First Day of Spring

It was nice yesterday so I went to work. Planted about 100 lettuce seedlings in a hoop house. It was a hodgepodge of varieties-lollo rosa, cracoviensis, marvel of four seasons, Amish deer tongue, forellenschluss and Simpson green leaf. All heirlooms. They should be ready to harvest in 35 to 40 days. Just about right for the first regular season Farmers Market.

Planting lettuce in a hoop house on a sunny day is hot work. I was dripping sweat in minutes and realizing a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans was way too many clothes. But I did not want to get naked (Eugene was okay with the idea, though) so I sucked it up and dripped on the seedlings while I dug my hands in the warm damp earth planting cube of lettuce after cube of lettuce. once in the ground we gave each plant a hit of kelp/fish solution and put up #9 wire hoops and than a layer of row cover over top of them.

After that was done I went in for lunch and did some business with Miami University which is getting into supplying local foods to their numerous dining facilities. they have a local foods dinner coming up next week and needed root vegetables so we have sold them all our remaining taters, rutabagas, parsnips and about half of the leeks we still have in the ground and a dozen heads of garlic. After that we will pretty much be done with our winter vegetables. that is as it should be, it's spring after all.

The afternoon was spent cleaning and mulching the asparagus and Eugene pruning the two big and unkempt apple trees. I hate heights. No let me rephrase that, I am terrified of heights. So I don't do ladders or getting up on roofs or things of that nature if I can avoid it. That means if the tall trees are gonna get pruned Eugene has to do it. Fortunately he seems to enjoy climbing around in trees with saws and cutter. More power to him.

I stayed on the ground and spent the afternoon yanking dead asparagus canes out of the ground and putting them into a pile. I really should have worn gloves as the things will give your hands a lot of tiny cuts. I knew that going into the job and yet I went with naked hands and now regret that decision. Cleaned up 6 50' beds than went in to wash the cuts on my hands and rub them with shea butter. My hands were really sore, not so much from the cuts (though those did and do hurt) but muscle soreness. I had to do some serious yanking on some canes and my hands were not used to that kind of abuse (but they will get used to it soon enough). The shea butter helped my hands a bit and I went back to the garden to finish the job by digging up some of the perennial weeds which was not all that much fun with sore hands and heavy waterlogged soil. But I got many weeds extracted and than started cutting open bales of organic straw and spreading it on the 6 beds occasionally picking out thistle down and entire flower heads. This is a hazard with using certified organic straw-there tends to be a bit of thistle seed in it but with my sharp eyes I can usually get 95% of it out. I really do not want to get a thistle problem in the asparagus beds if I can help it so it pays to be alert when using the Filbrun's straw.

Got done with the mulching around dusk and picked some tiny heads of lettuce that overwintered under a row cover and were basically forgotten and assumed dead. They were not dead and quite delicious. And it looks like they will grow into nice sized heads of marvel of four seasons and buttercrunch. I also found a patch of cilantro that made it through winter and should get nice in the next 2 or 3 weeks. went back to the house and star fed the dogs than made dinner of brats from the Filbruns hogs and the lettuce and some scallions we over wintered. A locally grown meal except the buns and condiments.

Took a long hot shower and rubbed my now very sore and swollen hands with arnica, watched Lost and went to bed. Over night the arnica did wonders to my hands and today they are hardly sore at all. It's amazing stuff.

It was a good way to usher in the vernal equinox

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.

Got the Implant

but I don't believe I will fill it. I also was given a script for some sort of antibiotic that has the side effect of deadly Got the implant and I am feeling pretty much no pain. This is good. Of course I took 2 Advil when I got home and I think that is helping a lot. I was given a script for Vicoden for the pain but I doubt I will fill it. I was also given an antibiotic whose worst side effect is deadly diarrhea. That drug is making me a bit light headed but that is one of the side effects. I know this will do a number on my digestive tract but I will be replacing the flora with doses of raw milk and yogurt. And the course lasts only 4 days, not the usual 10 days.

It took Dr Silvers about an hour to drill a hole in my jaw due to extreme bone density (this is very good). I'm in the top 5% as far as dense bones go. he got the hole drilled put in the implant and than found a pocket of infection in the tooth next to the implant and scraped that out while he had the gum open and the root exposed. than he packed it with bone powder in hopes of regrowing the bone that had eroded by the tooth allowing crud to creep in and cause a small abscess.

I gotta say this is the best my mouth has felt in about 7 years. There is almost no pain and for the first time in years I believe there is no infection present in my mouth.

Getting the Implant Today

Today, at 9am, I get a titanium screw implanted in my lower jaw and I am a bit nervous about this. I know it's going to be painful, though apparently not as painful as a full deep periodontal cleaning/scraping (which I went through about 5 years ago). I visited my friend Linn yesterday (to pick up some home grown grapefruit, fresh from Florida, that a mutual friend grew in her backyard) and she had an implant put in a while ago and was telling me that it feels like they take a drill (like a drill you would use for a construction project, not a dentist drill) and drill a hole in your jaw than put in a titanium screw and than you let that set up with the jaw bone for a while. Linn said a year, my periodontist who is putting this thing in said 2 to 3 months (I have a feeling it will be far closer to 2 to 3 months as I seem to have tremendous healing abilities-likely from the great diet I eat and the fact I do not do prescription drugs, especially antibiotics, so my immune system is top notch and can do its' job). After the screw is set into the jawbone than I go to my regular dentist and get a veneer (fake tooth) put on the screw and I am done and should have no further problems for the rest of my life (knock wood).

