Memphis Democrat Column from April 06, 2008

The crocus that Gigi planted in front of the White House and by Dharma are putting on a really beautiful display this year. There are dainty little yellow and white ones and eye-popping big purple ones. The Siberian Squill on the other side of the White House are in bloom, too. I really like their delicate deep blue flowers. The leaves of the tulips and daffodils are growing fast and I think they will be spectacular this year. It will sure make up for the long winter. Our first interns, Ann and Kevin, arrived on April 1st. They came down from Madison, Wisconsin where they had passed the winter. They visited us and Red Earth Farms last October and decided they wanted to spend some more time in the Rutledge area. They see their internships at Sandhill Farm as a chance to acquire more skills that will be of use when they eventually set up their own homestead. Prior to beginning their travels last year, they had lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. We have begun our gardening year with a lot of energy. Michael, Gigi and I have been busy starting more flats of seedlings. Michael has been working on tomatoes, tomatilloes and basil, Gigi started some flowers the other day and I have gotten my early lettuce, hot peppers and sweet peppers on their way. We move the flats after they germinate to the greenhouse and it is very satisfying to see the space filling up. Michael spent some time this past week planting spring spinach in the South Garden, Gigi planted some parsnips and Ann helped her move the volunteer garlic in the echinacea bed to another patch and the first of the peas were planted this morning. Ann and Kevin have also been helping get beds ready for more planting. I finished the clean-up work on the herb garden earlier today. Apple has continued her pruning activity and most recently has been working on her namesakes at the Dharma pond. She and Stan visited the bees today and, on the whole they seem to be doing well. We lost one hive over the winter and there are a few hives that are queenless. We are starting with twenty three hives and hopefully can increase that number during the season. Laird oversaw the inoculation of a new group of shiitake mushroom logs during the past couple of weeks. We did our first round on March 26th. Brian, Liat and Michelle from Dancing Rabbit helped out and in return we gave them some inoculated logs of their own. The second batch was inoculated on April 2nd with the help of our interns and members. The logs are now set up behind Karma and in due time we will be enjoying harvests of delicious mushrooms from them. We will harvesting again this year from our previous set of logs which are located down by Sugar Shack. We decided at our retreat to fund the cleaning of our heating and cooling ducts in Karma. The system has been in place for some years and it really needed to be done. A company from Kirksville did the work for us on April 2nd and it should really improve the efficiency of the system, which is of alternative design. Heat is provided by a built-in masonry wood stove and the cooling capacity of the earth is made use of in the summer. The building, which is our largest one, is passive solar in design. We had identified some subjects during our retreat that we wanted to discuss in more depth. While Laird is home this month, we are having a series of focused meetings each week so that we can do so. Some of the topics we are discussing are vehicle needs, organic certification of additional products, future projects, co-operation with our neighboring communities and finalizing our budget for this year. We have also had been enjoying some fun times. There have been evenings of games in the dining room and kitchen. Renay and Apple have been having fun making music together and Renay is learning to play the guitar. Folks have been sharing their enthusiasms and our collection of field guides have been getting a lot of use as a result. Saturday evening we hosted Kim and Nina from Red Earth, along with Kim's mom Joanne, for supper. Chad was not able to join us since he had to go to Michigan for family reasons. It was fun to see how much Nina, who is just five months old, has grown. We enjoy the larger social group that our neighboring communities provide us and it is a pleasure to be able to visit back and forth.