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Go Forth and Vote!

To All,
Erin Ely’s “YEAR ROUND HOME FOR THE LANE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET”
idea at IdeaBlob is behind by a hundred votes! Thanks to you who have already voted. But if you haven’t voted, we need you. The competition will go down to
the wire and you still have until Midnight Saturday to vote.

One important thing to remember. You must register at
http://www.ideablob.com first. But you can’t vote until you receive
email confirmation of your registration. And that can come in two
minutes-or sometimes in two days!!! So register now and be patient.
When you get the email, vote-but not before you receive that
confirmation. Many thanks. You will be repaid by access to great
fresh produce from local farmers.

PS. It’s fun to check the tallies every morning at http://www.ideablob.com
.
PSS. Please pass this on. We are right on the cusp

$$Funding for Farmers’ Market Envisioning and Design Process
Erin ’s idea is titled: Year Round Home for the Lane County Farmers Market.
That’s the idea to vote for. (click on the above and vote now!)

Greetings to all who are interested in seeing Lane County Farmers
have a year round indoor-outdoor market in Eugene. The year-round
farmers market has been in and out of popular discussion for several
years now, but has
lacked focus and sustained energy. The Willamette Farm and Food
Coalition has decided to host a series of facilitated discussions to
move the conversation forward with the purpose of drafting designs
and creating a business plan.
The Lane County Farmers’ Market is happy to have the Willamette Farm
and Food Coalition taking the lead and plans to participate in the discussions.

Local citizen activist Erin Ely is trying to help us with our effort
by using the Internet. Advanta Corporation sponsors an online “idea”
competition at their www.ideablob.com website. The best idea of the
month, determined by the votes of website visitors, wins $10,000.
Erin Ely entered this competition two months ago with the idea for a
permanent Farmers’ Market for Eugene. She lost the contest by a mere
20 votes! She’s entered again and is now in the finals!!!

If Erin wins, she will donate the $10,000 to Willamette Farm and Food
Coalition to facilitate public discussion of farmers’ market options,
and to draft a preliminary presentation of 2 or 3 designs as well as
a business plan. So we want you to help us help her win!

Chickens

I have nine chickens. One slightly older one lives in a coop in my back yard, and the other eight are still little and live in a watering trough in my laundry room. Raising chickens is hard work, but you get a lot out of it. So far, we’ve got about a cubic yard of awesome compost made of a combination of all our kitchen scraps with the wood chips and chicken poo we’ve cleaned out of the trough. It’s not composed yet, of course, but it’s on its way and I’m excited. I’ve been tweaking the compost pile I built, adding mesh around it so the stuff doesn’t fall out and reinforcing the structure some. It’s a beautiful compost pile. Truly.

Every day, someone has to make sure the chickens have enough food, grit, water. The big chicken outside has to be let out of her coop in the morning, and shooed back into it before dark. raccoons eat chickens, and hunt at dusk, so we have to have her protected by that time of day.

It’s been a while

Once again I’ve fallen down on posting. I’ve been working extra hard as a new Board year for the Growers’ Market kicks into gear, working on my garden (see my wife’s site, with whom I share space on the internet, for a garden journal), and watching my son grow up. He’s 20 months old, and is extremely pretentious. He’s learning his letters, wants to read poetry with me (Robert Frost, T.S. Elliot, Pablo Neruda, and Saul Williams are his favorites), and generally understands the world better than his mother and I do. I’m not sure what to do with him, and I worry that if he doesn’t slow down he’s going to miss some of the important details that toddlers at this stage learn. On the other hand, I’m trying my hardest to remember that he knows what’s best for himself, and that he’ll be just fine. Taylor was a very early reader, and I was a very early talker. He seems to have picked up both from us, and that’s the way it goes for him.

We’re deep in the swing of getting the garden ready, planting and tilling and pushing earth. I built Arthur a sandbox in the back yard (it needs sand, but otherwise it’s ready to go). We have nine chickens, one a full on pullet and the rest emerging from chickhood into a sort of creepy dinosaur looking transitional phase. We inherited a very nice coop from some friends who were no longer using it, and have fenced in a nice big corner of our yard to be a chicken run. Big Chicken is already living outdoors, and the littles are living in a big watering trough in our laundry room. I’m ready for them to grow up and head outside, but it’ll be a while yet.

My father in law and his wife will be in town for the whole summer, out from the East coast, and we’re getting ready for a great summer of Grandparent time, festivals (Country Fair is less than two months away!), and harvesting. I’m hoping to have a pig roast, something we did last summer, and to brew up a batch of Lambic (which won’t be ready to drink for two years. Awesome).

I did some (not much) volunteering for Oregon’s primary, which took place last week. Our commitments to the food co-op continue to keep us busy, and our country fair meeting and planning is kicking into gear.

In terms of brewing, I’ve done two batches since I last posted and I may at some point share the recipes/techniques used here. For now, I’m going to let it be and go back to work.