Sounds good, but frankly I am nervous about the whole thing. I know this is gonna hurt like Hell for a couple of days (and I am not a fan of the NSAID's like Advil but will probably take my fair share over the next 48 hours). It's going to make my mouth feel different than it has since the offending tooth came out last May and there is some small chance that the screw will not set and I will have to get it taken out and a bridge put in (or just go toothless). Linn has told me that tobacco smoking is a no no and I do smoke 5 to 7 hand rolled cigarettes a day and I am not very interested in stopping this addiction. But this might just get me to quit. Than again, I was told that smoking while having stitches in my gums from the periodontal deep cleaning/scraping was a big no no and I still smoked and recovered about 3 months ahead of schedule. Perhaps all the prescription drugs big Pharma pushes on people are far worse for the human immune system than a few smokes. Not that you will hear such blasphemy from them or anyone influenced by them, such as 99% of what you see/hear on television and the radio

Ah, well I am now rambling and it is time to get more ready for this ordeal

Still Awake

It's now 3:57pm. I have been awake with no nap for over 12 hours-woof!

It's a warm sunny day and by warm I mean it is almost 60˚F and it is the middle of December. Gotta love the el Nino effect on SW Ohio. We get dry warm winters when there is a strong el Nino this time of year.

This is good for our winter gardening. This means the ground will not freeze badly if at all and that means plowing and tilling can be done in January and February. This means the things in hoophouses will grow very well. We have some nice spring mix that will be cut tomorrow for the farmers' market this Saturday. This is good since the older spring mix beds that were not in a hoophouse got pretty nuked by the combination of high winds and snow followed by bitter cold. The lettuce and other greens are still alive but a lot of the leaves are pretty burned and thus not very usable. I am hoping there is some arugula that is usable as Eugene, for some reason he cannot explain, did not plant any arugula with the lovely spring mix in the hoophouse. Arugula is pretty darned important in my spring mix mix, it's a much duller salad without it.

Ah c'est la vie.

puzzles in today's Dayton Daily News are repeats from yesterday. I did some house cleaning this morning. Discovered the crossword and SudokuHmmmph!
Lightly weeded the spring mix so it would be ready for harvest tomorrow. Ate lunch-PB&J sandwiches, bananas in vanilla yogurt and a big cold glass of ovaltine and raw milk. Than went to Eaton to get more hangers for the gutters that Eugene is putting up today. Got some clamps for the Montero muffler (the Montero is my 1986 Mitsubishi Montero, the 1st SUV ever made. It is a small tidy vehicle, nothing like the behemoths of today) at TSC because the Auto Zone place was out of them. And dog licenses at the court house (I love the Preble County Court House). Despite living in a very rural county Homeland Security decided there might be terrorist threats at the PC Court House. This means there is a deputy Sheriff stationed at the door and you have to walk through a metal detector and if you have a bag or purse it goes through the x-ray machine. A bit of big city paranoia in small town America. Gotta love it. Got the dog licenses. $28 for two dogs. It was not too long ago it was $7 per dog. Now Arlo and Nate are legal for 2007.

Eugene is busy hanging gutters, something that should have been done last fall but we had a porch and roof to paint because our old insurance people said we had to. The roof took a lot of time and because I have a morbid fear of heights I was zero help in the roof painting project. If I get up on a roof I have an extremely hard time moving or getting back down so I avoid roofs when ever possible. So it took Eugene something like 8 weeks to get it done (look at the Oct and Nov 2005 archives for the full story). the night after he finished the roof it started snowing and did not quit for about 5 weeks than when it did warm up farming got in the way (he had 150 beds to open up last winter) so the porch and eaves did not get a final coat on them until this fall when he quit farming for the most part for the season. Two weeks ago everything was ready to receive the gutters 'cepting the weather which got windy than cold. But now we are unreasonably warm and the gutters are going up.

When we got back home from our errands I made an appointment to get some periodontal infection dug out of my gum and to get an implant screwed into my jaw. 6 months ago I had a horribly infected tooth pulled and that is why I am getting an implant. The tooth next to the horribly infected tooth was also infected but instead of the infection going into the tooth it went into the gum along side root of the tooth. So on Jan 10th at 4pm I get to go and get that checked out and likely will get the infection out at that visit and than 2 weeks later get the implant or at least get fitted for the implant. The woman I talked to assured me it would be almost painless. My dentist tells me it will be about as painful as getting my gums flayed open (which is what they do to you if you have to have a full born periodontal cleaning. It is not as fun as it sounds. Been there, done that. Makes a filling with no Novocaine seem like a day at the beach). I do not know why I pay people a lot of money to put me into exquisite pain in my mouth but I do. I guess to save my teeth and health. A sick mouth will lead to a very sick to dead body. A healthy mouth means good health for the rest of the body.

Now I am thinking about what to have for dinner. Could always go to Taco Bell and eat some e-coli laced lettuce (Or is it the beef? Or is it the tomatoes? Or is it the food system?!). Or I can make something here that will cost less, taste better, be far more nutritious and not be full of pathogens rampant in the industrial food system.