It has been a very eventful two weeks since I last wrote my column. There is plenty of news to pass along this time.

A big change in our lives occurred on May 14th. Cedar, Jess and Skyler moved to Columbia to begin a new adventure. Jess is returning to school to pursue a career as a certified nurse-midwife. She will begin taking classes at Columbia College the first week of June to satisfy the perequisites required for entry to nursing school at the University of Missouri. She hopes next year to enter the special accelerated nursing program for applicants with prior degrees and then go on to graduate school after that to get her certification.

Although we will miss their daily presence, they are close enough that we will see the three of them frequently. Laird went to Columbia this weekend to make product deliveries and stayed overnight with them at their new apartment.

Jo and Ceilee went down to Columbia on the Monday after our anniversary celebration and Laird and our guest Susan joined them there that evening before Laird took Jo and Susan to Kansas City the next day to catch their flights to New Hampshire and Georgia.

Gigi and Renay left on a cross-country trip to Albany, New York on May 11th. Gigi's sister Monique had twin girls in March and Renay was excited to see her cousin Naomi and the new babies. They plan to be gone until mid-June. It seems very odd to the rest of us not to have any children on the farm for most of this time.

We were saved from total childlessness this week when former member Craig, his wife Cleo and their five year old son Adrian visited us for three days. Craig is the person who got Sandhill started in the tempeh business in the 1980s. He has been a member of Twin Oaks Community for some years, as has Cleo. Cleo and I had met before on several occasions when I was at East Wind Community. Craig and Cleo are great singers and we had a sing-a-long at Dancing Rabbit after supper this past Thursday and there was a lot of singing on our front porch during their stay, too.

This week also brought us two new interns, Kristen and Susie. Kristen, who arrived on Thursday, is from Florida and is attending Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She is an anthropology major and will be graduating this coming semester. She will be with us until the end of August. Susie, who came on Saturday, lives in Kirksville and attended Moberly Area Community College. She worked for our friend Julia at Washington Street Java Company for a time and is a friend of Trish, who has been living at Dancing Rabbit. She expects to be here through sorghum harvest.

Wednesday morning, Dancing Rabbit visitors Joshua and Allison came over for a tour. They are part of a group of folks hoping to start a new community in southern Oregon in the near future.

We have also been in overdrive the past couple of weeks getting both field and garden crops planted.

We managed to get our sorghum transplants done in record time. The crew on the planter for the last round finished up the job just as a rain storm began. Stan has also gotten the direct-sown sorghum done. He says we are ahead of schedule in comparison to last year.

We had a "go" to get the tomatoes in and Michael, Stan, Laird and Jayd put in a full day doing it on Thursday. Jayd also headed up transplanting the sweet potatoes and planting the rest of our potato crop this week. Members, interns and guests have been keeping up with weeding, thinning and mulching that have needed to be done in all three of our gardens.

Michael and I have also been busy with some of our spring fairs. We were at the Herb Fest in Bethel on May 15th and 16th. This was the first fair of the year for the two of us and we had a chance to visit with some of the other vendors who we hadn't seen since last fair season ended. A number of us do the same fairs and we have our own little community. This past Saturday, Michael and I were at the fair and car show marking the twentieth annivesary of Lake Mark Twain.