This year! This Year!!!

We are going through a pretty poopy time. Money is threatening to bring us down, yet again!! Taxes, insurance.... food! Everything just seems a bit overwhelming, but then I look at all of the other things that I have been working so hard to set into motion. All of the things that I have broken down into baby steps and tiny bites. The mushroom beds are so close to being ready and ordering the spawn isn't very time sensitive. I will be ordering my first chicks in about two weeks. Tonight is bee class.... just two more classes left. I should order my bees no later then mid April, which gives me a little time. Two hives will run around $150.- $160. and that isn't counting the wood to get the hive built. I can just build my brooder boxes right now. I won't need the supers until the honey run. It all seems so manageable. It is al coming in steps, one thing after another.


Two things I feel that I am neglecting... acquiring sheep and starting grape vines. Then this morning I kind of had an epiphany. We were watching PBS before Mac went to work. Burt Wolf was on in a show called "What We Eat". Todays topic was the California wine industry, which of course, had to be compared to the French wine industry. They told about some sort of root scourge or fungus that decimated the French fields. They solved the problem by putting French vines on American roots. This is where we say "Eureka!!" The property gets covered in native grape vines every spring, especially in the garden. This year I will have a "vineyard" prepared and the native vines will get transplanted. Later I will bud graft my wine variety onto my native stock. The advantage of bud grafting is that it's easier and also, for every slip I have with eight or more buds on it, I can start eight or more vines. While if I just plant the slip, I get one vine. The variety that I would like to plant is Vignole. It is more tender and the addition of the native rootstock should help it a great deal. Of course there is the possibility that I will not get to the wine project yet this year, but it could happen.... I want it to happen.

This is going to be our year!! It has to be! This is it! This year! This year!!!

Louie