LallyLuckFarm

We have solar panels and a backup battery for when the grid goes down. Our panels generate more than we generally use (we overbuilt on purpose) but we could run almost indefinitely as long as the panels are clear. There are two totes hooked up to a gutter on the back of our garage which provide 550 gallons of water storage that we use to water gardens and top up our duck pond. The ducks and chickens do most of our insect maintenance in the gardens.

I'm working on additional shelving in our cellar in order to be able to store more of our canning from the gardens; most of the material is reclaimed pallet wood from a nearby business. We've also got two slightly damaged solar panels that I'd like to use to circulate the water in the duck pond - pump and lift to flow through some uphill garden space back down to the pond after it's been filtered by the plants - and to provide some power to the bird coop for water heaters and maybe a light source.

That's awesome, I'm glad to hear that your community is doing one too!

<3 I have a hard time believing that a conversation between us would be intended as anything but constructive.

Despite being deep in the feels of the day, I agree with you; I try my best to be that force for good as well, and live up to being the person she and other people have believed me to be capable of. There are days it's difficult to see myself the way I view them, because of how well I can see my own faults and mistakes. That's not to say that they didn't have those same types of self perception, but those foibles seem larger when we're looking at ourselves, I think.

I have high hopes of being that kind of role model, dare I say, hero to our daughter. My wife surely feels the same drive in her own way. But there's something about having a grandmother figure who lived through desegregation and suffrage that seems, I dunno, grander (or at least more impactful) and it saddens me that she'll only know her through memories, rather than firsthand.

This week started off strong - forward motion with the seed library project, and I managed to get another person involved in the project. Our daughter had her four month appointment yesterday, and the doctor was thrilled with her progress and remarked at some of the developmental milestones she's hitting months ahead of schedule. Plus they gave us a super cute tote bag full of books - we've done a hundred or so of the "thousand books before kindergarten" challenge.

But last night I got a text from my best friend on this whole planet that his mother, someone I call mom as well, is in the ER. She's got pneumonia now, as though Parkinson's and touches of dementia weren't enough of a burden. Other tests are showing that her kidney function is falling.

Her first home was firebombed because she had the audacity to teach impoverished children of color how to read in Alabama at the beginning of desegregation. She kept doing it. After she moved north she started a program for children on the spectrum before it was as understood as it is today - my friend and I and countless other people wouldn't have been the same without her skills and understanding. She took me in when I was kicked out of my home, treated me like her own child, and taught me not just skills to manage my own challenges but how to do right in the face of what's wrong. I wish my daughter could meet her and know her, to have an understanding of what it means to be a true force of good in this world.

I've been preoccupied growing and training up a Juniper (our four month old), but I've also got a closet full of Cuban Oregano (Plectranthus). Every time they get tall enough to touch the grow lights I take cuttings to make more. Like Chris, I'm freezing my butt off.

I'm currently soliciting donations for our town's seed library, and will be getting together with folks in a few weeks to organize and package all the donations. The library also built a greenhouse with a grant this past year, so we'll be planning some crops and their rotations in there and in the ADA raised beds we built last year.

There are a ton of seeds we collected from our cultivated plants and ones we foraged during the fall, those will be started soon to be ready for spring plantings and for our library's annual plant sale fundraiser.

Those spare instruments on the walls aren't just for me, you know

I can see why it's your favorite, this is beautiful

Probably a double yolk, but that's based on the ~30% increase in weight and with no concrete information on age or breed. Our girls will sometimes lay double yolks of about the same increase in size and weight (even our ducks) but as long as she's eating and drinking normally it's unlikely to be anything to be concerned about.

A health insurer being permitted to vertically integrate a pharmacy chain to get around profit margin caps.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one officer stated that the current pool of suspects include anyone with any sort of knowledge of UHC's method of making money. "We'll proceed with the operation's scheduling as soon as we receive pre-authorization, but of course," he said, "pre-authorization is obviously not a guarantee that a given service will be covered."

Seventy secondth

The R-value of cats is absurdly high