Rain

It's raining today, Woo Hoo.

We get about an inch twice a month whether we need it or not.

Nice Anti-GMO Blog

Recently I joined something called blog catalog to get some more traffic to this blog. I am not sure if I am getting any more traffic but I have found some great blogs over at this site and have even made a virtual friend. The blog find of today is

Genetically Modified Foods, The Silent Killer

If you are like me and concerned about ingesting food that contains GMO's or aspertame than go and read this blog. Lots of information and I hope the info keeps on coming.

Our Season So far

Despite the drought, we have had a good growing season. Not everything has grown well but most of our crops have done well for us this year. Roots have not been all that great for us. The carrots have been ravaged by carrot maggots and we have lost about 1/2 the crop. Beets have been hit and miss all summer. We have generally had a few but they have rarely been great beets. Some kinds of radishes have done exceptionally, other types have barely made roots. Onions, garlic, leeks and scallions, on the other hand, have done very well for us this summer (and will continue on into fall and winter).

Kale has been spectacular, though lately it has not been growing well. The chard was doing well until early August when it got some fungus that looks like black pepper has been sprinkled all over the leaves before the leaves turn brown and rot. The leafy cool weather greens did well in spring and we have had arugula since early August. Who knew arugula will grow well in hot dry conditions with no irrigation? Annual herbs have done especially well. We planted a lot of basil this year and all of it has produced abundantly. Parsley has also done well, though we had some major germination problems this spring so only have 12 plants. Dill has been a surprise. Eugene planted some in early summer and it got forgotten until late August so it went to seed all on its' own and has done a super job of thickly reseeding itself making for a gorgeous bed of cutting dill. Cilantro has been real hit and miss. It hates hot dry conditions so has not grown very well most of the season, that should change in a few weeks since fall has now arrived.

Winter squashes have done well but by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes were hit and miss. Probably because we were growing several new types and did not know what we were doing with them. Melons were decent. Not terribly prolific, well, they were but so were the voles early on. The voles damaged at least 75% of the early melons. But Eugene and the dogs got on the ball and got good control of the varmints so we got many cantaloupes, Winter squashes have done well though, by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes, charantais melons and watermelons all through August and September.

Corn was another disappointment. We rarely do good sweet corn. It is very hard to get clean well filled ears producing it organically. We do not use treated seed so we cannot plant until the soil is at least 60˚F which this year was mid May, well after they rains had left. So from the get go we had some serious issues with the sweet corn. What we ended up with was basically crappy corn. About 10% was sellable another 15% we froze for winter and the rest was composted. I don't know if we will continue to grow sweet corn. In theory, we need it for the farm stand, though our sales were not horribly impacted by not having much corn this year and I believe that we can get our customers not to expect sweet corn but to look forward to over 100 other produce items we grow at the store. For all the time and cost put into growing sweet corn it is one of our least lucrative crops. But I am positive Eugene will hanker to plant sweet corn next year and so it will be planted.

The nightshades-tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes have all done quite well. I have noticed these crops tend to do much better in dry conditions than wet. Last year we harvested, maybe, 200 peppers the entire season and most went into the freezer and were not sold. This year we have already harvested close to a thousand sweet peppers and the season is far from over. The hot peppers have loved the hot dry conditions and have been extra prolific. Tomatoes would have liked a bit more rain, I think, but overall they did well, though it seems the season was a bit short as after this week we will likely not have any tomatoes and I noticed at market this week very few other farms still have 'maters. Eggplants have done better for us in the past but this was a good year for them, no the less.

The strawberries have been a real workhorse all season. Early and mid September was not a great time for the berries but other than that they have produced high quality fruit. The raspberries have been a disappointment. Between the Easter freeze, birds and Japanese beetles we have not gotten a good harvest from either the Latham which produce one time or the heritage that produce spring and fall. The berries we have managed to harvest have been excellent, just not at all plentiful.

Now that it is autumn we will be harvesting spring mix and lettuces soon. Hopefully, we will get some rainy weather this fall, though I am not counting on it. Lettuce, especially, likes rainy conditions. Thankfully we have a drip irrigation system and we know how to use it so the leafy greens will grow well enough for us.

