odds and ends

Apologies for not posting recently. I'll try to catch you up to speed.

First, all the plants are out. Here are small tomato plants and a garlic plant. The garlic is planted in the fall and roots through the winter and continues to grow through mid summer. So these guys have a few months left to go. But it is nice to start the season with something already in the ground! As far as tomatoes go, we have several varieties... two yellow cherries, a roma, a 'big pink', something striped, and a purple I think. I actually can't really remember, when I bought them I didn't label them, so we'll just be surprised!


Also, in case you were interested, this is how we started seeds inside. Roger has a huge setup of florescent bulbs (industrial plant growing kind) that we lower over the plants and slowly raise as the plants grow. If the bulbs are too far from the seeds when they start they will bolt and get really thin and fall over.


Also, an update on our favorite neighbor, Neighbor Bill. Neighbor Bill is so awesome. He watches our place like a hawk and tells us everything that happened while we were gone. 'A chicken hawk was eyeing your chickens', 'I saw a woodchuck in your field', 'someone turned around in your driveway'... He invited us to go camping with him and his buddy... they go fishing a lot, and I guess they go to this place that's an hour away and fish all day and then 'camp'. And when he says 'camp', it turns out it means make dinner over a fire, then sleep in the car. We think it will be fun and we're going to try to go with them. We will be using a tent. Here is Neighbor Bill and his buddy grilling pork chops:



Also, I cut my hair. I donated it to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program
Beautiful Lengths I have a sister who is a cancer survivor, and it was important to me that my hair go to a place that makes wigs for adult women. Here is a kind-of picture of my new hair, plus me harvesting rhubarb. Yes, that is a rhubarb plant. The huge kind. In this picture it looks kind of boyish, but I think it works for me.

And lastly, here is a picture of my dear friend and coworker Sarah, holding a chicken for the first time.

Mexico

A thousand apologies for not updating in so long... I've been in Mexico with a group of students from the college I work at. We took 12 students to a small town called Calnali, 7 hours by bus from Mexico City. It's up in the mountains. The students pour concrete floors and put up walls in a shanty town, and then they go to an indigenous village and give out shoes.

They shanty town is an acre of land that was donated by the government for a group of 10 homeless families to live on. The shacks are one room boxes with dirt floors and plastic wrapped around the sides to make walls. The students mixed the concrete by taking sand, gravel, a giant bag of concrete mix, and buckets of water from the river. They mix each batch by hand by turning the ingredients with shovels. The few walls they built were either cement block (if they were lucky) or cardboard painted with tar.

Before we left we did a shoe drive around town here in Bloomington, and collected about 400 pairs of shoes, mostly childrens. We were only able to take about 300, due to space. Each student checked a huge bag with nothing but shoes. At the village we gave away every pair of shoes in 2 hours. Many of the children didn't have shoes, and many of them that had shoes were wearing something that was in horrendous shape and not near the right size.

That's the synopsis. Later I'll post my report to the college.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Well, we've been thinking about it for quite some time, and finally did it. We made laundry detergent.

Here's what you do:
Grate a bar of Fels Naptha and dissolve it in water.




We used a kitty litter container.


Add washing soda and borax. Shake well.

Store with laundry stuff.


Here's the recipe:
1 gallon of water
1/6 bar of Fels Naptha grated
1/4 cup washing soda
1/4 cup borax

We made about 3 gallons. It probably cost $2 to make.