Memphis Democrat Column from June 04, 2006

There have been lots of comings and goings at Sandhill the past two weeks. Laird and Ma'ikwe arrived late on the 23rd for a few days at home before heading to Ann Arbor and other destinations on the 26. Laird is scheduled for another session of his Michigan faciltitation training course.

On the way there, the two of them stopped in Chicago to spend time with his family and also visited her folks in Michigan.

While Laird is in Ann Arbor, Ma'ikwe is attending a workshop in Miami, Florida. Laird will be back at Sandhill on Tuesday and Ma'ikwe will return with her son Jibran on June 12. The two of them will be with us until Jibran needs to return to school in New Mexico in August.

Gigi, Jessie, Renay and Aradia left on Friday for a trip east. The four of them will be stopping at The Farm, a community in Tennessee. Gigi and Renay will spending time there with former Sandhill member Lotus and her daughter, Emma. Jessie and Aradia will then go to see Jessie's mother and sister in Knoxville and Gigi will head to North Carolina to visit other former Sandhill members, Jess and Skyler, and also spend time at Earthaven Ecovillage. In the meantime, Renay and Emma will attending the Kids To The Country summer camp program that is held at The Farm while Gigi, Jessie and Aradia are on the road.

We said goodbye on June 1 to our 2005 intern Justin, who spent three weeks with us. His mom and three of his six siblings came to pick him up and take him back to St. Louis. Jenn from Dancing Rabbit also rode to St. Louis with them.

The evening before, our whole crew went to the Catfish Place for a "farewell dinner" for Justin, for Angie, our current intern who is leaving this coming week, and for our travelling members. We also didn't neglect to have a birthday celebration for Justin on May 26, complete with a yummy cake baked by Angie.

We also welcomed a new intern to our midst on May 30. Amanda is from southern California and is a student at Sonoma State University. She is a friend of our other current intern, Rory, and found out about our internship program through him.

We are still in planting mode and have been busy filling up the rows in the gardens. Winter squash, summer squash, melons, cucumbers and okra are in, as well as bush beans, sweet potatoes, more potatoes and various herb starts. We have another batch of sweet potato slips to pick up from the Burkholders and plant and I hope to start in on moving my sweet and hot peppers to the garden this week.

Bringing the crops in is the other side of this coin and we are already have had good harvests of kale, collards, oriental greens, radishes and lettuce. We have had our first snow peas and the other peas will be ready to start harvesting very soon. Rhubarb has been abundant this year and we are in the midst of picking cherries and strawberries.

Food processing has started in earnest and Rory, Amanda and I spent part of the afternoon today blanching greens for the freezer. Boxes of fruit and rhubarb are filling up. The abundance makes all the work worthwhile.

The pace is really picking up with our bees, too. Stan along with some of the other folks here, has been busy getting more frames ready for the hives. There have also been a number of trips to work with the bees. Interns and visitors often don bee suits and go out with Stan and he enjoys sharing his knowledge with them.

The recent rains have provided a needed boost for our field crops. Stan has had to do a bit of replanting of some crops, but he says the sorghum transplants are doing great. The recent dry spell and heat was hard to deal with, but it looks like everything is thriving now.

Speaking of rain, we had an interesting experience last night. While we were eating supper on the screened porch, a thunderstorm switched on right over our heads. It had some pea size hail in it, but not enough to do any damage. During this storm, the sun was shining brightly all around us. The rain drops were sparkling in the sunlight and we had a magnificent rainbow. One end of it was right by our shed across the road from the house. We resisted the impulse to get shovels and dig for treasure. Watching the spectacle was gold enough for us.