Great Markets

Eugene selling a customer (and future customer) a butternut squash mere minutes before the crowds gathered

We have had a great late summer farmers market season. In all but one Saturday the last 4 weeks we have broken, no shattered, sales records. And that feels so good. Finally, after 14 years of learning how to do this we can make a decent living instead of just barely eking by. This does not mean we are getting rich, not by any means. But what we are doing is making close to minimum wage instead of making around $2.80 an hour, working 60+ hours a week.

The Saturday farmers market in Uptown Oxford is becoming THE place to be on Saturday mornings. Used to be we would get to market at 7:20am or so, get set up by 7:45am and not sell much of anything until around 9am. So I would wander around the market and talk to people and buy things like meat and eggs from other farmers. No more. Now we need to get there by 7:00am (this almost never happens) so we are pretty much ready to go when the bell is rung at 7:30 because the crowds will start to gather by 8:00am and by 8:30 the crowd is there enforce and the serious selling starts. I kinda miss not getting to talk to the other growers and vendors and it has become almost impossible to buy locally produced items I do not grow/make myself. Eggs are easy because Karen Baldwin is just two stands down from me and I can get over there before we are completely set up, say good morning and buy a dozen eggs and than get back to the stand. Buying meat form either the Filbruns or Bill Miller/Bob Harris is trickier because they are at the other side of the market and it can take me up to a half hour to get over there and back because I will pass by people with whom I want to chat for a few minutes. Repeat a minute or two of light conversation 10 times and one has eaten up a half hour.

What can I say, the farmers market is my social time. Or it was until things got much, much busier. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. I am in this business to make a living and a dead farmers market is no way to make a living. I have been there, done that and never want to repeat that again. It is great that the foot traffic through the market has increased about 100% over this time least year. We must get around 800 to 1000 people through the market these days vs around 450 to 600 last year. If things keep on going the way they are this market should get around 3000 people through in another year or two.

Kudos to the market board for making the market better each and every week and all the eaters who are waking up and smelling the fair trade coffee and buying local.

Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes

Yesterday I believe I finished putting up tomatoes for the year. I did my 3rd 5 gallon pot of sauce which yielded 11 quarts. That will go with the other 20 or so quarts of tomato sauce. I also did some salsa (I do not remember how many jars) and tomato juice (IIRC I have 21 or so jars of that.) Next on the agenda is apple sauce.

I have also been freezing. Right now peppers are the main thing I am freezing as they are coming in. I like to have at least 8 well packed gallon freezer bags of chopped sweet ripe peppers and a couple of bags of roasted peppers to get through winter. So far I have 5 bags of peppers and none of the roasted variety. I am thinking Sunday may be a good day to start a fire in the Webber grill and roast and skin a bunch of peppers. They are so good roasted. They add a wonderful smokiness to any dish you add them to.

Last year I was lucky to get 5 gallon bags. It was a bad pepper year for us-too wet I suppose. Those 5 bags were gone by April meaning we rarely had peppers all spring and most of the summer. I rarely will buy peppers at the store as ripe peppers simply cost too much for my budget (but I understand why they cost so much-a lot can and does happen to a pepper between green stage and full ripe stage and about 1/2 to 2/3 will not be sellable at ripe stage). But because I grow peppers I am used to being able to use a lot of them every time I cook with them.

This year has been a good pepper year and I should have more than enough to get through winter and spring. I already have about as many frozen as all of last year and we are still picking lots and lots of peppers and I will be freezing quite a few more in the next 10 to 20 days.

How to Roast a Pepper

Over a flaming wood fire (you can do this with charcoal but wood gives you a much better flavor and you won't have petrochemical residue left on the peppers from the fire starter. I guess a gas grill will work as well but again there is the flavor issue) put on as many peppers as you can fit. Let the flames blacken the peppers and split the skin. Turn every 15 to 30 seconds (this is fast cooking over high heat). When the peppers are black, flaky and ugly on all sides remove them and place in a paper bag to steam for a 5 to 15 minutes. Bring the bag of peppers inside to the kitchen sink. Take a pepper out of the bag and start removing the skin (which is charred). The skin should come right off. If it does not that means you did not cook the pepper quite long enough. Don't try to re-char it just take some extra time to get the skin off and next time take more time to roast the peppers. Cold running water will help in removal. Once the skin is off slice open the pepper and remove the seeds and the placenta (the thing the seeds are attached to at the top). Now, you can either use the roasted peppers right away or slice them into thin strips and place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Once frozen, pop the strips into a well market plastic freezer bag and store for winter use. These peppers can be used anywhere a smoky sweet flavor will work like fried potatoes, chili, macaroni and cheese, soups (I can see using these in a butternut squash soup).
Bon Apatite

Ah, Basil

Genovese basil just beginning to make flowers

Basil is one of my favorite market garden crops. This year we put in 250' linear feet which I can harvest 10 pounds at a time twice a week in high season. Harvesting 10 pounds is not as fun as it sounds.

