5 Things on a Tuesday

I took a vacation day yesterday from work.  Didn't accomplish quite as much as I would have liked, but after the busy weekend, the day was enjoyable.  So that's why "5 Things" is late this week.

1) The horse show on Saturday was a lot of fun.  It was an incredibly LONG day -- left the farm at 7:30am... returned at 8:30pm.  Spent the morning watching, reading on my new Kindle (I won a raffle at work on Friday), and catching up with friends.  I love the Stillwater Pony Club show.  It's always fun.  It was a decent sized show and with the larger arena, the classes took a while to finish.  Spot and I finally got to show about 4:30.  He was SO much more confident than at the Greenstone show a couple weeks ago.  The fences didn't phase him.  We had our issues with the canter transitions, but that's a work in progress for Spot.  Even between the first and second class, his confidence grew.  He's such a neat horse.  We didn't place in any of our classes, but I'm so proud of him!  I'm hoping Jen got a couple good pictures of us.  I also really appreciated the comments and compliments I got from friends. 

2) Very proud of myself for all the work that was accomplished on Sunday.  Trimmed bushes, weeded flower beds (and cleaned up the mess from both), finished painting the turkey coop, painted the support posts for the farm sign, cleaned the chicken nest boxes and refilled with bedding, cleaned the turkey coop and replaced the fly strip, picked up the trash that Stewie kept scattering in the pasture, and dismantled the old burn pile.  Oye!  Didn't do diddly Saturday evening that's for sure!

3) Had a meeting with Farm Credit on Thursday and things are looking very good for the land purchase.  Need to get all my financial documentation in order and turn in the paperwork.  Of course the hoops don't stop there -- after I get my approval back, we have to go to the Township to get the big parcel officially split.  THEN I can go back to the bank and finish the loan.

4) Attended the Nourishing Connections meeting last night.  It's a chapter of the Weston A Price Foundation.  The speaker was from the Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund (and Foundation).  This is a wonderful organization that helps farmers, even or especially in fights with the government.  The Foundation is an educational charitable branch of the organization and it turns out they have some experienced folks willing to help with the education of new farmers when they have questions.  I WILL have questions with the new land.  Having been conventionally farmed for many years (who knows how many), I'm worried about the soil quality.  As was quoted last night (and paraphrased here), the quality of the ground leads to the quality (and quantity) of the nutrient dense vegetation -- whether that's in the form of vegetables or forage crops for feed animals.

5) Along the same lines as #4, I think I'm going to see a showing of the movie "Farmaggedon" this Sunday.  4pm at the Little Art Theater in Yellow Springs.  $4 of every $10 ticket goes to support the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  This is not fringe, hippy, radical stuff.  It's incredible, disturbing and true and I would urge anyone interested in good, nutritious food... AND the right to CHOOSE what food you are able to buy... to go see the movie!