Unbelievably, things are warming up, the goats are kidding, seeds are being planted, we’re wearing shorts, celebrating birthdays, and of course, cooking and eating. Life is good!
HAW RIVER PROJECT
Bob was standing on the town of Pittsboro’s water intake above the Haw River dam when he took this picture. He is working on a project that, if realized, will get an ancient hydro electric plant up and running.
OPEN BARN AT CELEBRITY DAIRY
Several times a year, Celebrity Dairy invites the public to sample their cheeses and see the new kids.
FAIR GAME
Bob brought a selection of Fair Game Beverage Company‘s wines to go with that cheese.
PRECOCIOUS ANGELS
One of several terms to describe baby goats. The thing about dairies is, to make milk, you need babies. The kids get sold, and mama provides milk for human consumption. When the milk starts to run out, the nanny goat receives a visit from the billy goat. Milk is the bottom line in the dairy business. Those bumptious babies are by-products.
LOCAL FOOD
Bob swings by the Thursday farmer’s market every week, and picks up greens, potatoes, and whatever else is coming off the farm. As an added bonus, Lyle gifted us his weekly CSA share of oysters mushrooms because he was out of town. We threw the stems into a stir fry, and made a creamy mushroom-sherry sauce a couple of days later which we served over angel hair pasta with braised garlic spinach on the side.
WINTER BOUQUET
Linda gave Camille a dried lily bloom for the seeds, inspiring a winter arrangement of pampas, black-eyed susan, pine, and juniper.
PNEUMONIA
Camille’s mother went to the hospital with pneumonia on February 22nd. Lucky for us John’s wife, Darla, works at the hospital, so Mom is getting great care and lots of visitors, including grandson Brandon. It may not look like much, but being able to sit up in a chair was one of her milestones. By the end of the month, Mom was able to walk about 15 feet!
AMIE’S BIRTHDAY PIE
Eden and Delta came over to Trouts Farm to make a strawberry pie for Eden’s older sister, Amie.
Hurrah! Hope there’s no hobos around… That used to be a joke, when someone was cooling a pie on the kitchen window sill and a hobo would creep up and snatch it, then run off. The worst thing is, they’d make off with the pie plate, too.
SUNDAY CIRCLE
On the last Sunday of every month, Tami gathers her neighbors to a circle in the woods for an hour of meditation, song, poetry, musings, and readings. We begin with a minute of silence under the swaying loblolly pines, then take turns telling the group about our joys and concerns. Each month one of us has usually prepared an inspirational talk, and Bob almost always reads something from Kurt Vonnegut’s Fates Worse Than Death. In between readings we all sing one or two songs accompanied by Arlo on his guitar.
Whitney passes out song sheets to Janice, Alisa, Eden, Amie (on her 16th birthday!), Zoe, Pam Aaron, Jack, Jordan and her mother, Kaye, and Stuart.
AFTER-CIRCLE PARTY
Saturated in simple, woodsy, joy, we headed down to Tami’s to celebrate Jordan’s birthday! Oh, and yes, both Bob and Camille are already wearing shorts.
SEED STARTING
If Bob is starting seed flats, it must be February!
THE BOY IN ALL HIS PERFECTION
This is a beautiful picture we pinched off Emily’s facebook. She has a photographer’s eye, and a mother’s heart. And she loves the perfection of her son’s ears…
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THIS MONTH’S QUOTES:
“It’s not a question of growth versus no growth; it’s which type of growth do you prefer: growth in prenatal care, or growth in the number of AK-47s on the street?” – Tom Hayden
“Trump, despite his disappointment at Washington’s failure to properly greet and celebrate him, was, like a good salesman, an optimist. Salesmen, whose primary characteristic and main asset was their ability to keep selling, constantly recast the world in positive terms. Discouragement, for everyone else, is merely the need to improve reality for them.” – Michael Wolff from Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House
“We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.” – Ramsey Clark
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