Basil is one of our best selling crops. We sell it two ways, a small bag with approx an ounce of basil in each bag and the big bag with a 1/2 pound of basil for those smart folks who freeze pesto for winter use (something I need to do, I have a half pound of frozen pesto/garlic/oil (not really pesto but close) and I know from experience that is not enough to get us through winter/spring.

This year I grew two kinds-Genovese (regular basil) and Reuben, a beautiful red basil with no flavor. Fortunately, I grew very little Reuben compared to the wonderful green basil. Last year we discovered basil does well planted early in a hoophouse. We had a bunch of cucumbers damp off (die) so there was about 25' feet of space in one of the hoophouses so I started basil seedlings and got them transplanted in late April. By June 2006, we were harvesting. So, this year we repeated the basil experiment only this time it was planned and the basil got a whole 50' of space and was put in a bit earlier. It did not do quite as well as the unplanned early basil. Early on, the early stuff threatened to die outright (and some Reuben did die). It was a bit too cool for the basil. But soon enough it got warm enough and the daylight hours long enough and the early basil flourished. I just stopped harvesting it, because it has gotten pretty seedy. The main crop basil we planted outside of a hoophouse has flourished this summer. Though it too really wants to make flower tops, have sex and got to seed. That just means I have to cut it more often to keep the flower stalks at bay.

Now I am at the end of the basil season, plants want to make flowers/seeds and the temps at night are a bit cool for the uncovered basil. If I am lucky, I will get another 3 to 4 weeks of harvest before the plants are spent. Than I will pull them up and hang them in the barn to dry so I have dried basil all winter and spring to use and sell (there are some things that I feel dried basil is better than fresh, home made salad dressings and spaghetti sauce come to mind) before the fresh stuff next year is ready to cut.

Chipoltles

Last night I roasted peppers for dinner (also had a chicken we raised and grilled eggplants and pattypan squash). I put a couple of marconis, a Giant Chinese pepper, several Hungarian Hot wax and some red ripe Jalapenos in order to make chipoltle peppers (I think these need to be dried after roasting to be true chipoltles, I did not get that far with them). Long story short Eugene and i were eating our dinner and he asked "have you eaten one of the roasted jalapenos yet? I had just taken a small bite and it lit me up. roasting increases the heat factor...a lot. Those puppies where almost as hot as a habanero pepper. Yikes!

I was on fire for a good 15 minutes and could not eat. I stupidly drank water which made matter worse. I think today I will roast and freeze more Jalapenos as these would be good in chili sauce, curries and other hot dishes this winter.

We are Women Dammit

This morning I have a rant.

For several months, perhaps this has been going on for a couple of years, I have noticed that people on TeeVee have replaced the term "Woman" with the term "Female". As in, "that female over there screwed my boyfriend". This is most prevalent on the news and the afternoon shows (Judge Joe, People's Court, Maury, Jerry Springer etc.. ) Yeah I watch a lot of crap when I don't have to other things to do in the afternoons. I'm a TeeVee addict like most citizens of the USA. I'd like to say I watch only PBS (and I do watch a lot of PBS) but I can't take most of the kid shows they have in the afternoon.

I assume this is coming straight out of cop speak as in the "female perp"... which is fine for the police. But now this way of referring to Women is creeping into common language. No more than creeping, it is galloping into common usage, thanks to bad TeeVee

I hate it when the local news does a live interview and a woman, for Christ's sakes, uses the term "Female" to describe what some woman did (it could even be herself she is describing). Dammit, use the term Woman when you are talking about a woman. Are the women of this country so afraid of their womaness that they will not use the word woman? Using the term Female, to me, is neutering the whole idea of Woman (maybe spaying is a better term than neutering). We are fast losing any empowerment the feminist movement of the 1970's and 80's gave us by using this awful term to refer to our sex

We are humans, therefore we are women, not females. FYI kids, female refers to any species so you could be talking about a dog, horse, iguana, bee, slug (okay slugs are hermaphrodites), a toad, a cow, a tree, etc..

