Weekend of Jan. 22-23, 2011



Seedling Hoop House at our home in Memphis



Seedling Hoop House in the early stages



Our Composter - We have had it for over a year.




That is some BEAUTIFUL compost. :)

 We stayed in the 'city' this weekend to work on the seedling hoop house that will stay at our home in Memphis.  That way I can monitor the seedlings progress from home and keep them hydrated and hopefully they will grow up to be big strong plants.  We used pvc pipe and had the hoop house up in no time.  It is already getting toasty inside it.  We put our Rosemary plant in it and will build some tables to use for the seedling trays.

I also emptied out some of our compost from our composter.  The compost is really nice if I don't say so myself.  It does not smell bad at all, which is a good sign.  Compost is NOT suppose to smell bad if it has composted correctly.  I loaded it in the garden cart and will mix it with some peat moss then use that to fill our seedling trays.  The compost consists of a year's worth of kitchen scraps (vegies, egg shells, bread, paper towels), leaves and grass clippings (no chemicals on the grass).  You can't put anything greasy in  there like meat or butter.  You have to take this special compost tool (or a shovel) and mix the compost once a week to add oxygen to the mixture. You also have to keep it moist but not soggy and add a shovel full of dirt once in a while.  I am truly amazed at how great the compost looks and how it did in fact compost all the pounds and pounds of kitchen scraps we placed in there. 

We stopped by the Farmer's Market at Cooper and Young this morning and visited with our friend Walt who owns the dairy farm.  We also met some farmers from Mississippi and I gave them our e-mail address to keep in contact with...they were very nice people.  I have found most organic/non-chemical type farmers to be very friendly and eager to help.  I am not saying non-organic farmers aren't nice...I just don't know that many.   We talked to them about raising chickens and how the state of Tennessee won't let farmers butcher their own chickens to sell them at farmer's markets.  There aren't any butchers in the state of Tenneessee permitted to butcher them either, unless you are a huge farm with over 500 or so chickens to butcher at one time.  Makes it impossible for small free range farmers in Tennessee to sell butchered chicken.

We also stopped and had breakfast at the Trolly Stop Restaurant and Market.  The owners also own Whitten Farms and have branched out with the restaurant.  The market portion allows year round farmers to sell their items and the restaurant uses only local and or organic ingredients.  My breakfast was a farm fresh egg, fresh sauteed spinach with mushrooms and cheese on texas toast.  It was yummy.  I picked up some more granola that our friend, Uele sells.  It's called 'Groovy Granola' and it's the best I have ever had.  If you live in the Memphis area, you need to stop by the Trolly Stop Market. 

Cris and I may get a few chickens and put them in our backyard. (don't tell the neighborhood association!)  We have to build a chicken coop first and them we will get about 3 chickens...no roosters!  Roosters make too much noise and would give us away.  It would give our dogs a chance to get use to having chickens around and hopefully they will learn that chicken is our friend....and not something to kill and drag around the back yard.