to include a picture of this event. He did argue.)

To help him feel better and to boost his immune system, I made him a berry/ banana smoothie. This is significant because we haven't had a blender in the house since 2004. Ours broke during one of the moves. It didn't seem like we used it very often so I just never replaced it. Now we have a new blender and the kids are ecstatic! You'd think I'd just had a new baby! Well, maybe not that ecstatic.

Anyhoo, these are the steps for my sick boy's smoothie-in-the-new-blender:

1. Bananas- Because every sweet-ish smoothie I've ever had to drink had bananas in them and because we have bananas that are beginning to go bad, I cut a 'nana (sorry Nana) in two and blended until smooth (without the skin).

2. Berries- We have a plethora of frozen raspberries. Even though we don't have any berry bushes in our garden (yet), raspberries are so plentiful around here and we have so many good, generous friends, we have many, many frozen tubs of berries in our freezer. Therefore, frozen raspberries is the next ingredient.

3. The next ingredient is......HUCKLEBERRIES!!!! One cannot live in Montana and not have huckleberries in their freezer (if indeed they were dragged, I mean, escorted, by their wonderful husbands up into the wilds to pick berries in the grizzly infested mountains). This picture makes the berries look a little like they might have been gathered from the bottom of the rabbit cage but I assure you, they are huckleberries.....gathered in the wild, grizzly infested, etc.

4. Ice cream- I don't usually include ice cream as an ingredient in our smoothies, but the boy is sick and I want him to feel special. And he saw the huckleberries and wasn't convinced that I hadn't made the trip to the rabbit cages so I included the ice cream to reassure him that I love and care for him and would never do such a thing.

Blend all the above until smooth and wala- an immune booster for my sick boy.

If you look closely you can even see the little flecks of immuno-boosting, vitamin jammed molecules in that fruit drink.

One swallow and he says he's feeling better already!

Even if he's not, I think he's planning on going back to school tomorrow anyway.....just in case those weren't huckleberries after all.

Basil plantlings in the sunlight.

The clouds have rolled away and the sun shines.