Summer!

The semester's finally over, and it's time to get the blog back on track.  I saw that our last post was at the end of March, so we've missed a whole month and a half worth of fun stuff to share.  I'll break it up into a few categories for the sake of organization.

The garden:  Our neighbor, a farmer, has been gracious enough to share some of his land with us this year and Pu Lue has been gardening several acres of traditional Burmese and Thai vegetables that the refugees can't buy in stores here in the US.  It's been a great learning experience for all of us.  We have pictures and more details on our refugee blog:  www.oneworldoutreach.blogspot.com

Our backyard garden, though weedier than we would like, has also produced better this year.  Here are the onions that we laid out to dry last night.

The animals:  We have had a bumper year of baby animals born on the farm.  I think we're finally finished with all of the births as of yesterday, and our total count is 9 lambs, 6 goats, a donkey, and a baby chick.



We just placed several ads on Craigslist to sell them--check them out at these links:

http://dallas.craigslist.org/sdf/grd/2396809452.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/sdf/grd/2396810302.html
http://dallas.craigslist.org/sdf/grd/2396818655.html

Our family: If you haven't heard the big news yet, our family is growing (hence the need to downsize some of our furry friends.  We're expecting a baby in mid-October, and of course we are super excited.  We should be able to find out the gender next week!



Gearing up for spring

About this time every year, we start getting really anxious for spring to get here.  We've got lots of big plans for the garden this year, and are excited about trying out some new seeds that we imported from Thailand at the bequest of our Karen refugee friends.  We're hoping that some of the vegetables they remember from Burma and Thailand and can't find in the supermarkets here will do well in our garden.  Above, our garlic, which was planted in the fall, will be ready to harvest in early summer.  Below, Pu Lue and Aaron working on preparing raised beds in the garden.

We bought a bunch of these magic seed starter soil discs on ebay, and just love them.  They start out like the little quarter sized disc on the right, then you just add water, and voila, an instant self-contained home to start a seed indoors.  So easy and so convenient.  When you're ready to transplant your seedlings into the garden or a larger container, you just tear off the netting.

Aaron starting various types of pepper seeds.  Chopsticks are a handy tool for this delicate task!

Planting, Planting, and more Planting

January 14, 2008
We are wiped out! We spent all weekend working outside--planting all of those trees all over the place and also fencing part of the pasture with field fence. It was a crazy amount of effort, but I think it will pay off in the end. It will be great to let the sheep and goats graze all day and then just put them in their pens at night. It will certainly save us some $ because we won't have to feed them as much. As for the trees, we fenced them off so that the animals can't reach them and eat them while they're so tiny. Sometimes I wish I could see into the future to see what the farm will look like 10 years from now when all of the trees are big, but alas, no such luck.
This week we're hoping to get the majority of our seeds started indoors so that they'll be ready to transplant in March. Aaron is building a neat plant stand that looks kind of like a book shelf with lights that we're going to use to get the seeds started. We'll put the step-by-step instructions on how to build it on our projects page this week.