I notice men are NOT referred to as males, they still will use the term Man when referring to the male of the human species. And this is despite the cops using the term Male when referring to a suspect/perp/etc who is a man. Maybe what I am seeing is the death of feminism. I hope not but it seems that too many women out there do not appreciate being a woman and the power we women all have if we are will to find it and tap into it so the refer to themselves as females.

Women are smarter (That's right the women are smarter) and we have impressive powers. Our breasts alone contain strong powers few men can resist. Ladies, we need to tap into our powers more than we seem to be doing these days and quite referring to ourselves as females, We are Women dammit! So quit referring to you and me as Female.

This Morning's Sunrise

This was the scene looking westward, away from the sunrise. Within 2 minutes the lovely light was obscured by clouds

Women Who Farm

Women Who Farm.

This is a forum I found because I was reading Shari's Blog, Shari's Gone Country, and there was a link to this forum. Since I love Internet forums, especially ones about small farming/organics/local foods I clicked on over and saw there were many women farmers I already knew from email lists and gardening forums in which I participate. So I registered and have become a part of this growing community of women who farm (or want to farm). If that is you check out the site.

Tomato Hell Redux

One of the compost piles we are currently building. It looks so festive with all the colorful tomatoes in and around the pile.

So now the cherry tomatoes I harvested on Thursday, that did not sell at market Saturday, are beginning to soften and split. This is bad as it attracts fruit flies who lay eggs in the slurry. It also smells bad and drips foul smelling tomato goo on the floor or ones feet. So for an hour this morning I sat in a chair in the back of the store and patiently removed good sun sugar maters into a clean crate and bad sun sugar tomatoes into a compost bucket. The result was about 1/3 were keepers.

I still have around 6 crates of big tomatoes to go through yet this afternoon. I am sure I will get 4 to 6 buckets (5 gallon sized) of tomatoes to take out to the new compost pile to go with the other 20 to 30m buckets already there.

Cherry Tomato Hell

Cherry tomato hell has hit Boulder belt. This happens every year when we have more cherry tomatoes than we can possibly sell but they have to be harvested anyway. If we do not pick them they will start splitting and rotting on the vines which will attract the wrong insect crowd as well as a lot of fungi, bad bacteria and viruses. The result will be dying vines loaded with inedible fruit long before frost kills them off. Something we want to avoid

So yesterday afternoon I went out with a gray 3/4 bushel crate in hand and started harvesting the loaded vines. I started with Cherrywine, a pink cherry we are breeding/stabilizing. I plopped the crate on the ground and sat down in front of the first plant and started in on picking. I picked handfuls at a time, careful to toss on the ground any that were split, bitten into by hornworms or army worms or were soft and/or off color. All of these things means that the tomatoes will start rotting in their bins after picking and as we all know, one bad tomato spoils the whole bin. After 45 minutes I had the cherrywines finished meaning I had about 30 ponds of small maters and my head, arms and hands were greenish black from picking. So I went back to the house to wash up and have a smoke.

After my break I unloaded the garden cart which had about 100 pounds of butternut squash Eugene had harvested earlier in the day. I took the squash into the store front and loaded the cart with 4 gray crates and went back out to the mater patch and got back to work. This time out I harvested the sunsugar tomato. These are a cherry orange cherry tomato with a fantastic flavor and our best seller. Because this sells so well we had an entire 50' bed devoted to them (plus around 10 other plants that I got in a seed trade that were supposed to be 4 other kinds of heirloom tomatoes, not sunsugars). So once again I plopped down a crate and sat down in front of the vines and proceeded to pick. The sunsugars despite not having been well harvested for at least 10 days were in pretty good shape. After doing the Cherrywines I expected a lot of splitting and other ills but most were A-OK. I did have to deal with the problem of these plants being on short stakes and not well tied up so the tops were draped over and touching the ground meaning I had to lift up the vines with my left hand so I could pick the interior of the plants with my right hand. Next year we will buy some more fence stakes so we do not try and support tall plants with short stakes. I found several small hornworms while picking and I made sure I did not destroy any garden spider webs as they are helping us keep the white fly and cuke beetle population under control. An hour later I was done with the sunsugars and had around 50 pounds of them.

