Welcome rain, warm nights.

Despite the challenges right now we're moving along with life as we address them. Lately our predator concern has come from the hawks that are out a lot lately. The electronet doesn't help with that, but the chickens have been sticking to the tall grass and weeds to hide from the aerial threats. I'm always glad to see animals doing the smart thing to stay alive when I can't be there to preserve them 24/7/365 since I'm at work during the day.

On the funding side of things, the furnace situation is rough, but the go fund me has been incredibly helpful, and people have been generous, kind, and helpful with money, advice, and love. Our strength and wealth is in our community and friends, and this has really highlighted that.

Another concern lately has been the absence of rain, which has come to an end today. A good day of general rain fall will do our plants a lot of good, as you can see below the tomatoes haven't been growing fast, and nor have the peppers. The garlic has been doing very well no matter what the weather, and the scapes are starting to look great. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to try for getting the garlic flowering, and harvest seeds this year, or just go for eating the scapes which are delicious, and easy to cook with. I'm probably going to be doing some of each honestly because the idea of having actual garlic seeds is very appealing to me.

A thing we've been forgetting to do lately is water the garden. We don't water often normally but with the distractions in life we just haven't been doing it. I think that the mulch has helped keep almost all of the plants alive which is impressive given the level of care we've given them which has been nearly nothing for the past two weeks. We're getting our minds back into the swing of things, and are going to be doing weeding as soon as we have a couple minutes to rub together without rain, and with sunlight to do the weeding in. I can't really imagine that weeding at night would be a wise idea with my level of skill at plant identification! I'd end up pulling out the tomatoes, and leaving the plantain. I'd say the rabbits will be happy, but they won't be around by the end of this

coming weekend. That's not to say that all of them are going to be butchered for meat. We're selling our stock off to a couple different locals who want to get started with rabbits. We're selling off many of the hutches as well, and the ones that don't go soon I'm going to be putting up on various "sell this thing" sites because while I'm not perfect, these hutches are still in great shape after a few years, though they could use a coat of paint. Getting rid of the rabbits to folks that are looking to get into them makes us feel better that they will be used for their purpose, and is another step towards getting financially out of the mess we're in. Every dollar counts, especially when it's a dollar earned, and a dollar not spent on feed all at once.

We are going to be holding onto the chickens to the bitter end in hopes that we'll be able to keep them when we move. As always, we'll keep you updated, and intend to make sure, where ever we land we can at least try to keep the mindset of working towards sustainable community living.