farm made tools

We get buckets of stuff from restaurants for our pigs to eat. Some days we get truckloads for them, some days buckets.

The lids are usually snapped on tight. If the bucket tips over everything stays inside as the seal on the lids is tough to break.

One problem. I can't get the lids off the buckets. The seals are so tight that I try and try to pry them off and it just does not happen.

The big box hardware store sells a piece that works to crack the seal, but still keep the lid usable. We are equally distant from York and Harrisburg..about 12 or 14 miles, each way, to a big box store. Difficult for me to justify a drive for that one thing, and always forgotten when there for another project.

Homer made this tool to pop the seals. It works for him, but I still can't get the lids off! He is left handed and a lot stronger..that must explain it..

When it is my turn to slop the hogs they get apples, not the restaurant mix. Since apples arrive by the truckload there are no lids to pop. And if I can just remember to stop in and get the lid popper..

starting

We grow our vegetables out from seed. The seeds go in the ground, in a farm made cold frame, in pots under grow lights..it is tough to start to many seedlings and we do our best to over run ourselves.

We buy seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Landreth Seeds. The first two are a part of the lawsuit, under way in New York, against Monsanto. The heirloom varieties we grow are threatened in their purity by the GMO pollen drifting off of other farms..I'm not a lawyer and I don't have time to follow along on great detail..but I know Monsanto has put seed savers out if business, has worked hard to force farmers into using their seed, matched to a particular herbicide, that kills everything when sprayed on the field. Monsanto also breeds varieties that have systemic poison in them, killing insects that eat the crop..and every other bug, pollinator, eaters of other bugs and all.

From where the business practices of Monsanto are not what I want: conventional farmers say it is the only way to grow enough food for all..but we are managing to scrape by growing and procuring a lot of what we eat outside of their GMO products.

We are managing to not gain unwanted weight, to have healthy organs, blood pressure and the like..a video is circulating about the effects of eating conventional and organic does to a persons system, and if it is true it is staggering the difference.

Much to do on the farm, so the lawyers will have to take over in working to protect our rights to grow what we want. And our seed purchases help out in the small we we are able.

fastnacht

There are days every year when I am stumped. Astonished. Last year it was Ascension day, when I was on my way to pick up irrigation equipment and found out the hour drive was not needed. The Amish run business was closed for a holiday I did not know existed.

Today? I knew it was Fat Tuesday..getting ready for Lent..but a donut is dedicated to this day, and available only this day? Armies of people preparing this little fat bombs?

I'm told the donuts are made with potato dough..they sure don't taste like a regular donut..and Maple Donuts, a York based chain with a handful of locations, is packed with people carrying them out by the multiple dozen. Children express astonishment at their parents purchase of so many..donuts. 6 people behind the counter.

The PA Dutch..Germans really..don't appear to have big Mardi Gras type celebrations. They are the "plain people" after all. But fry up some dough and it is a celebration non the less!