Next I was off to harvest the yellow pear which were a mess. These are on shorter stakes than the sunsugars and the plants are taller. The good thing is there is only a half bed (25') of these guys. So once again I sit down in front of the plants and start taking hand fulls of yellow, pear shaped cherry tomatoes. Unlike the sunsugar and cherrywines, these guys fall off the vines at the slightest touch. So I had to pick a lot up off the ground. These also decided that it would be best if the majority grew in the middle of the vines (i.e. underneath where the vines had flopped over. So I had to sit literally under the plants holding them up with one hand while picking handfuls with the other. All the while, at least half were falling to the ground. The good news was there were very few split or chewed fruits despite being ignored for at least a week. I was surprised to find 4 hornworms and an army worm on these plants since they had so little bug damage. Now they will have a bit less.

I took the crates of yellow pear and sunsugar back to the storefront, where we are storing the tomatoes. I ran into Eugene who asked if there were any more cherry tomaotes to pick and I said yes, the Red Pear and red grape still needed harvesting so he took a crate and brought in red pear. I went back to the house to wash the green/black crap off of my hands and arms and than went back out and harvested some okra and than half the red grape.

I stopped when I got 1/2 bushel because these are not our best seller and the red grape are a mishmash of tomato types because we planted seed we saved last year from an F1 hybrid. This means we have 4 different kinds of tomatoes growing in the red grape area, including a couple of red grape plants. We also have a round red cherry, a mini paste and a red saladette. I will save seed from the kind that are true to type and hopefully, next season most will be what we want.

Anyhoo, we now have well over 100 pounds of cherry tomatoes. Today I will go through them and the large tomatoes (of which we have around 1000 pounds) and toss into the compost any that are getting soft or, worse yet, have deflated. Than I will make pint boxes of cherry tomatoes in preparation for tomorrow's farmers market in Oxford. I like to have around 60 boxes made up and ready to go. It makes life easier at market if we do not have to be constantly refilling boxes with cherry tomatoes.

I hope we have a good market for them Saturday, I have no idea what I will do with over 100 pounds of cherry tomatoes if they do not sell. I can dry some and I suppose I could make tomato juice out of them if it comes down to that (of course I also may have hundreds of pounds of big tomatoes to deal with as well.). I will cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

Saving The Planet One Seed at a Time

A very nice article I pulled from the Baker Creek Seed gardening forum (with permission, of course). As regular readers know, I do a lot of seed saving because I feel it is vitally important to preserve as many seed varieties as possible. Especially now that way too many small independant seed companies are being gobbled up by big multi-national seed monopolies. So far this summer I have saved 10 kinds of tomato seeds and at least 7 kinds of lettuce seed. If we do fall zucchinis I will will save zuke seed as the fall as they will be well isolated and hand pollinated.

Saving the Planet One Seed At A Time
Susan Carson Lambert

Ever wonder where the seed comes from for all those Heirloom tomatoes you see at the Franklin County Farmer’s Market? Many of those tomatoes are ancient. To be labeled an heirloom the lineage must be traceable for 50 years. The women of the Garden Club of Frankfort were curious about heirloom tomatoes so they invited Gary Millwood – otherwise knows as the “Tomato Man” to come talk with them at their August 10th meeting. The moniker is well deserved after hearing his talk about old tomato varieties. Millwood now lives in Eastern Jefferson County


Millwood learned about farming from his grandparents who were tenant farmers in South Carolina and his parents who were city folks, but still grew flowers and vegetables. His life’s work was in service to the church. He worked for children’s homes as an administrator and stockman and gardener. He grew vegetables to feed the children and staff at the home. In the 90’s he had health problems which eventually required him to retire from his staff position.


By 2000 he was recovered enough to begin growing again, but not on the same scale as before. He began to focus on heirloom tomatoes. A friend got him started by giving him some seed for the “Granny Cantrell’s German” tomato. He loved the tomato and that was it. He was off trying to find more heirloom seeds. Once word got out that he was collecting Kentucky tomato seeds people began sending him seed. Gary shared a lot of source material with me to for writing this article. It is amazing how many varieties of heirlooms there are just here in Kentucky. Here are a couple examples: Kentucky Plate- potato-leaf plant with a smooth pink beefsteak fruit, 1-1.5 lbs each. Excellent taste and good yield. Resembles Brandywine. Indeterminate. Here’s another – Kentucky Amish Oxheart - Casey County Heirloom, very large, red oxheart, great flavor, variable shape, regular leaf, solid texture, good production. These are just two examples out of many pages of reference material. This guy knows his heirloom tomatoes!

