Photos: The cat is “helping” me do some research on an article I’m working on. The inside of one of our “hoop houses.” These function as mini-green houses. The plastic is on it‘s third year and will probably need replaced next spring. My wife mixed up a rhubarb coffee cake. This is the uncooked view. We’d have taken a picture of the finished version but we were too busy eating it when it came out of the oven. It was very, very, good. We got another porch swing set up this afternoon. The tree on the left is still small so we had to brace it up until it gets bigger. Susan cutting up the rhubarb for the coffee cake. Fresh homemade bread tonight. (And, yes, it was great!) Susan packing oatmeal into plastic buckets for storage. We purchase it in large bags then repackage it in sealed plastic buckets. Me feeding the chickens. We have two more chickens that aren’t in the picture.

Yesterday (Friday) it rained most of the day. I worked on an article doing research and getting my outline down then started on the text. After that I went to the shack to do some reloading. Susan dehydrated 20 more eggs, put the horizontal support strings on the long hoop house and got the plastic put back on again. (The wind had blown it off.) We try to cover it a few days before we plant to warm the ground up. She put Styrofoam sheets around the last of the tomatoes and covered the top with plastic. She also finished an article and sent it in and did some more writing on the fiction story she’s working on. I spent a half-hour fixing a phone problem in the evening. Turned out to be a splitter that had some corroded wires.

Today we had better weather, partly cloudy and warmer. Susan packed up some oatmeal in plastic buckets for long term storage then we put together another bucket of emergency supplies that will be stored away from the cabin. I got some stuff together for some photos for an article (and found a compass I’d been looking for). Susan got more stuff planted in the garden. We covered more of it with plastic to start heating the ground up for planting. I washed my clothes this afternoon. Susan dehydrated a couple dozen more eggs then I mowed and she trimmed grass with the hand trimmer. We both took a break on the swing and then decided to play a game of horseshoes. It was our first game of the year and we could sure tell it. Just before the horseshoe game I shot a gopher that had taken up residence too near the garden and house. It was a thirty yard shot. He was sitting, I was kneeling. It was a perfect heart/lung shot. 223 Remington, 50 gr. hollow point, he never knew what hit him. We put up another swing by the playground for the grandkids afterwards. By the time we got back in the house it was 8:30 pm. It was sure nice to see the DIRTTIME site back online again.