Hello again! Time- what a rare commodity. Time to sit and write, even more rare. I actually occasionally watch TV seasons on Netflix now, but that is only because I do so while nursing my baby- an incredibly chubby, solid 5 and a half month old. Still happy, most of the time. He is lying on the nursery floor right now on his tummy, waving arms and legs in the air, talking and giggling at things only he knows about. Big brother Andy the Golden Retriever lies on the floor beside him sleeping. Andy lies just far enough away that he does not get an ear grabbed, but just close enough to keep an eye on him.

My farm is such a peaceful place right now. In the winter garden, across the yard, neat rows of potatoes, carrots, onions and beets are incredibly big and fluffy, promising roots to match. My sweet corn is getting close to knee high. In my summer garden just outside my back door, watermelon vines are shooting all over, and baseball sized watermelons are growing. I pick a long, smooth cucumber every several days. My eggplant has yet to set on, and my tomatoes are frustrating me- they flower, and then the blooms dry up and fall off without making fruit. Out of five plants, we maybe have five tiny green tomatoes. My herb garden is an explosion, even though it only contains basil, cilantro, parsley, garlic and chives.

We fenced in a portion of backyard for a dog run and a shelter from the wind last winter, when I was so large I had a hard time dragging fence posts around. I really want to find the time to go out there and build raised beds one of these days. I have the reclaimed lumber, I just lack the time. Then I will have B fill them with dirt, I will mix in compost, and it can mellow over the winter for next spring planting. Or perhaps I can even do a late summer planting in them in time for fall to produce cool weather crops.

It has been a bit of a frustrating summer, I can't lie. Bobby has not really worked since last fall. He is coming up on about seven months of a little work here and there and a whole lot of coasting and trying not to dip too deeply into savings as we hope for more work to come his way. When he came here two years ago, there was more work than he could handle. There were never enough hours in a day, or days in a week, to get all of the manure spread that he needed to. But when it stopped, it stopped. It has been great to have him at home, but at the same time, money would be great, too. Not that we are hurting too badly yet, thanks to him working sixteen hour days for months on end last year, but still.

In the meantime, I have started using my schooling of the last year to try to bring in a little income. It isn't much. By the time I pay the rent on the office I had to rent in town, there is even less. I see clients every two weeks for six months, guiding them in small steps to a healthier diet and lifestyle. I like it. But the two weeks per month I do it, just getting myself to town for those extra hours is exhausting and a bit overwhelming. In order to pay the rent on the office so that my health coaching can be income and to free myself from having to push it too hard and then overextend myself, I have started extending myself just a little by teaching yoga classes there four mornings a week and one evening- two hour-long classes on Tuesday morning, starting at 6 a.m., one hour long class on Wednesday starting at 6 a.m., two on Thursday morning, one on Thursday evening, and one on Friday morning. This is one of those jobs I cannot actually take a vacation while doing, because I do not have anyone to teach classes for me. That is a bit of a stresser, given our M.O. of skipping town when work is slow and we have a few extra hundred dollars in our pockets. We like to get out of town and take cheap vacations- camping trips, stay with friends, get out of the stifling summer heat, howling wind of all four seasons, or damp winter cold of western Kansas.

Actually, our love of skipping town is the reason my plan for making this a fully integrated, self sustaining farm is not working out as I had hoped. First of all, self sustaining farms still need humans to help close those circles. We still do not have a greenhouse, and with our income being slow, our dreams of building one just keeps slipping further and further away. I know exactly what I want, and it would be so simple to build, just a couple of days, some lumber, some sheeting, some hay bales, and Bobby's loader. It is called a Walipini. An underground greenhouse. It is basically a trench dug in the ground with a roof to let in light. The earth walls stabilize the temperature. But this involves actual money, even if less than a conventional greenhouse, so instead I sit and draw plans for aquaponic systems and heat sinks and heating systems and plans for keeping chickens inside for bug control and as of yet, those plans float around the house until we get tired of cleaning around them and they get tossed. Sigh.

We planted about 20 acres to wildflowers this spring, hoping that we would get rain and they would sprout, grow, and support the beehives we want to build. It was a dry year. Very few came up.