There are several organizations for saving seed, the one of the most prevalent is the Seed Savers Exchange. SSE is a nonprofit organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. When people grow and save seeds, they join an ancient tradition as stewards, nurturing our diverse, fragile, genetic and cultural heritage.

The SSE organization is saving the world’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity. Few gardeners comprehend the true scope of their garden heritage or how much is in immediate danger of being lost forever.

There are other organizations Millwood works with, the Appalachian Heirloom Seed Conservancy AHSC is dedicated to preserving Appalachia's edible heritage, this young non-profit has already added 50 regional varieties to its seed bank, and is preserving several hundred more. Since so many of these rare heirlooms came as just a few seeds from a single source, the AHSC is currently building inventory. In time, they plan offer these seeds to AHSC members and others. They published a quarterly newsletter, with info on what they grow and how you can help preserve heirlooms from the Appalachians. Their email is: KentuckySeeds@hotmail.com ACHS will have a conference this fall Oct 5 – 7 in Berea at the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center.

Gary is active in another organization the Cincinnati Heirloom Open Pollinated Tomato Associate Growers CHOPTAG. They are an organization specifically devoted to share their appreciation for heirloom tomato gardening. They have plant swaps in the spring and tomato tastings in the late summer. The most recent was August 18th. Each grower puts all of her/his tomatoes on a picnic table and everyone tastes the tomatoes.

According to the International Seed Saving Institute. We are on the verge of losing in one generation, much of the agricultural diversity humankind created in the last 10,000 years. The International Seed Saving Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental educational organization was founded as a response. Central to their strategy is the seed saving ritual, a ritual as old as civilization, a ritual in many ways responsible for civilization. Saving heirloom seed, not just tomatoes, is very important. Biodiversity in the agriculture community is vital for all the same reasons as in natural communities. If we grow only a few varieties of anything there is a good chance the variety could be wiped out if some killing disease came along which affected it. If there are many kinds of plants growing with different strengths and proclivities - where one variety may fail, another might be unaffected and flourish. Monocultures of anything are generally not a good idea. For the welfare of our future and to maintain our genetic heritage saving heirloom seeds is imperative. If you save your own heirloom seeds you are saving money because you don’t have to purchase seed next spring, you can give them as gifts (other gardeners love this) and you know what kind of tomato you’re going to get when you grow them next year - because they are your own seeds. AND in a small way you are contributing to the welfare of the planet.

Here is a site that tells how to save tomato seeds.

Like Gary Millwood, I am a gardener. I have first hand experience with heirloom tomatoes as I grew 5 varieties from seed in my greenhouse this spring. They are coming in right now. They start and grow well. They are not fussy and grow on strong vines and produce like crazy. Unlike some hybrids I’ve grown that demand water and pout and wilt when they don’t get enough, these heirlooms have survived this wretched summer we’ve all lived through and are pumping out so many tomatoes its overwhelming.

If you have not experienced heirloom tomatoes (note I did not say EAT) go down to the Franklin County Farmer’s Market Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday morning and pick some up. Heirloom tomatoes compared to the insipid tomatoes available in the grocery store is like the difference between driving a ‘66 GTO and a ’66 Dodge Dart. Go for the GTO and the Heirlooms!

As a side note, I would take a Dodge Dart over a GTO any day. I have owned a couple in my life and really love the ugly little Darts. But I will always choose an heirloom mater over an insipid round red orb

New URL; Update your Bookmarks and links!

After two years of having the wrong spelling in the URL for this blog I finally corrected that spelling from "boulerbelt" to "boulderbelt" (note the addition of the letter "D"). If you have this blog linked to your blog or website please update the URL. Time to update bookmarks too.

Having changed the URL (which I cannot undo as a spam site has taken over my old URL-that took under 24 hours) may have been a bone head move in the short run as a lot of people cannot find this blog via their links and bookmarks but in the long run it should be a brilliant move as now this blog will show up in search engines when "Boulder belt" is typed into the search box.

It has been fun trying to remember where I put up the URL to this site and changing them all (over 20 links so far and I am sure there are others), especially in light of the fact I am using a brand new computer that I have not been able to transfer anything from my old computer (because it died 36 hours before I got the wonderful and beautiful new iMac) to so I do not have many of my old bookmarks and only 10% of my email list

New URL

After two years of having the wrong spelling in the URL for this blog I finally corrected that spelling from "boulerbelt" to Boulderbelt"