Memphis Democrat Column from April 30, 2005

It has been three weeks since I wrote my last column. Michael and I took a ten day trip to the Ozarks and just returned this past Thursday. We spent five days in McDonald County and saw friends in the area.

We then participated in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Spring Planting Festival in Mansfield on April 24 and 25. This was the first time that we set up for this particular event. It turned out to be fun and we sold a lot of Sandhill products. The last few days we were gone we enjoyed a visit with my daughter and her family in Pomona.

The timing of our trip was great. It was one of those glorious years when the dogwoods and the redbud bloom at the same time and there were also lots of wildflowers along the highways. I don't think that Missouri takes a back seat to any other state when it comes to natural beauty.

The Friday before we left, the second of this year's interns arrived. Sparky is originally from California but has lived in Seattle for several years. She was a visitor at Dancing Rabbit last year.

We had a group of students from the Environmental Awareness at Truman State here on April 16. They took a tour of the farm and then helped us with some work projects, including seeding sorghum flats, weeding horseradish and stacking wood. They were a very enthusiastic crew and obviously enjoyed the experience.

Laird returned from his trip to North Carolina on April 21. His daughter Jo was then here for a weekend visit before going down to Columbia to visit with Ceilee. Laird then was back on the road on the 25th for another trip to Colorado.

While he was here, Laird harvested eight pounds of morel mushrooms. Gigi experimented with drying some of them and we enjoyed having them this evening with Michael's homemade noodles. Renay and French also had some luck morel hunting. During the same period, we also had a big harvest of shitakes from our logs. We are mushroom rich!

Gigi has continued with her painting program. Most of the sitting room off the kitchen is now a pale peach that coordinates nicely with the color of the kitchen walls. The wall behind the wood stove needed some dry wall repairs. These are almost done and then the rest of the paint job can be finished soon.

Our friend Matthew came up from St. Louis for a couple of days to consult with us about some repair and maintenance work that we have pending. While he was here, he lent Gigi a hand and they put up a nice ceiling light fixture to go with the new paint.

Gigi and the interns have also been busy with putting some of our multitude of transplants in the gardens. The early lettuce is in and brassicas are in the process of being set out. Everything is doing relatively well in spite of the unexpected cold snap. Keeping them that way involved moving a lot of flats in and out and covering planted crops with row cover. Some of the warm weather plants are shivering a bit, but they have been promised some better temperatures later this week.

We said what we hope is a temporary goodbye to our friends Arjen and Stefanie, who have been residents at Dancing Rabbit. They are off to Europe for a year to tour communities and visit Arjen's family in the Netherlands. We invited them over for a farewell lunch and they promised to keep us up to date on their adventures.