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market-farming - strawberries, birds and and knee surgery

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  • From: Marie Kamphefner <kampy AT grm.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: strawberries, birds and and knee surgery
  • Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 12:44:19 -0500


Regards to the list:

Our strawberries are getting ripe! Glad to hear that someone else is getting strawberries too. I can't think of anything better than fresh, ripe warm strawberries just picked, unless it's one of those French cantaloupes just picked, ripe and warm.

Had my knee surgery yesterday and I'm doing fantastic! I'm following all the rules - taking my pain pills, wearing an ice pack and doing the leg lifts. My knee hurt immediately after surgery but now, it feels fine. I don't need the pain pills when the time comes around to take them, but doctor said to take them anyway for a couple of days. The knee doesn't crunch anymore and I can walk without limping. When I was five, my brother and I were running after a cat. I tripped and fell and ran a corn stock into my knee. My dad had to lift me up off of it. I spent most of that winter lying on the sofa, crying. Then, about 2 years ago an emu kicked me on that knee and I've fallen hard twice on it since then. The doctor trimmed off torn cartilage, smoothed the bone where it was rough and repaired the damage from the corn stock. When I think of how long I've had trouble with that knee and it took only about 20 minutes to fix it - I wonder why I didn't get it fixed years ago.

Monday night, it got down to 38 degrees here. Didn't kill anything as far as I can tell.

I got 2 dozen turkey eggs today from a lady on the Pastured Poultry list. Two goslings hatched yesterday while we were gone and four geese are setting on eggs. Our first "Chicken Tractor" is coming along nicely. It's made from cattle panels. I'm really looking forward to having turkeys. Do you think I'll be able to kill them? :-(

The new water valve and little white things arrived to put on the transplanter we got in Indiana from the Chapmans (thank you again). Hubby has installed comfortable boat seats on the transplanter. I was hoping he would install drink holders like he did on the tractor and perhaps an umbrella or canopy. Now we just have to wait until it's dry enough to plant. Thought about ordering rice tires for all the implements with all the rain we've been having. :-) The little transplants need to be in the ground pronto, so I hope the weather will cooperate. The wind is blowing really hard today so perhaps the ground will dry quickly.

The Seeds from Italy came in the mail and made me more and more anxious to get into the garden. It will all have to be tilled again before we plant. Got a note from Johnny's wondering why they haven't heard from me. I'll have to explain that I haven't sold any CSA shares yet and money is scarce. I thought it was nice that they wrote to me.

Have dowsers coming to the farm soon. We have a deep well that went dry (the underground river changed course?) and I understand that certain dowsers can move the flow over to where you need it. I am hoping to find a good spring water source too. The Dowsing Society is bringing a class to the farm. I'm going to serve a picnic lunch. Small price to pay for new water sources. The public water supply water is nasty with chemicals and they charge a fortune plus they're hateful to talk to.

Would like to get our own power source for electricity too. Thinking a ground source heat pump run with solar or wind power would be just the thing. The local power supplier told me that they were the only ones who could design and implement a ground source heat system for us. But they're the ones who also told me that thermostats for our ceiling heat were no longer available. Found the thermostats about 25 miles from home. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Gotcha!

Also looking for an alternative for propane. The gas price thing just really irritates me. One of the local propane suppliers is sueing people - mostly farmers - right and left because they can't pay their whole bill. The Amish may be the smartest of us all.

And that's the way it is in North Central Missouri.

Marie




  • strawberries, birds and and knee surgery, Marie Kamphefner, 05/23/2001

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